Friday, November 19, 2010

Who knew I could learn something from Stuart Smalley (Saturday Night Live)?


Now this adorable little girl has more positive mojo in her entire body than a whole handful of adults could ever dream of having!  This has to be one of my FAVORITE videos ever.  (Click on the link below and then come-on back).  


Whenever I feel a little glum, I do a quick search and find this amazing display of positive self talk that can only put a smile on my face and perk up any grumpy mood.

I try and imagine what our world would look like if more people, men and women, started their day with a spirit like hers?  I am not sure if we all need to jump up onto our bathroom counters and do a little jig every morning (can you picture this...I know it would be an entertaining site in my home)! 

I have a choice every morning to either be an energy "giver" or an energy "sucker".  I have had my fair share of spending time with people that apparently have only one side of the bed in which they can roll out of each morning...the wrong side.  After spending time with someone who complains about everything, never seems to be happy about anything...I can feel every ounce of my positive thoughts and feelings being sucked out of me....all my good mojo is gone.  I end up feeling sad and negative myself.  YUCK! 

There are days that no matter what I try to do to lift my spirits, I just need to be an energy sucker.  The key for me, is NOT to move into "Glumville" and become a permanent resident there.  

It is a choice, no matter what is on my plate, to think positively or negatively.  I have noticed that the days that "negative" has chosen me before I even have a say, things just go from bad to worse.  It is like negative things continually find me...like a big negative magnetic with 2 arms and 2 legs.  If I feel that I just need to have a bad day, because let's face it, everyone does, I just try my hardest not to SHARE my negativity with others.  Those are the days that I don't even like being around me so I don't expect others to appreciate my mood and want to hang out with me either!

A few months ago, I was having a chat with one of my sons about baseball, as he was trying to improve his techniques and success when swinging at the plate.  I asked him to pretend to step up to the plate like he was going to hit a ball.  He just rolled his eyes and probably thought...what is she going to have me do now!  My kids have learned to just go with it because I seem to have a persistent quality (putting it in friendly terms) when I am trying to make a point and be heard.
                                                                               
He gave me a look and I nodded my head for him to continue.  As he was doing this, I asked him what he was thinking at that very moment.  He thought for a while and I asked if it was good thoughts or negative thoughts.  He finally said, I just keep thinking about past times when I was up to hit and I struck out.  I looked at him and said, then that is exactly what you will do...strike out.   I explained that whatever you are thinking, your thoughts, your feelings, your self-talk have a strong impact on how things will turn out.  I told him to do this again but invision himself connecting with the ball and smacking it with everything he had.  He tried the experiment again, without even rolling his eyes.  Then he tried it with an actual ball...and he connected and hit it!  The next time he had an actual game, he looked over at me, his eyes met mine and I mouthed the words
"YOU CAN DO IT"....and he did.

Great story huh?  Well, here is what I realized after hearing me, myself, speak these important and powerful words to my son...I am my worst critic, like many of us are.  I have said some of the worst things to myself...thought some of the worst things about myself...things that I would NEVER speak to someone else as it would crush them and their spirit, hurt them in more ways than I could ever repair.  This thought stopped me in my tracks.  Why in the world did I think it would be okay to say these things and think these things about myself??  After time, you believe what you are being told...good or bad.  I realized this was no different with self-talk.  Finding a "New Kind of Normal" and my quest to embrace new lifestyle changes with eating and losing weight, as I have shared in a previous post, is something that requires me to totally change the way in which I look at myself and my self-talk process.  The first few days of repeating positive affirmations to myself, just like Stuart Smalley from the Saturday Night Live clips, was honestly very difficult and awkward.  It was different and a whole new shift in thinking.  But I continued repeating and telling myself good things about me, positive things, and what I noticed was I felt better.  My spirit and mood was better and happier.  My family even noticed as I became maybe just a little bit sassier (I like to call it "spunky").  Things just seem to be going better.  Whoever would have thought that in all of my conversations within myself I was doing more HARM than GOOD?  This has been a HUGE ah-ha moment for me...not an easy thing to admit and isn't easy to add to my "New kind of Normal" but so healing and so beneficial for sure!!

As Stuart Smalley would say "You're good enough, You're smart enough, And doggone it People really like you!"...and it is ALL TRUE!!

2 comments:

  1. time to develop a "new normal" - it has alwasy been one of my favorite mantra's - life calls for it consistently and ....it's a beautiful thing.

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