لخّصلي

If there is one thing I found all of the self-empowerment movement experts to agree upon, is that the way we talk about ourselves, the very words we use to describe ourselves, have a strong impact on our lives.
An impact so strong in fact, that we can become the prisoners of our own descriptions, or the creators of our own reality.
The way you talk about yourself is the story you’re writing in the book of your life. And it starts with your name.
The ancient Romans used to say “Nomen est Omen” (loosely translated: the name is a prophecy). The ancients were very careful when naming a baby, believing it would influence its destiny. I tend to agree. That single act is the beginning of the story that we will tell about ourselves for the rest of our lives. And I’m telling you this out of personal experience.
Now, a little premises: my mother is a very “different” person. and so she did something very different from what mothers usually do when they have a child. She waited to meet me in person before naming me. It took her around 3 months to decide, and the name she finally gave me was quite peculiar (it is old, and usually found only in Russian fables).
When I was little in the ex-USSR, I was happy with the beginning of my story: I was different and I liked it.
Then we moved to Italy, where nobody could ever pronounce my name right. To help me blend in, my folks thought it would help forcing me to use an Italian name. There was no legal name changing, I was just instructed to use a different name and never use mine again in front of Italians.
What do they say about good intentions? This change made me feel as if there was a barrier between me and the outside world. As if nobody would have ever been able to accept me for what I really was. As if my very own essence had to be hidden like a hideous secret.
No wonder I got stuck with depression for some 5 years (and that is a story for another time). I dug myself out of depression like any Russian girl with no internet access would (hint: books, lots of them). But it wasn’t until I moved to a different city, and was finally free to use my real name again, that I started to heal.
So if a name can make such a difference, and it is only the first word in the book of our lives, what effect do you think what we write inside can have on us? Every time you express an idea — be it to another person or through your own internal dialogue — you reinforce it. You write it over and over again.
I’m not going to quote any philosopher, as this article is about personal experience but should you be inclined to read about the idea-language correlation, I strongly recommend Hannah Arendt and the research of Whorf and Sapir.
Any language is a product of the human mind and its ideas. If there is no word for a concept in a given human language, that is because its speakers evolved without that idea.
This works the other way around too. If you introduce a new word into a language, the corresponding idea will be created in the speakers’ minds. This happens all the time when some new technology is invented.
So words and thoughts are not only connected but so strongly bound together, to be almost one and the same thing. If you want to create a different shape for your own world then, you can start with the language.
I’m going to share another personal experience on the topic. Growing up as a depressed girl with no friends other than books and food, made me a fat and shy teenager (surprised, huh?). Once I overcame depression, I still had lots of other issues to fight with. Making friends wasn’t on top of the list, so I never actually learned how to socially interact.
Luckily for me, as a young adult I moved to a different city (again), far away from home, where nobody knew me. And there I had my own revelation:
“These people know nothing about me. They don’t know that I’m shy, so I have no reason to be shy around them”.
I told myself this one day, before going to a writers’ group and guess what? I was one of the most outgoing people in the room. I stopped being shy altogether and never was again.
So if a 19 years old fatty can do this, why cannot you? Why cannot we all? And yeah, now it’s hard for me too.
I think that is due to the fact that a self-judgment gets stronger and stronger every time we tell it. To the point where we can no longer erase these words: we’d have to tear the page out, and write a new one.
But what if the whole book is filled with these unpleasant ways we describe ourselves? We cannot throw the book away entirely: it is our life. And we cannot find the strength to simply erase what we spent most of it writing down. What now?
The answer here, as with every other question about a hard change or a long process, is: “baby steps”. And I would like to share with you my favorite one so far, in changing one’s self-description: Yet.
If you read my story so far, you might be astonished at this new: I don’t like the way I look. I used to be a very short and fat child, and a short and fat teenager, and being not rich always made it hard to be dressed “properly”. Additionally, in the most recent years I had a bad case of relationship unhappiness, poverty and thyroiditis, that broke the little self esteem I managed to build on the subject.
This time moving to a different city didn’t help.
Especially since I had the brilliant idea to move to Milan to find a job. As it turns out, Milan is the fashion capitol and it is customary to judgepeople based on their appearance. It doesn’t matter if you are smart and have a pretty face. If you’re not thin and properly dressed, you’ll never feel like a woman again.
So I started telling myself that “I am not beautiful but I am smart and funny and I’m good with that”. I told it so many times that I actually became funny! Or at least, funny enough to have lots of friends who like me for what I am. But I never dated in almost two years, I didn’t feel worthy.
And oh, yeah, I was also in the middle of another burst of depression but that is not the point. This time I was an adult with the Internet, so it took me a lot less to get back on my feet. Anyhow, when I realized what I was doing to myself with the whole “I am not beautiful” statement, I knew I had to overcome it, but thinking differently was just too hard. I’ve been saying this to myself since childhood, and don’t have the mental strength to simply turn it around (yet). I wouldn’t believe any differently. So: baby steps.
Now, every time I catch myself thinking or saying “I am not beautiful” I add “yet” at the end of the sentence. It’s something so little that I can do it without consuming any mental energy and it feels better immediately after.
And after a whole month of “yet attitude”, guess who’s happily hitting the gym, makeup-less and in her scrappy clothes?
I’m not saying this is the cure for all of your issues: you still have to get out there and do stuff. But I can assure you that it really helps to have a positive internal dialogue. And when it is too hard to create one, you can still baby-step-modify the negative one you already have.
So when if this feels overwhelming, let’s start with baby steps: let’s start with yet.
I am not beautiful yet.
I cannot draw yet.
I am not smart enough for this job yet.
I am no writer yet.
See where this is going? Shape your mind to believe you’re not stuck in some undesirable condition, you’re just still in the change process. Once your mind believes it, the process will be a lot easier to start and maintain.
Thank you for taking the time to read this