Thanks for joining me for another edition of the Serenity Through Sweat blog. Today I want to talk about our internal dialogue, or the types of messages we tell ourselves repeatedly.
I remember as a really young kid the toy that almost everyone had, or had used, was the Fisher Price See n Say. You pull the handle, the farmer spins around eventually landing on an animal, and says “the cow says… moo” or whatever animal it lands on.
This is a great toy for children’s early development. They can associate sights and sounds that go together, and there is some randomness as well as repetition.
Eventually children can remember the sounds that various animals make and reproduce them on command. After a few months my 2 year old son was able to list off the sounds of most common barnyard animals and that is pretty age appropriate and common.
As someone who works on the road, my family and I spend a lot of time on the phone. While this isn’t ideal it is far easier to have a relationship with your family while being away through things like cell phones and FaceTime than it was even a decade ago. Young children tend to model the behavior they see, and even before cell phones were around children have been pretending to answer the phone.
To my son anything with buttons is a phone and can be held against his ear and he can have a conversation. I asked who he was talking to and he replied “Daddy”. It was now my picture up on the proverbial See N Say and I was curious what he would come up with when I asked, “what is daddy saying”. His response was “I love you”.
Now besides melting my heart a little bit and being absolutely adorable, this isn’t really a surprise. One of the most important things we can tell those close to us and especially our children is “I love you”. There are no guarantees in life and we only get one time around so I try to use the phrase early and often.
Now in his slightly more than two years on this planet, and slightly more than one of them being verbal, he has figured out that mommy and daddy’s message is “I love you”. That’s what he hears the most (despite the many repetions of “we get down feet first” and “we put our pee-pee on the potty”.
If you had to spin the See n Say and it landed on your picture, what would it say. What is the message that you tell yourself the most, your internal dialogue. For most of us, especially as we get older, I think it is easier and easier for that message to slip away from something positive.
Part of the journey towards Serenity is how we talk to ourselves. Are you encouraging yourself through one more set, one more roll, one last interval? Are you making yourself and your well being a priority? Or are you telling yourself that your diet isn’t important, your sleep isn’t important, your feelings aren’t important, or your time isn’t important.
This internal dialogue can be obvious and loud, even audible (if your a little zany and talk to yourself like me). But it can also be insidious and hide behind the scenes. Our internal dialogue reinforces the habits in our lives whether they are positive or negative.
Next time you spin the wheel and it lands on your picture, what are you going to tell yourself?
Thanks for joining me and stay sweaty my friends.
