Episode 340 - 8 Ways to a Better Self Image
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[00:00:00] You are listening to episode 340 of the Peaceful Mind Podcast. Welcome to the Peaceful Mind Podcast, a place where you can move out of overwhelm and into a calm, confident motherhood with God at the center. I'm Danielle Thienel, certified life coach, Catholic mom, and creator of the Cyclone Mom Method. I help you create emotional steadiness and peace of mind from the inside out so you can experience more balance and more joy in your busy mom life.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, let's get started.
Hello. If you are a mom who has a running commentary in your head that talks to you about you in a way that you would never allow anyone to talk to, let's say, your daughter, or it is [00:01:00] not the kind of way you talk to your best friend or somebody you really care about, then this episode is for you.
Welcome, everyone. I'm Danielle. I'm a certified life coach and Catholic mom, and I wanna welcome you back to the Peaceful Mind podcast. In today's episode, I am gonna give you eight ways to a better self-image, and I wanna be clear right up front about what I mean by that, because this is not obviously an episode about you looking better or performing better.
Your self-image is simply the collection of thoughts you think about yourself. That's it. It's the story that you tell about who you are, and I just mentioned, if you're somebody who what you talk to yourself about, what you say to yourself, the relationship that you have with yourself, what you think about yourself isn't good, then you are going to want to [00:02:00] improve on your personal self-image, and I'm gonna give you eight ways.
And here's the best news you'll probably hear all day today, that since your self-image is made of thoughts and thoughts can be changed, your self-image can be changed. And this isn't about you becoming a different wom- woman, but I want it to be about you learning to see the woman that you already are.
You're just not seeing it in the light. You're not seeing it in where it's rooted in truth. So let's just dive in, talk about those eight ways. Grab a pen if you can, or if you're in your car or driving, then just let it land, let it wash all over you. You can always come back later and I'm going to give you things that you can start putting into practice today if you're [00:03:00] someone who knows that you could benefit from improving the relationship you have with yourself and to just have a better overall self-image.
So the two-- I'm gonna just go ahead and start with the first one, and that is that I want you to watch what you say after you say the words "I am." The two most powerful words in your inner life might be, "I am." And the reason is because whatever you then attach to those two words, your brain will go to work proving it So are you somebody that says to yourself or even out loud, "I'm such a mess," or, "I'm always behind," or, "I'm a terrible cook.[00:04:00]
I'm a bad friend. I'm an impatient mom." You say those things often enough and your brain treats them like the truth, and it will gather evidence to support that truth all day long. So the first way to a better self-image is to simply catch these. You don't even have to fix them yet, right? Just notice. This week, every time you hear yourself say or think, "I am," can you pause and ask, "Is that a fact, or is that just a sentence that I've practiced?"
Because I promise you, most of them are just sentences you've practiced. Think about it. If I ask you to prove it in a court of law that you are a bad mom, could you? Or would the actual evidence of all the meals that you make, the tears that you wipe, the pray- the prayers that you pray over their sweet sleeping heads, would they tell a completely different story?[00:05:00]
And anything practiced can be replaced with something more true. I am a mom who's learning. I am someone who shows up even when it's hard. I am doing better than my brain gives me credit for. Ugh. Let's all use that last one more often. And here's a little extra motivation for you. Your kids are listening to what you say about yourself.
So when you say, "I'm so bad at this," out loud in the kitchen, you're not just shaping your own self-image, you're teaching them how a woman talks about herself. The sentences you practice become the sentences you inherit. Okay? So that's number one way that you can improve your self-image starting today, is to watch and be deliberate and intentional about what [00:06:00] you say after the words "I am."
All right, number two, I want you to root your identity where it can't be shaken. And here's where so many of us go wrong. We build our self-image on things that are, like, constantly moving, right? We'll build our self-image on the number on the scale, which moves around a lot. The state of our kitchen that is always in flux.
How our kids behaved at mass. Whether we yelled today or not. How much we crossed off the list or didn't get crossed off. And when your identity is built on things that move, your self-image rises and falls like a rollercoaster because those things can change by the hour, change by the minute. As I literally just cleaned up the kitchen before I came in here, and I just heard my son out there rattling around.
That's hilarious. Just, okay, I digress here. When we come back [00:07:00] Mama, you have somewhere unshakable to build. You are a child of God. That was true before you accomplished anything, and it will be true on your worst day and your best day because your worth, your inherit wor- inherent worthiness was settled a long time ago, and it isn't up for a daily review.
Your house can be a disaster, and your worth is unchanged. You can lose your patience at bedtime, and your worth is unchanged. The scale can say whatever it wants, and your worth is unchanged. When you, your root, when you root down your identity, everything else becomes something that you just do, not something you are, right?
The laundry is a task, not a verdict. The hard parenting day [00:08:00] is a day, not a diagnosis. And notice how much lighter that makes the doing of things. When failing at a task cannot even touch who you innately are, a wonderful, beautiful child of God, you're actually more free to try things, to grow, to laugh at the mess along the way.
So if you want to have a better self-image, then you're gonna wanna do more of number two, which was remind yourself and root your identity in a place where it can't be shaken, and that is that you are a child of God The third way is to talk to yourself like you would talk to your best friend. I have a whole nother podcast on this called Best Friend Versus Bully Brain, which was very popular, so you're gonna wanna go back and look that one up.
But [00:09:00] I use this test on my clients all the time, and I bring it up all the time, and it works because it's so simple. If your best friend came to you and said, "I lost my temper with the kids today and I feel awful," would you say to her honestly, "Ugh, you are a terrible mother and you should be ashamed"? Of course not.
You would never. What you most likely would do is you remind her that she's human and humans make mistakes, and that she can ask for forgiveness, and you'd remind her that she's caring a lot and that she must be stressed about something else if that happened. And you won't-- You would tell her that one hard moment doesn't like erase like the thousand loving ones that she already did.
So why is she the only one who gets that type of [00:10:00] kindness, right? Self-compassion is not letting yourself off the hook. It's putting yourself on the same hook as everyone else that you love, which is to say we wanna hold ourselves and others with grace So you want to talk to yourself as if you were your own best friend talking back to you.
So this week, when that other kind of bully brain critic pipes up, just ask one question, "What would I say back to my best friend right now if she was going through this same situation?" Then I want you to say that to you. That will help your self-image. All right, step four, stop grading yourself on your worst moment.
So here's something sneaky our brain does. [00:11:00] You can have a day with 50 small, loving, faithful acts in it. You made the breakfasts. You found the missing shoe. You listened to the long story about the video game. You helped with homework. You showed up. You took calls from your adult children. You navigated two teenagers.
And then at 6:40 PM, you snapped about a backpack laying on the floor. Okay? Guess which moment out of all those moments your brain will replay like at midnight and keep you up? Yeah, I know. Your brain has a negative bias. It is wired to find all the things that went wrong because noticing problems is how it protects you.
I know. We wanna be like will you stop doing that?" But guess what? It's not [00:12:00] going to. It's kinda built in there how it protects us. But what you look for, you're going to find. So you have to look on purpose and look for the things you actually want to find, right? Do we really wanna find all the things that went wrong?
Or do we wanna find all the things that are going and we're doing great at or we're grateful for? And here's the question that I say give my clients if they're doing that midnight kind of replay. Would the verdict hold up if we showed the whole tape of your day? Because your brain is showing you a little 10-second clip of your worst moment, and then it's calling it it's making it the title of a documentary that would represent your motherhood.
It's not. It's a clip. It's a blip. And a [00:13:00] better selm- self-image gets built when we build it on better evidence, and the evidence of your goodness is already there. You're just not going around and collecting it. So here's the practice. Tonight before bed, name three things you did today as evidence that you're a good mom, a faithful woman, a person who's trying, right?
And they can be tiny. They can be small. Tiny counts, small counts. You're not making anything up. You're finally counting what was always true. And in my practice, I call this celebrating wins. In my Divine Time Planner, one of the resources I've created, that is definitely one of the items each day I have moms go collect.
So if they want a happier, healthier, holier life, then you're gonna be, in this [00:14:00] episode, I'm trying to help you have a better self-image, then you're somebody who will write down, "What do I wanna celebrate about myself that happened yesterday or that's happened today?" We want to stop grading ourselves on our worst moment and start focusing on what we are doing well, what is going right.
Okay, step five, I want you to quit the comparison scroll. That's right. We're just gonna talk about the phones for a minute. I know. It's just a, it's a great reminder. I've got my phone right here in front of me. I can see it, and I'm on it a lot too. But the truth is we cannot spend 45 minutes a day looking at other women's lives that are edited, curated, our best moments.
I, I do that. On my personal account, I put all my best [00:15:00] moment highlight reels of all of our, vacations and the family stuff. I do it too. And we can't do that day in, day out for a long time and expect to feel good or even neutral about our own kind of ordinary part of our life, like that Tuesday afternoon, right?
It's never gonna be a fair fight because we're comparing our kinda like behi- behind the scenes to what everyone else's like final movie product is. So this way to a better self-image is beautifully practical, and that is to unfollow at will. Like any account that reliably leaves you feeling less than, behind, or not enough, on this episode, I wanna [00:16:00] give you full permission to mute it or unfollow Even if she's lovely, even if you know her from church, like this isn't unkind This is a true gift to your mind and mental health.
And notice I'm not going to tell you to throw your phone in the lake. I'm telling you to just curate what comes into your head with the same care you use for what comes into your home. Or just think about the things that your own children would scroll and look like, and then if you saw their own thinking patterns or their sel- own self-image, like start to diminish, you would wanna protect them from that.
You would wanna remove that from what they can see. I'm offering that you could do that for yourself right now. Okay, step six. I've been talking about this tool a lot lately [00:17:00] in my sessions and here on the podcast, but we wanna let the grade of B-minus be just beautiful for our lives. Because perfectionism and a poor self-image, they go hand in hand, and here's why.
'Cause perfectionism, it like sets this bar, right? The bar of flawless, really. And since nobody lives there and nobody can attain it, you get to fail every single day, right? The dinner wasn't homemade enough. The birthday party wasn't Pinterest enough. The prayer life isn't consistent enough. Perfectionism is a machine that manufacture- manufactures the evidence that we are always falling short, and that is why I teach my clients the B-minus tool, [00:18:00] and I want you to hear me.
B-minus work still gets full credit, right? When you fed your family, B-minus. Full credit. B-minus party, it still can delight your child. The two-minute prayer in the car still connects you to God. When you let B-minus just be beautiful in the way of it, you then stop generating the proof that you're, like, not enough, and something surprising happens.
And I know, because it was a huge surprise in my life. I didn't even know how far the perfectionism had taken me off track. But you start liking yourself more. Just so ironic, right? Because we thought we would like the perfect version of ourself. And it's because you finally let yourself win [00:19:00] when you just show up and act where and complete things and move when it's like B-minus work.
Okay, step seven for your self-image, and that is to keep the small promises to yourself. This is one I don't talk about often, but it's a huge piece of your self-image, and that is your self-trust. And self-trust, I do talk about this actually when I'm really coaching on time management, right? And becoming somebody who does what you say you're gonna do.
But for today's podcast, I just want you to see that self-trust to yourself, it's exactly the way that you would put trust in another person. It's not different. So when you keep your word to someone, you like make a promise to someone every [00:20:00] time you tell yourself, "Oh, it's, I'll start walking this week," or, "I'm gonna start to go to bed earlier," and then you don't, there's this quiet little message that gets filed away.
And believe me, your brain keeps track of everything. It has a filing cabinet for everything, but it really starts to learn that my word to myself doesn't really mean that much. So you wanna rebuild it the same way you'd rebuild trust with any other person, and that is you make small promises and you keep them.
You don't promise yourself an hour at the gym five days a week. But in my whole 10% healthier philosophy, it would be something like promising yourself 10 minutes of a walk tomorrow, and then you do it. Promise yourself you'll drink more water, read the one page, say the one prayer, and then you do it. And I [00:21:00] know that I've really helped myself with this by having checklists for it.
The of small things, that's what's so great. I break it down into really small thing. And here's what like a week of this could look like, just to show you how small like Monday, you might step outside for 10 minutes. Tuesday, I'll put my phone in the other room during dinner. Wednesday, I'll be in bed by 10.
That's it. Promises so small your brain like can't really talk you out of them or even think, "So I can do that," or it's maybe that's kinda easy. But each kept promise is a deposit in the account you're like funding, that file cabinet you're filling, it's called the I can count on me drawer And just give that a few weeks and watch how differently you carry yourself.
Your self-image will go through the roof because a woman who trusts herself walks [00:22:00] into every room, including her own kitchen just a little bit differently. Okay, we've made it to number eight. Okay? The last one, and that is some really the-- if I summed it up, I will want you to update your old stories.
And what I mean by that is some of the harshest sentences in our self-image weren't even written by us. They were written by a comment that our parents made to us, or a teammate, or a mean girl in the seventh grade, or an old boss, and it sounds like, "I'm not the smart one," or, "I'm too much," or, "I'm not a creative person," or, "I'm bad with money."
You've been carrying those sentences so long they feel like they're just part of your body. They're like a bone. [00:23:00] But mama, they're not bones. They're just thoughts, old ones on repeat, and when you put all of them together, that's what I mean when they make up the story we have about ourselves. But you are allowed to update the story.
I'm just giving out permission everywhere on this episode today, and so this isn't any different. I'm giving you permission to update the stories. Stop putting old thoughts on repeats, and again, ones that mostly aren't even-- didn't even come from you In fact, I would say that you're called to, because those old stories, they are actually contradicting what God says about you.
So pick one, just one old sentence you're tired of carrying around. Is it, "Oh, I'm an introvert"? Do you know that's just a story? You didn't come out of the womb an introvert. It's is that story [00:24:00] of being an introvert helping you become the person you wanna be or do the things you wanna do? Maybe, and then this isn't one you have to update, but I was just giving an example.
What would it look like if you just no longer told that story? Write it down. Look at it. Ask, "Is this actually true for me? Do-- Or is it just old?" So here's an example what this might look like. Say the old sentence that you've been carrying around is, "I'm bad with money," and maybe it was planted by one, like embarrassing moment of something you did in your 20s.
And so the task I'm asking you is to write it down, "I'm bad with money," and then ask yourself, is that true of the woman who now runs a household or figures out how to feed a family? And you-- have you kept the lights on in your house for 15 years? Oh, yeah? Someone who's bad with money doesn't [00:25:00] figure out how to do that.
So the updated sentence might be, "I'm a woman learning to manage money with more and more wisdom every month." Notice it doesn't have to be like this kind of like bubbly affirmation that you don't believe. Like we don't wanna take it to an extreme where our brain will just reject it. It just has to be a little bit truer.
Truer? More true? Than the old one. Then practice it the way you would practice anything new, right? When you're at the sink, those little in-between moments in the car, that's where your new story gets stronger. All right. Let me fly over these eight things one more time because repetition is how these will take root in your mind, right?
What I want you to see that there's eight ways that you can have [00:26:00] a better self-image and that is to watch what you say after the words I am, to root your identity in being a child of God, not in the things that move. Talk to yourself like your best friend. Collect evidence of what you're doing right instead of grading yourself on your worst moment.
Unfollow whatever feeds the comparison. Let B-minus be beautiful. Keep small promises to yourself and update the old stories. Now, please do not hear this as eight new assignments you must do. You must overhaul all of these in your life right now, 'cause that would just be that whole perfectionism sneaking back in that side door.
Just pick one. [00:27:00] The one that I spoke about that made something in you go, "Oh, that's me," and just practice that one this week. Knowing a better self-image might not be able to happen in a weekend, but it's built the way a friendship is built. One kind of honest, kind interaction at a time. Except this time I'm asking you to help the friendship with yourself and then it's gonna be with you for the rest of your life.
It is so worth it. And what's really at stake here, it's not like a self-image kind of vanity point. The way you see yourself then sets the kind of temperature for your whole home, right? Because I want you to be a mom who believes that she is incredible, that she knows she's a beloved child of God [00:28:00] doing her honest best, and you parent from peace.
And your kids, they don't need a perfect mom. They want a mom who treats herself the way she's teaching them to treat themselves Okay? That is what I have for you today. And if you listened to all eight of these and thought, "I can see it. That critical voice, though, has been running the show for a long time, and I want help and guidance, support, and accountability to help change it.
I don't wanna do it on my own," then I would love to invite you to come to a free coaching consultation call with me. Thank you so much again for being here and I will see you again next week, beautiful mamas, with something else to help you enjoy your motherhood more and to show up with the peace and the joy and the balance that you want in this beautiful life.
All right, everyone, until next time, may peace be with you always. [00:29:00] Thank you for listening to the Peaceful Mind podcast. If you've been feeling a quiet desire for more peace and steadiness in your motherhood, I invite you to take the next step of scheduling a free coaching consultation with me. We'll meet over Zoom to explore options and possibilities of how having a personal life coach and mentor could help you experience the exact motherhood and life your heart desires.
To talk through current options, schedule a free coaching consultation today. You'll find the link to schedule in the show notes. It would be an honor to support you at any stage of your motherhood journey.
