Words Mean Things

One of the things that I've struggled with in my life is having pride in myself.

I've been a bit of a people pleaser in my lifetime, so hearing others tell me that they're proud of me always lifts my spirits. I won't lie and say that hearing "I'm proud of you" from someone that I love doesn't motivate me. One of my highest love languages is words of affirmation, after all.

But over the past couple of years, I've learned the importance of using that love language on myself.

I've been purposefully working on my self-talk recently. As I reached 30, I realized that I was extremely hard on myself with everything. Part of it is because I can be a bit of a perfectionist, and I'm quick to berate myself if something doesn't come out the way that I envisioned it in my head.

Being a perfectionist has been a mixed bag. On the one hand, it helps me to pay attention to details in things like writing my novels. It helps in teaching when I create my lessons and activities for my students since I'm constantly searching for ways to improve.

On the other hand, it can be detrimental when I can't reach the often impossible standards that I've set for myself and subsequently berate myself over it. I also fell into the comparison trap, specifically when it came to my weight and my body.

For years, I was in a very unhealthy relationship with exercise and dieting. Rather than exercising to just be overall healthy, I was obsessed with losing weight. I strove to get back to the weight that I was freshman year; never mind that I wasn't playing volleyball or walking all over campus anymore. I was also in the first few years of teaching, arguably the most stressful time in a new teacher's career. But I didn't think about how those factors would affect my body. I didn't even want to acknowledge that getting older would also affect my body.

Instead of wearing clothes that I felt comfortable and confident in, I wore Spanx and other support wear to create a desired silhouette. There's nothing wrong with these garments, but I was always uncomfortable in them and tended to wear them too tight. There were days while teaching that I was struggling for breath halfway through the day, ducking off during one of my few bathroom breaks to try and loosen it.

In college was also when I started wearing makeup in earnest. Prior to that, the most I wore was eyeshadow and lipstick. But soon I began doing a full face of makeup, obsessing over the two tones of my lips and the acne scars and dark spots and dark circles under my eyes. I refused to go anywhere without makeup on. Even when we returned to school and were masking, I still had on far too much makeup.

In all of these instances, I realize that, somewhere along the line, I had allowed my metric for what I should be proud of to be influenced by someone else.

Growing up, my parents did their best to instill in me a strong sense of self and pride in myself. They always told me that I was beautiful, and encouraged me to chase my dreams. My parents were the reason I had the confidence to begin writing in the first place.

So it was disheartening to take stock of my situation and realize how much things had changed.

I would constantly get compliments about my outfits at work, about my skill at teaching, about my writing, and about how beautiful I was. But for some reason, I didn't believe any of it.

It wasn't until my boyfriend said (and repeated) a specific phrase that I started paying attention to the things that I was thinking and saying about myself and how they were affecting my self-esteem.

"Words mean things."

He said this in response to something negative I'd off-handedly said to myself - something I'd begun doing without even realizing it. The phrase was simple, but it got me thinking.

Why did I move the measurement? Why was nothing that I did good enough for myself, even when others praised me? This went far beyond my perfectionism at work, turning into me keeping myself down.

But more importantly than why was how did I fix it?

I began by paying attention to my self-talk. Most of the negative things that I said about myself were done almost automatically. So I tried to be aware of when I was being negative. (My boyfriend helped by forcefully reminding me to stop talking bad about his girlfriend.) Then I was purposeful about speaking positively about myself.

I re-learned how to set my standards to a place that was challenging, but manageable. I started buying clothes that were more comfortable, and left the shapewear alone. I stopped wearing a full face of makeup, now only wearing eyeliner, mascara, and an eyebrow pencil, and stopped worrying so much about my skin tone. I slowly built a workout routine focused on being healthy and getting stronger rather than obsessing over my weight. I kept writing and eventually gained the confidence to share it with others, even getting impressed by reading back over what I'd written.

But most importantly, I started speaking more positively about myself. When I send my boyfriend pictures of myself, whether my hair, face, or outfit, I tell myself that I'm beautiful. I've started complimenting myself on my writing, trying to notice things that I do well, and encouraging myself.

This is not to say that I don't slip up from time to time. It's easy to slip back into old habits. But I can confidently say that I've grown in the past few years, and now I can confidently remind myself of things that I'm good at without lessening my standards.

Because they're my standards, reachable standards, that focus on the things that I think are important.

And words mean things.