You are ugly! You are stupid! You are fat! Do I have your attention yet? I’m sure some of you are offended and taking those statements very personally – as you should! Would you want to be around someone very long who spoke to you this way? I hope not. I hope you would remove yourself from that situation as quickly as possible! But I’m going to guess that we ALL have someone VERY close to us who says some pretty negative things about us on a daily basis – and we take it as fact. Because it is us who says those things to ourselves. I’ve just come to realize how flippantly I use the words “I am” in my self talk. I don’t always say them out loud for others to hear, but they are ruminating in my head often! As I’ve become aware, I’m shocked by how negatively I speak about myself. The one I find myself thinking about most often, now that I pay closer attention, is “I am sick.” And if you saw me out and about with my wheelchair, you would probably agree. Another word for sick is unwell or to not be oneself. I definitely have not felt like myself because of MS. But without MS, what am I? It’s time for me to become cognizant of the adjectives I put behind those two words, because they hold more power than I realized. And I am a whole lot more than sick!!
I and am are two of the smallest and most powerful words in the English language. Yet, we tend to throw them around and use them to describe ourselves in a myriad of positive and negative ways without truly thinking about it. Most of us would balk if a friend/acquaintance/stranger said, “You are ugly,” or “You are fat,” etc. Yet, how often do we say to ourselves, “I am ugly,” or “I am fat,” etc. and believe it as true? I have found myself guilty of this many times in my own life. It wasn’t until recently that I realized how influential those two words are. In the Bible God refers to himself as the “Great I AM”. We have the power to label ourselves the way that God labeled himself. Why, then, do we choose such negative words to follow ‘I am’ and name ourselves? Because it feels conceited/strange to say, “I am beautiful,” “I am smart,” or “I am awesome.” I’m not sure why it has taken me so long to learn the importance of what I name myself because when I say I am (whatever trait), I am labeling, or naming, myself as such. What we name in our life, we will see more of. If I use positive words and truly FEEL the love and kindness towards myself around those words, I will bring more of it into my life. And even if you don’t believe in the law of attraction, changing my negative self talk can only make me feel better about myself.
So, not only do I need to use only positive descriptors to name myself, but I have to know that those things are true in my heart regardless of what the outside world is trying to tell me. So, I will start today! “I AM beautiful, I AM kind, I AM healthy, I AM healed!!!” And every time I feel those pesky, negatives crawling back into my head – and I know they will because I am human and life is not always roses – I will consciously manipulate those thoughts into something positive. I was born in the light and I will choose to live in the light. I hope that your ‘I am’ statements are filling you with positivity and light! You are beautiful! You are special! You are loved!!