The Self-Talk Revolution: Speaking to Yourself as Kindly as You Speak to Others

This episode explores the transformative power of positive self-talk, challenging the double standard many Christian women over 40 live with—showing grace to others while being harsh on themselves. 

Key Scriptures:

Luke 6:31 - "Do to others as you would have them do to you"
Mark 12:29-31 - "Love your neighbor as yourself"
2 Corinthians 10:5 - "We take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ"
Philippians 4:8 - "Whatever is true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable—think about such things"

Main Topics Covered in this Conversation:

• The double standard we live with (How we see beauty in others but struggle to see it in ourselves)
• The mental health impact of negative self-talk
• Why self-love is actually biblical (Mark 12:31)
• The science behind self-talk
• Physical health benefits of positive thinking
• Practical transformation steps
• Self-care as spiritual practice
• Reframe self-care as stewardship of God's temple, not selfishness
• Practical self-care ideas
• A weekly compassion challenge 

Purchase my book, Your Worthy Body here

Episodes Discussed

My Arsenal to Fight and Overcome My Current Body Image Battles S20E15

I've Gained Perimenopause Weight. Why I'm Not Trying to Lose it. S20E16

Beyond Barbie-Style Self-Care: Transforming Your Nervous System's Response to Calling with Janice McWilliams S23E16

Nourished Notes Bi-Weekly Newsletter

30+ Non-Gym Ways to Improve Your Health (free download)

Connect with Amy:
GracedHealth.com
Instagram: @GracedHealth
YouTube: @AmyConnell

Transcript

The Best Friend Litmus Test in Your Words and Health

Hey, everybody. I'm so glad you tuned in today, and I do not take it lightly that you hit play on today's episode. I know there are so many options for you to listen to—so many different podcasts—so thank you, thank you, thank you for hitting play and for putting me on while you are walking or driving or doing anything else. I'm grateful to be part of your day, so thank you.

I'm wondering if you have been seeing some of the same things that I have on social media. Granted, I am not on social media very much. I kind of have stopped posting just in general. In fact, I ran into a neighborhood friend, an acquaintance, and she was like, "What? I don't ever see any of your posts anymore." I was like, "That's because I'm not posting." I don't think she listens to the show and she's not on my email list. I'm like, "I'm doing stuff. I'm just not putting things out there on social media," and I'm not going to apologize for it. I don't know how long that's going to last.

Anyway, I digress. I'm wondering if you have any kind of social media presence—if you are seeing the same type of posts that I am, which is some version of "This is the season to embrace your body and not worry about what it looks like," or some version of that. And of course I applaud that. Of course I do. I mean, how many times have I said on this show we take care of ourselves so we can do what we're called to do? Not so it will look a certain way. So of course I subscribe to that and I applaud it.

Or maybe you are seeing posts about like a summer reset or summer goals in terms of health and fitness, and all of a sudden we're starting to think, "Oh, this is what I need to be doing. This should be my expectation," or I start comparing myself to other people, other things. And let me tell you, if you are in any of those camps, I am right alongside you.

I could tell you of college graduation trips I have seen on Facebook that just look so amazing that I wish I was on, but guess what? I don't have a kid graduating from college. And would we do that? I don't know. We're not there yet. I have applauded and cheered on friends who are having wonderful, amazing professional wins and kind of comparing myself and comparing the numbers that they share. And they do that out of joy and they should. But here I am thinking, "Oh Amy, you're not doing enough. You should have been marketing better. You should have been reaching out." And I'm just—that's not one of the skills that I'm great at, unfortunately.

And of course being summer, we do have the issue of swimsuits and shorter shorts and sleeveless tanks and all of the other things that can make us sometimes, unfortunately, feel a little self-conscious.

As I was prepping for this episode, I actually was reminded that it was just a year ago that I had two of my most downloaded episodes over the last several years, and that was about, number one, a body image meltdown that I had and my arsenal of what I was doing to combat that. And number two, I've gained perimenopause weight and here's why I'm not trying to lose it. So I am just a year past those episodes. I am not a year past dealing with it, but you know, we kind of ebb and flow. And I don't know if that's what your story is, but that's just part of my story. And if you've been with me long enough, you probably know that.

I've also been working with a coaching client who has made amazing progress during our time together, but she has gotten a little frustrated at the lack of what I would call linear progress. So she's made a lot of great progress, but it has been up and down and up and down and up and down, and every time she goes up, she's getting up a little bit more or we're reframing things, but it hasn't been one, then two, then three, then four, and so forth. And so she's been a little frustrated with that.

Why am I bringing up all of these things that could be swirling around in our head? Because I think we are not treating ourselves the way that we would treat other people. One of the more commonly known things that Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount is "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you," or treat others the way you would like to be treated. That's from Luke 6:31, and it's probably not new to you. And in fact, even if you grew up in a home where faith was not a part of it, you probably heard the golden rule: treat other people the way you want to be treated. And absolutely.

My question and my challenge to you today is: are you treating yourself as well as you would treat other people?

As I shared in the episode from about a year ago about my body image meltdown, I remember sitting in my car—my youngest was getting ready to graduate from high school—and I was sitting with my dear, dear, dear friend, and just crying and just so frustrated with things. And of course I had just come off a big book launch and it was supposed to be so exciting, and it was. And then I was disappointed in how I looked in the pictures, and you can go back and listen to that full episode if you want. But my friend who's so amazing just said, "You know, Amy, I think you need to do what you talk about all the time, and I think you need to give yourself some grace."

She was absolutely right. I talk all the time on this show about giving yourself grace, but yet when it came time for me to do that, was I doing it? No. And thankfully I had a friend who was able to call me out a little bit saying—you know who you are if you are listening. So I'm very grateful for that friend.

But I just wanted to take this episode to do a little gut check and to ask ourselves as we are entering into this season of the swimsuits and the expectations, and you know, it's a new season so we can do new things. Like, are we treating ourselves the way that we would treat others?

I shared this story in my first book, Your Worthy Body. But I remember a time many years ago when a friend in my friend group was saying, "Well, I'm just gonna get this whole mommy makeover thing. Like a little nip, a little tuck, a little suck, like all of this kind of stuff." And several of us were all together because we were out on a girl's trip and there was no judgment. But all of a sudden all of us were like, "But do you really see how incredible you are?"

We got an opportunity to share with our friend the beauty we saw in her, and we were able to point out all of the great things that we saw, but she didn't necessarily see, because of course we are our own worst critic. We are the meanest person in the world to ourselves most of the time, especially when it comes to body and body image and expectations. And I would say particularly health expectations, but really probably any kind of expectations. And we just almost have this double standard between what we are saying to our friends and the encouragement that we give to our friends. And the other side of that is what we're saying to ourselves.

We are our own mean girls in so many situations. If I had a friend like that, she wouldn't be my friend for very long, honestly. Like the kinds of things that can go on in my head—and I'm gonna talk about that in just a second, about how I deal with that—but those kinds of things that go on in our head, if we were to say that to our friends or our sisters or other people we care about, we just wouldn't get to hang around them for very long because it's just mean, it's unhelpful.

And I think it's worth digging into the science behind negative thoughts. So when we start getting in a loop on all of the things that we are disappointing ourselves in—and most of the time it's we are disappointing ourselves more than we are disappointing other people—then that's actually having a negative impact on our health. Which is kind of ironic because if we're talking about this in the Graced Health space, we're probably having negative thoughts either about how our body looks or about how we are not doing as well as we think we should in terms of movement, in terms of eating, and we've had plenty of conversations about that.

But how ironic that when we do that and when we have a lot of negative self-talk, then it can impact things like our cardiovascular health. So we've talked about cardiovascular health as women in perimenopause and beyond. This is something that—I don't know about you—but I know I am paying attention to. Of course, it's important, but studies show that optimistic people have a 50% lower risk of heart disease compared to their pessimistic counterparts. And the Harvard School of Public Health found that the most optimistic individuals had—get this—a 50% reduced risk of coronary heart disease, and were 38% less likely to die from a stroke.

Now, please hear me. I am not saying to be so positive that you are not paying attention to the important things, right? We're not being Pollyanna, we're not having this toxic positivity, but we are retraining our brain to have more positive thoughts and especially overtaking the ones that are negative.

Here's another health consequence of our negative thoughts: our thoughts impact our immune system. So positive thinking can strengthen your immune response. Research from Carnegie Mellon University demonstrated that people with positive emotional styles—so like, are you generally positive or are you generally negative?—they were less likely to develop cold symptoms when exposed to the rhinoviruses like colds. So if you have a more positive outlook, then you were less likely to develop a cold and cold symptoms. How crazy is that? Because their immune system produced more antibodies and showed better resistance to illnesses.

So as a little pro tip to myself as I get on a plane next week, I'm gonna be thinking some positive thoughts on that airplane rather than, "Oh my goodness, everyone around me is coughing and I'm gonna get sick." I don't know if that would do it or not, but we'll just pretend that it does.

Here's another health outcome of our thoughts: optimistic thinking reduces your cortisol production. Cortisol, as we know, is our body's main stress hormone. There is a time and a place for cortisol. However, if it is chronically elevated, then that contributes to disrupted sleep, increased inflammation. It can create weight gain, particularly around your midsection, which is called your visceral fat, and that can have negative health outcomes. Remember, I am weight neutral, so I'm not concerned so much about our weight; however, we do want to have health-promoting behavior and reduce our visceral fat as much as we can without getting all stressed out about it.

Here's another interesting one about longevity: the Nurses' Health Study, which followed over 70,000 women, found that the most optimistic women lived 15% longer than the least optimistic, and they were also 70% more likely to reach the age of 85. So if you want to be living longer, then let's make sure that our thoughts are positive, and again—and we'll talk more about this here in a second—but talking to ourselves in a way that we would talk to our friend.

Finally, optimistic people fall asleep faster and experience deeper, more restorative sleep. You have probably heard me say how guarded I am about my sleep. Despite that I don't always have perfect sleep—in fact, last night was one of those rough nights—however, optimistic people fall asleep faster and get better sleep. Negative thought patterns activate what's called the sympathetic nervous system, which I'm sure you are aware is that stressed-out state that we can be in—that fight, flight, freeze, or fawn—and it just kind of keeps us in that state of alertness when we should be winding down.

So especially when it comes to bedtime, let's make sure that we are being kind to ourselves. This is not the time to look back on the day and think about all of the things that we should have done.

Now I admit I am one of the people who tend to fall in the more positive outlook, just generally positive thinking camp. I do know that it can be harder if your head just goes to the more negative sides. And there's nothing wrong with that. And I think honestly that there are some benefits in other areas of your life. If you're constantly thinking, "Well, what could happen?" I bet you're a great risk manager. I bet things run very smoothly in your world. Mine not so much—I have to really work on some of that. So I'm not saying that having a generally negative outlook is terrible in all ways. However, I do think it is important to recognize when we start to spiral into spaces that are just not going to be helpful or productive.

When I was writing Your Worthy Body, I actually did a little crowdsourcing on one of the Facebook groups that I'm a part of and I asked them, I was like, "Okay, what are some of your mantras or affirmations to counter negative thoughts?" Because we all have them. I mean, we all have these times where we just go into the deep, dark spiral of whatever the subject matter is.

I shared these in Your Worthy Body, but I thought I would share them here as well. I don't think that they'll mind if you wanna borrow one, but someone said, "I am my own sunshine." I love that. Someone said, "Faith over fear," which is kind of a nod to that 2 Timothy 1:7 that says, "For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and love and a sound mind." Someone said, "This too shall pass." And it will—it may not feel like it, but it will. I also got responses like "I can do hard things." Actually since I wrote that book, this is something that I say to my kids all the time. I'm like, "We can do hard things. We can do hard things."

And actually another thing that I say to them a lot, which was not in the book, but I think that we can add here, is "Everything is figureoutable." Like sometimes we just feel stuck. And I have to give Marie Forleo, who's an online business coach, credit for that one. So I did not come up with it, but I say it all the time to my kids. I'm like, "Everything is figureoutable. We can figure this out," and it may take time and it gets really frustrating, but when we are in a stuck situation, everything is figureoutable.

Someone else said, "I choose joy," and this one I love: "Jesus, you'll fix it." That's so good. And of course, the one that I would say a crowd favorite that so many people said is the last part of Philippians 4:13: "I can do all things through him who gives me strength."

So my challenge to you in taking yourself from speaking to yourself like your friend never would to being kinder is—it is really found in 2 Corinthians 10:5, and I love this verse. I use it all the time, but it says, "We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ."

So when we are having those negative thoughts, then we take that captive, we snatch it up, and we turn it around. So you can use any of these affirmations or mantras that people have used. You can make up your own. But what we're doing is we're saying, "Oh no, this is not true. This is not what God says about me, and instead I am going to say something that is true."

And I feel like we can't cover this topic without at least a reminder to take care of ourselves. We just had a great conversation with Janice McWilliams in Season 23, Episode 16, called "Beyond Barbie Style Self-Care: Transforming Your Nervous System's Response to Calling." And she did such an amazing job of reminding us about the importance of little bits of self-care rather than taking a chunk out of your day and just pushing everything off that will be waiting for you whenever you're done getting your pedicure or manicure or massage. Now there's nothing wrong with that, but I loved that conversation with her. Highly recommend—go back and listen to her.

But in the vein of being kind to ourselves and treating ourselves like we would treat a friend, I want you to envision having any kind of conversation with your girlfriend. You're texting on your phone if you're like me, like on Marco Polo or voicemail or something like that. And I want you to envision telling a friend something that you would like to do that you would consider self-care.

So in my world, that would be—we call it "be still time" over here in the Graced Health space—but that's just sitting outside with God and not doing a whole lot of praises and prayers, but just sitting in his presence. That's been hugely impactful in my world. Maybe it is, "I am going to read a fiction novel during lunch." Ah, scandalous, right? Not really, but that feels very indulgent to me. And maybe it does to you, maybe it doesn't. You know, we're in the middle of summer here and maybe it's, "Well, I am going to take an hour out of my day and I'm gonna sit outside and read a book or listen to a podcast and just enjoy the sunshine."

So something like that. And so I want you to envision telling your friend that you're gonna do this, and then what would they say? They would undoubtedly, unless they're your boss and you have a big project due, more than likely they're gonna be like, "I am so happy for you. Go for it. Do it." And can we do that all the time? No, but you know what? You're not doing it all the time. You are a high-achieving person who cares about the quality that you do, who cares about other people. And probably anyone who loves you and knows you would probably say you don't take enough time for yourself.

So I want you to envision that scenario. And what would your friend say? Okay, now I want you to turn the tables and say that to yourself because you know, if that friend called you and they were saying, "Okay, I'm gonna do this," you'd be like, "Yes, I'm so happy for you. Go for it. Do it."

I'm reminded of Dr. Sandra Dalton-Smith in her book Sacred Rest. She says, "Don't expect others to give you permission to take care of yourself." So I guess if you want to, you can text your best friend and say, "Hey, is it okay if I do this?" But they're not going to reach out to you and say, "Okay, Amy, today from two to three you need to turn off the computer and you need to go outside and you need to relax." No one is going to do this, and so let's give ourselves permission to rest.

And by the way, Dr. Sandra Dalton-Smith's book called Sacred Rest is fabulous. She goes over the seven different types of rest that we can have, and it's really just a great way of thinking about rest beyond sleep. So, just as a side note, if you want some summer reading, go read that book.

As we wrap up, I really encourage you to start evaluating your self-talk. And if you need some kind of filter, what I want you to do is use Philippians 4:8 as a filter. So this verse says, "Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about these things."

If you are trying to reframe how you're talking to yourself, then this is an excellent filter to use in terms of the words that we will allow ourselves to say about ourselves. Again, I want to be very clear. I am not promoting toxic positivity. There is a time and a place for hard discussions. There's a time and a place to be honest with ourselves. What I'm talking about is the loops of negativity, the loops of "should haves," the loops of shame. These are the ones that we want to filter through that Philippians 4:8.

And my challenge to you is when these thoughts creep in, as they certainly can, I want you to think one of three things:

Number one: How would my best friend respond if I said this to her?

Number two: I would ask you if you would actually say that about anyone else. So not even our best friend, but just about anyone else.

And number three: Would you say it about yourself if your heavenly Father was right there by you? Because you know he is, and you know that it pains his heart when we are so hard on ourselves.

And sisters, please know that even as I say these words, I'm like, "Oh yeah, Amy, you're talking to yourself as well." So this is for me just as much as it is for you, but I do hope that this can help reframe some of our thoughts that get in the way of us being able to fully live into whatever it is that God is wanting us to do.

Okay? That is all for today. Go out there and have a graced day.