The Power of Words

“Because I Love You”

For a few days now words have been twisting, turning, tumbling around and bumping into each other in my skull, begging to be set free.  I have finally given in to their demands and hope only to do justice to them.

Now if that does not have you wondering, then nothing I have to say will.

For most of my life I have struggled with my weight.  I would try to diet but it never took much to fail and give up. So my weight would climb as I resorted to comfort foods. I was told repeatedly by various people that I was overweight, fat, obese you pick a word I have been called it.  What people don’t realize is that those words do more harm than good. Even when they tell you that you need to shed the weight because they “love you” they most often present it in a negative way.  This also does more harm than good.

Rather than hearing all my life about all the positive things I accomplish, I would most often hear about my weight from those people that were most important in my life.

There was even an incident, when I was out of work because the company I worked for closed their offices in California and left the employees behind, that I turned to a ‘loved one’ because I had finally hit the emotional breaking point. All I needed to hear was… ‘You will be ok. You have family and friends’.  I wasn’t asking them to solve the problem, only to reassure me that I was not alone. Do you know what I got instead?  “Do you think it might be because of how you look?”  Keep in mind the latest job interview before that conversation had been a phone round table interview to spare me the expense of traveling to them for the early round interviews.  So looks had nothing to do with it.

I was devastated.  To this day, over seven years later I don’t think I have truly forgiven them. If I had that may not be the example of comments loved ones make that are more harmful than helpful.

This past year, and more importantly these past few months, I have been dropping weight seemingly effortlessly.  What has changed? Did I find some magic drug or diet?  Well only if happiness in what I am doing is a magic drug. And diet? Not in the way you may be thinking.  I have simply changed what I eat.  A few months ago I started having cravings for fruit smoothies, Rubios, tuna subs, salads, things like that. I wasn’t interested in burgers or fries so stopped picking up dinner at Jack in the Box, Carl’s Jr, or any other fast food burger joint.  Then after several weeks of this I was running late on evening.  Decided I would just get a burger at Jack in the Box.  You know what?  I had to force myself to eat even half of it.  It was GROSS!  I don’t know how I used to eat that or how others still do.  [Don’t get me wrong, I still have chocolate, chips, things that aren’t good for me, just not as much and they also join with lots of things that are good for me]

I’ve found my happiness in my writing, my photography, going to Comic Cons, getting to know/talk to/interview people in the industry.  I may be burning the candle at both ends, but I have never been happier!

Then something amazing happened. I put a button down blouse on that I had not worn in almost two years as I always had to worry that the buttons might come undone. And it was HUGE on me. I mean, I still can’t see the change when I look in the mirror and don’t know if I ever will because the negative image was so strongly reinforced for so many years, but the clothes are telling a story.  The pants I wear to work now (which are getting to be to big on me) are five sizes smaller than ones I was buying just over a year ago.  I tried a t-shirt on the other day that was several sizes smaller than the last ones I bought and… it FIT. Maybe a bit more form fitting than I prefer, but it wasn’t uncomfortable (except for mentally/emotionally).

So why am I writing this? Why am I sharing? Because it dawned on me how much harm we do to one another when we tell people things because “we love them” without considering if we are reinforcing the negative without any thought of reinforcing positive images/thoughts/beliefs.

How many times have you heard, you would be pretty if you would lose weight? You can replace the pretty/lose weight portions of that with pretty much anything.  Other things people say “because they love you” You could get better grades if you only tried harder!  _______ can get it right, why can’t you? You just need to apply yourself!  These are often accompanied by the dis-looks… disgust, disapproval, disappointment. So even if the comments stop, the looks might not thus they still convey the weight of the negative comments.

And if you are an adult in a role-model position to somebody, whether you are their parent or not, you have much more influence over their self-image and self-confidence than you may realize.

As for what brought about this change in happiness and confidence… a mentor that had more faith in my ability than I did… a person that encouraged me to pursue my dreams, my passions, to do that which lit me up whenever I would talk about it. At the time he had no reason to believe I could do these things, I had no documented track record that he could look at to indicate I could do it. All he had to go on was my passion when I talked about any of my creative pursuits. I will be forever grateful to him for seeing in me what nobody else would see, for always encouraging me to do more, to not give up. If it were not for that, the happy things might not be happening.  If the happy things were not happening I don’t think I would have found myself in a place that has also had so many other healthy consequences. We laugh now when we have a meeting and start talking about my trying to do something I have never done before and the words “I could never do that” slip out of my mouth. It’s to the point that he doesn’t have to point it out anymore as I catch it myself and add “but then again I swore I could never do the things I have done this past year.”

I have begun sharing these thoughts with a few people I know, especially those that are parents to young children as they have the most opportunity to build or shatter the confidence of another.

I am not done yet. I still have many goals that I want to achieve, to prove not to anybody else that I can do it, but to prove to myself that I can.  I have people I want to interview, if for no other reason than in my head I still do not believe I could do it without tripping over myself or going mute. I have places I want to visit, so I can see and photograph the things that are there. And right now I am hoping that sharing this can help even one person have more faith in themselves, that they overcome any negative programming that they have grown to accept as truth and show themselves and those around them who they really are by living up to their potential.