“LOVE YOURSELF!” THAT message may sound like something on a bumper sticker, but it’s one of the most important pieces of the change-your-life puzzle. Badasses love themselves.
But how do you actually do that? How do you love yourself and appreciate your value in this world? If you struggle with these questions, you’ve likely been doing so for many years. Feelings of inadequacy often stem from earlier experiences with family, other people, or traumatic events.
I’m an example of this. I came from a crazy background, with amazing parents who were bikers, hippies, and rolling stones. I’m the middle kid of three children, so I am a classic case of feeling ignored. We were brought up in a rebellious background, with a lot of smoking, drinking, and partying. It’s not that my parents threw us kids into a raging house party, but we were exposed to a life filled with less than positive choices. Back then, I knew healthier options existed.
I was, however, raised well, with a focus on manners and an awareness of what I should or shouldn’t be doing. My parents loved me wholeheartedly, but I was heavily troubled and depressed through my early teens. I made a lengthy series of terrible choices because of it. I started chain-smoking, drinking whenever I could, and playing with drugs of every description, eventually getting my hands on harder drugs, like meth. I kept sabotaging myself with all this madness. I couldn’t even claim I was in bad shape, because I didn’t know what good shape was. I was destroying my body, my mind, and especially my spirit, and I was barely out of my teens.
In short, I wasn’t always as strong-willed, driven, determined, mindful, and creative as I am today, not at all. I was the very opposite. I had no self-esteem. I didn’t believe I was worth more than what I was doing. I simply always assumed that I wasn’t capable of doing much. I constantly put myself down.
Maybe you’re a lot like I was, beating yourself up at every turn and simply not believing you’re worthy of anything. Even if we have a success, we find a way to downgrade our efforts, to make them less of an accomplishment in our own eyes. No matter how much I achieved, I’d play it down. This was my life: destructive, dangerous, barely making ends meet, and resigned to what looked like a dark future.
I was on a path to becoming a full-fledged junkie when my mother suggested that I join her in Iraq, where she was employed as a civilian contractor. There was a job opening, and I decided to apply. I had to get clean to pass the drug test, which meant a period of no meth or other hard drugs. It was incredibly difficult, but I passed the test, and luckily, I was hired—initially as a laundry attendant and later moving up to camp operations specialist, doing logistics work. Anyway, off I went to Iraq, during Operation Iraqi Freedom, and was plopped down right in the middle of a desert war zone.
At first it didn’t hit me that I was in a war zone. It didn’t feel like war. It felt like a work camp, and militant with so many armed soldiers walking around on high alert. Then came the mortar attack. Boom, it happened. That’s when I realized this was real—really real. Everything at that moment seemed to unfold in slow motion—what I did, what I didn’t do, and exactly what I was thinking. This was the aha moment for me. I walked away from the attack, knowing that I didn’t want to die.
I also knew that if I wanted something better—and I did—I needed to make better decisions. But I had no self-worth to do so. Maybe you’ve had a similar “rocket-attack” revelation but were at a loss, not knowing what to do or where to turn. I’m living proof that you can change.
Over the next three months, I quit smoking and attempted to start hitting the gym. What really hooked me on fitness, however, was an exercise video I watched online. There were these three teeny little women, my size, and they all had beautiful bodies. They were amazing. One girl cried at the end, and I was like, “That`s what I want to do! I want to do a workout that makes me want to cry!” Those girls were doing CrossFit.
So I began a CrossFit program right there in Iraq, using the base gym, which was equipped with everything I needed. But change did not come easily. My lungs screamed for oxygen during an attempt to run a mile, compounded by my nasty smoking habit and an aversion to exercise. That mile nearly killed me. I dragged myself back to my quarters, tired and sore. It took me a week to recover. I did not like where I was. But although I was a bunch of broken pieces, I had hope that they could be patched up together again.
I began working out with a group of Special Forces guys who literally wanted to break me. Picture this: little tiny me, at five foot three, so underweight at 95 to 100 pounds that I looked anorexic. You could see the bones in my chest as clearly as on a skeleton. There I was, working out with these big husky macho soldiers! They’d put me through horrific workouts, standing over me to make sure I did every part of the workout and forcing me to finish. What would take them 15 minutes took me 30 to 45 minutes. Barely able to keep up, I was embarrassed to always be the last to finish.
After a few of those grueling workouts, those guys were convinced that I’d stop showing up. But I returned every day, knowing they were waiting for me with a hell workout.
My tenacity and determination to hang in there earned their respect. But really, I learned a valuable lesson from them: Do not give up, no matter what. That lesson stuck with me and would become the foundation for success in my life.
What drove me was the thought of going back to my life before the mortar attack. That “before life” terrified me. Had I not decided to change my life, I would have ended up as a junkie. I no longer wanted to invite death into my world. I wanted to crawl out of my rut and see what it was like on the other side. I had no idea what new worlds might await me.
After four years in Iraq, I returned to the United States and began coaching a boot camp and CrossFit classes, eventually opening my own CrossFit gym and competing in CrossFit competitions around the world. Over time, I became convinced that someday I would be part of something bigger than myself and be able to make a difference in the lives of others. I felt propelled along a new course of life.
Maybe you’ve come to a similar point in your life. If so, you have two options: Stay the course—aka, do nothing—or make some major changes in your life. If you choose the latter, know this: Small steps lead to miles walked and great heights. It took me more than a decade to climb my own mountain, and I didn’t start at the base of the mountain, either. I started in the ditches, below ground level, almost buried under a burden of a decade of poor decisions and feelings of worthlessness. Nor was this life change perfect from day 1. I relapsed a lot and struggled with insecurities. It was slow progress, with one step forward and one step back. Sometimes it was two steps forward, two steps back. But at least I was pushing myself forward.
If you’re truly ready to change, as I was, it does involve learning to love yourself. So, back to the original question: How do you do that? How do you move forward and create self-love?
I have a simple secret: Lie to yourself! This is also known as “faking the funk.” That’s what I did from the get-go. I simply lied. I call this find your lioness, otherwise called your lying-ness.
This isn’t lying in the way you think it is. It isn’t being untrue to yourself or inauthentic in the way you live. Rather, it is lying to those voices in your head that are telling you that you aren’t worth it, that you’re not as good as other people, that you’re a failure, that you’re not smart enough, and all that BS.
Negative statements like these can be devastating to your self-confidence and stand in the way of your loving yourself. The problem is that your subconscious mind begins to believe that you’re worthless and unlovable, and it makes you act as if those messages are really true. Negative thinking develops into a habit—one that gets so deeply entrenched in your psyche that you’re not even aware of it. And it cheats you out of happiness and success!
Naturally, you feel like retreating. You may pick up a glass of wine, a bottle of bourbon, a pack of smokes, a whole cake, or some other temporary “thrill” in an attempt to silence the whir of negativity. But these things don’t offer real reprieve; they only contribute to and compound the mess in your mind.
There are easier ways to break these negative habits and make positive new habits of self-love and self-confidence. Just as your subconscious mind believes the rotten stuff you tell it about yourself, it also believes the wonderful things you say to it. Start doing that now! Here’s how to “lie” to yourself:
Ditch your self-bashing mindset. Begin by countering every negative thought about yourself the instant it comes up. If you catch yourself saying:
“I’m a failure!”
“I can’t!”
“I’m afraid of ____________________________________________________________.”
Cancel those thoughts and instead say:
“Keep going for one more ____________________________________________.”
“I am a capable person!”
“This is why I’m here!”
“I’m confident I can ____________________________________________________.”
Statements like these may feel a little silly or a waste of time, but soon you’ll believe them, and soon after that, they’ll become true. Then watch how quickly your feelings about yourself and the situation begin to change. If you start altering your thoughts, you start changing your attitude, and you ultimately change the way you see yourself and the way you act.
Believe it or not, I used to feel very insecure and self-conscious about my body—even after I built some serious muscle and curves! I’d walk into a restaurant in a strapless minidress with my chiseled arms and legs bare for all to see. The whole time I’d be worried about what people were thinking (she’s got too much muscle, she’s too bulky, and so on). I finally had to banish these crazy approval-seeking thoughts from my mind and replace them with thoughts like I feel proud that my hard work has warranted some attention, and I smile at the onlookers. As a result, the coolest stuff happens. People now approach me with compliments, and they ask me about my fitness regimen and diet—which I am always happy to talk about.
So start cranking up your own ego. It may sound cheesy, but keep a running list in your head of all the reasons why you’re a badass—you can blast out squat reps like nobody’s business, your opinion is highly respected in business meetings, you can glam up with the best of them, everyone wants to dance with you because you’re so damn good, your Tinder matches are piling up, and they all want dates. Repeating the list to yourself can ratchet up your confidence and self-love, anytime, anyplace.
Fake it until you make it. Lie to yourself by “acting as if” you have certain qualities that you may not yet have. Act as if you’re that happy, self-confident, independent person, that you’re worth the workout, worth the effort to get fit, worth so much more than you have given yourself credit for. Be like those actors who get so caught up in their roles that they practically become the characters they portray. Well, taking on a confident, badass persona can help you feel superconfident and in control. If you make a conscious effort to act that way, eventually you’ll begin to believe it. Before long, you’re not just acting it, you are it.
Also, acting happy and confident creates a brain chemistry in which feel-good chemicals called endorphins increase, along with immune-building T cells. Scientists can even do scans of the brain, measure these chemicals, and actually see what anger, sadness, and even happiness look like. So act happy. Laugh. Smile. All these actions activate positive chemicals in your brain that keep you alert, upbeat, and physically healthy.
Loving yourself is the key to almost every success—it can bring you the body you want, the partner of your dreams, the job of your choice, and a circle of wonderful friends. Find your lioness, learn to love yourself, and see your life change fast.
For Today
TODAY’S QUOTE
When I was around eight, I looked in the mirror and said, “You’re either going to love yourself or hate yourself.” And I decided to love myself. That changed a lot of things.
—QUEEN LATIFAH
TODAY’S AFFIRMATION
TODAY’S CHALLENGE
Practice thought-stopping. This is an action-oriented technique to get rid of those nagging thoughts that haunt us and break unhealthy patterns or habits. Here’s what to do:
• Become aware of the messages that stream through your mind and recognize that you’re having a negative, unloving thought.
• Wear a rubber band on your wrist and snap it whenever the negative thoughts enter. This is important because it disrupts the negativity and prevents it from growing stronger. By doing this, you shift your mind away from the negative thoughts.
• Shift your mind to a loving thought about yourself. Exchange negative inner dialogue with positive, self-loving statements. Example: “I can’t do anything right” versus “I do most things exceptionally well.”
Today’s Mental Goal:
Today’s Personal Goal:
Today’s Spiritual Goal:
MY BADASS REFLECTIONS FOR TODAY
What are you most grateful for today?
Mentally: ______________________________
Physically: ______________________________
Spiritually: ______________________________
What was the biggest success for you today?
Mentally: ______________________________
Physically: ______________________________
Spiritually: ______________________________
What was the biggest challenge for you today? How did you overcome it?
Mentally: ______________________________
Physically: ______________________________
Spiritually: ______________________________
What can you do tomorrow to make it a better day?
Mentally: ______________________________
Physically: ______________________________
Spiritually: ______________________________
CHECKLIST
I completed my habit change challenges.
I made healthy choices today for my mind, body, and spirit.
I’ve expressed my gratitude for today and all it brings, good and bad.
I’ve prepared for tomorrow and all the unknowns it might bring.