Episode 1: Overcoming Your Negative Self Talk

Intro:

Welcome to the very first episode of How To Twenty Something, I have been dreaming of creating the podcast for about two years now so I’m really excited for it to finally be released out into the world

And that now I’m your one stop shop to feeling like you are getting your shit together. I am a certified Life and Nutrition Coach and I want to help you learn how to adult and navigate the complicated territory of your twenties

Today we are talking all about how to release your inner perfectionist, get over your fear of failure, and begin talking to yourself a little nicer

Believe me, there’s already enough hate in this world and on social media that you don’t need to add to it with the words you say to yourself

Plus you’re in your twenties; this isn’t when you’re supposed to have it all figured out or do things exactly right the first time around – your twenties are this massive decade long learning process; it’s a time of self discovery and figuring out what you do want to create in your life

So it’s time for you to shift your mindset and use your twenties to your advantage by building the foundation you want to have for the rest of your life and knowing that it’s not too late to begin doing this

We’ll call this foundation home base – for you to come back to, reset yourself, and then go back out and try new things, take calculated risks, and start to understand your reason for existing on this floating rock through space

And if you want to be successful then you need to start changing your perception of your life and the words you choose to use and thoughts that come through your mind as they will determine your willingness to keep going and to keep trying new things

It’s knowing that your beliefs create your experiences and your experiences confirm your beliefs and that endless cycle can either work in your favor or to your demise

Overcoming your negative self-talk begins with improving your thoughts and beliefs by questioning everything and/or believing that you are working to fine-tune a skill or become more efficient at it with the goal to level up 

It starts with a concept, I’m sure we’ve all heard at some point in our life, that practice makes improvement or even striving for progress over perfection and throughout this episode I’m going to break down just how you can begin questioning, practicing and applying these ideologies to your actual life and changing the little voice inside your head to be your best friend and not an annoying roommate – reference of untethered soul

It’s coming from a place of self-love and being more patient and understanding with yourself as you’re working to figure things out and releasing the pressure and expectations that you have to have it all figured out right now and know what you’re supposed to be doing or not even trying until you know it’s going to be the perfect decision or outcome

Heck, if that’s the mentality I had, then I wouldn’t be talking in your ears right now; I never would have been able to come to a place to release this podcast and work to develop this new skill of speaking to myself unable to see the emotions or faces of the listeners on the other end of this podcast and don’t even get me started with thinking about all of you having my voice in your ears each week, because it’s for sure an odd concept for me to wrap my brain around

I actually first began to understand how to release my inner perfectionism during my freshman year of college. For those of you who don’t know, I have a degree in interior design; my joke now is I can help you redesign the inside and outside of your life; que in the bud dump st

Anyways, the first two years of my four year degree was primarily architecture based – meaning we were hand building and hand drawing abstract models using glue, basswood, and plexiglass and it required a lot of patience and craft, (None of which I had when I was first starting out) especially as these models grew in size

But by Spring of freshman year, a friend of mine made a shirt that very accurately described our D1 architecture class and it had three words on it and as soon as I saw it was like I have to get that shirt it’s hilariously accurate; i still have this shirt today and serves as a great reminder to the concept of today’s episode, you’ll see what I mean in a moment; 

Those three words say always never done in an infinity loop with other architecture related symbols on it like a ruler and an exacto knife and it means that as you’re building these models you have to know when it’s time to accept what you’ve done is good enough and that it will never be perfect, because technically there was always something you could add to it or fix about it, so by default you were always never done with your work

In fact, the longer you worked on your model to try and achieve your perception of perfection, the more your frustration would grow and your craft would turn sloppy as you became more and more impatient 

It was a good life lesson for 18 year old me that later carried into adult world; of it’s never going to be 100% perfect, in fact, you shouldn’t be striving for perfection at all but rather for improving upon what you’re working on and knowing when it’s time to step away and move on to the next thing

Always never done also means that you’re always going to be a work in progress, there’s always going to be a new and improved version of you full of growth, maturity, wisdom, and experience, so as you up-level through your different stages come from a place of self-love and appreciation for not giving up and acknowledge the growth you’ve endured and that you’re going to continue to endure

That’s really what this paradigm is; a form of self-love and releasing the expectation that you’re already supposed to know what’s going on

It’s part of why I became a coach; I felt so unprepared for the adult world and all the trials and tribulations that came with it and now I want to help as many people as I can feel a little bit more supported as they work to understand all that their life has to offer

Body:

So when you start to question everything you are doing or how you are feeling you are creating this sense of curiosity, learning, and growth, rather than judgment and self-criticism

You become your own scientist and create hypotheses about what you’re questioning, you go and test it, and you apply your findings

I’ll use alcohol as an example, instead of judging yourself for getting too drunk and spending Sunday hungover in bed, start to question where in the night is your limit? What do you need to eat before you go out to prevent yourself from blacking out? How many drinks and what kind will keep you relatively together? Then create your if, then hypothesis that we all learned in seventh grade: If i have 6 rum and cokes over the course of 4 hours, then I will not black out and wake up with a vicious hangover.

Whatever your hypothesis may be, go test it and see if needs to be adjusted until you get the outcomes you desire which would be a fun night out, no regretful decisions, and no or a very small hangover the next day

It’s knowing that there is no one right way to do life – there are definitely better ways, but you don’t come out of college knowing exactly what those better ways are; kind of like you don’t enter the actual world as an infant and are expected to know what’s going on

When you think about it, we’re naturally given different mentors all the way up until we are done with school

We have our parents, teachers, coaches, and other adult figures that help us learn from our mistakes or avoid potential downfalls

I believe our twenties are the most misunderstood and confusing times of our entire life and that’s also when all of our mentorship ends – i mean yes, your work probably or hopefully gives you good mentorship, but what about the other areas of your life? All of sudden you are experiencing massive changes and learning experiences and it can feel very lonely as everyone else is involved in the drama of their own lives

Suddenly, You’ve lost the fourth grader to your third grader

Life is always going to be a skilled that needs to be learned, or a hypothesis to be tested, some of which comes from trial and error, some from good mentors and coaches, and some from unexpected occurrences out of your control

But, start with improving how you talk to yourself and the words you choose and bringing in some compassion of you’re doing the best you can or you learned something new based on an outcome that was not so desirable

Now you’re allowing yourself to continue growing and finding better ways to achieve the results you do desire

In regards to having a fear of failure, it’s important to remember that you can’t fail at something unless you’ve given up entirely

Even if you feel like you’re starting over; you’re never fully starting over as now you’re starting from experience

You only fail when you stop trying, and the fact that you’re listening to this podcast right now confirms that you are most definitely not a failure and you don’t have a failing or stuck or a fixed mindset and you are still trying to show up for yourself and be the best version you can be, learn from someone else, and use the resources around you to your advantage 

Whether those resources are this podcast, working with a coach or a therapist, seeking out someone more knowledgeable about an area of life you’re trying to improve, and even reading books that help you develop new skills

Bottomline, you need to start approaching your life from the perspective of becoming a scientists, creating theories, testing hypotheses, and applying your findings, but when it comes to your negative self talk, this is only part of the mind work that needs to be done and the other part comes from fine tuning your skills or developing experience

Which can come from various parts of your life and I’m going to give some examples that start simple and become more so you can see how possible this is to apply within the context of your life and maybe you’ve already subconsciously been applying this mentality to some parts and now you get to expand this experience to the parts of your life where you aren’t so kind to yourself

We’ll start with cleaning your place – at some point you had to learn which cleaning supplies were used in appropriate rooms and surfaces

With that comes the order to clean everything so it’s the most effective use of your time and cleaning supplies. For example with cleaning the bathroom I learned that you clean the shower and tub first so you can put all of the bottles on the floor or counter, then you clean the counter and toilet, and lastly, you clean the floors

In the kitchen I learned to clean the counters before the floors otherwise some crumbs from the counter could end up on your freshly clean floors 

Maybe you’re someone who hates cleaning their place so you’ve learned (or if you haven’t yet then you’ll learn right now) that you don’t need to deep clean every room in one day you can pick a corner or a room for that day and know what room to tackle the next day

Now you can probably think to yourself, huh I did learn that and I wasn’t so harsh on myself when I was figuring out the best way to clean my place

And adulthood is largely making your own messes and cleaning up after yourself, so the last thing you want to do is let it all pile up and then you have no choice but to clean, or if you have an unexpected guest come over and now you’re embarrassed

Another example is in regards to food

At some point you figured out foods you did like and didn’t like and that continues to evolve and change as you’re introduced to new things or begin to travel

If you’re allergic to certain foods then you learned by some reaction from your body not to repeat that food again

Maybe you’ve also experimented with different foods or recipes to see what combination of ingredients produces a tasty result

I know a year ago, I have no idea where I got the thought to do this, but I decided to combine pasta, chicken, broccoli, and hummus into one dish and oh man it’s delicious – pro tip would be to leave the pasta a little wet so the hummus can act more as a sauce, but seriously don’t knock it til you try, people always ask me about my go to recipe 

This could be a great opportunity to get curious as to whether you like this meal or not

Another concept that I talk to everyone about when they’re making food choices is choosing a food based off of instant gratification, as well as taking note of how your body and energy feels about 30 minutes after consuming your foods

It’s not getting down on yourself for over indulging it’s questioning what is your limit, just like in the alcohol example, for instance if 3 slices of cake makes you sick but 1 slice has no effect on you then bam you found your limit, you learned something about yourself

The third example I’m about to give is perfect for putting your ability to shift your thoughts around something new to a growing a skill or taking it in as a learning experience, and that is in regards to exercise

Exercising this is all about fine tuning a skill and a learning experience – no matter who you are, at some point in your life you had to learn how to workout in some way shape or form and even when you’ve switched your fitness modality you again had to go and learn a new one

With weightlifting – you definitely have to learn proper form to prevent injury

I’ve thrown out my back deadlifting before because i relaxed before the weight was fully back on the ground and let me tell you I learned that lesson the very hard way and will never repeat that mistake again

The skill part comes from moving the weight as efficiently as possible to then be able to increase the weight

If you’re a yogi or want more flexibility in your body then you learn different yogi practices and what each move is like a chaturanga, or warrior 1 – I can tell you right now that if you said chaturanga to me a few years ago I would’ve looked at you like your head was on backwards, but now I take part in yoga more regularly so I do know the terms and I get so excited when the instructor says a movement and I know what it is instead of looking around the room like what are we doing right now

And then you have to keep practicing the balance and flexibility parts to get better to then be able to either feel better in your body or advance to the next level of that skill

If you have an endurance goal, we’ll use running as an example, running in and of itself is a skill – there’s proper form and technique and rhythm to it, and then you keep practicing it to become more efficient at building up your endurance

You don’t one day decide to start running and go for 10 miles straight, well at least you shouldn’t, instead you build up to it with practice and experience

The gym in general is a very non-judgmental space because everyone at some point was brand new and built up their skillset over time

A more advanced topic is when it comes to relationships whether that be with family, significant others, or friendships you’re learning what you are willing to accept from other people, you’re constantly learning what your boundaries are through trial and error, and you’re learning what your relationships boundaries are

I say this in present tense because relationships are constantly evolving so you are continuously learning new things about them and about yourself, whether it’s someone new or someone you’ve had in your life for a while you’re still going to keep learning different levels and depths of them

You’re learning who you want to surround yourself with and how you want to be perceived by those around you

We’ll do a whole episode on effective communication of both of your boundaries or feelings, but maybe you can reflect back to a conversation in your life that didn’t go so well – that’s you learning how not to communicate your needs 

You can start questioning why you feel a certain way about someone or what you value about them in your life

Not questioning as a way to remove a person, although it could lead you there, but more so getting curious with your own emotions and reactions, like why did that upset you so much, or why are you feeling more irritable towards someone, are you under a lot of stress and it’s carrying over? Are you feeling unloved? Seriously, ask yourself how you fit in this puzzle of your relationships with what’s going well and what’s not going so well

The last category I’m going to go over is how you can bring in your questioning and practicing is career

You’re going to work to fine tune your skills and get really good at what you do if your goal is to get promoted

You should question how your job makes you feel this includes your workplace, the work you’re doing, and the life it could potentially support outside of work

You’ll hear me say a few things a lot but this is a big one; your job should be mentally AND financially supporting you so you can find your passion and purpose elsewhere or change your mindset around how you’re showing up in your career so it does align with your purpose and values

Or your job can be your purpose in life; I know mine is, but this wasn’t always the case, it was something I found through learning, self discovery, and trial and error, 

Recap:

But, hopefully, by now you can begin to see how to come from a place of curiosity and practice rather than being perfect at something or critical of yourself 

The second thing you’ll hear me say a lot is that if you want to begin making changes to your life or come from a place of curiosity then you need to build your awareness to everything you’re doing

Without your awareness you’ll find yourself operating in the same cycle over and over again or on autopilot

Start simple with how the weather makes you feel or even different songs; I always have people start with food since you definitely eat at some point in your day, so you can even start there too

This is your life and I want to support you in living the best version of it – but you need to be kinder to yourself and release the pressure either you, your family, or society has put on you

I’m here to tell you it’s okay to mess up, as long as you aren’t constantly repeating the same mistakes, but starting to question what can be done differently next time

Let me know what happens when you do start coming from a place of curiosity and fine tuning a skill – I would love to hear from you my email address is coach.jessdiamond@gmail.com and you can also find it in the show notes; 

Thanks for listening to How To Twenty Something, if you enjoyed what you heard, go ahead and hit the like and subscribe button, share it with a friend, or send me an email. If you have a story that you think others would benefit from hearing, want to work with me, or see what freebies I have to offer then please head over to my website and start poking around the different tabs at jessdiamondcoaching.com 

Otherwise, that’s all for today when developing the practice of treating yourself with kindness and I’ll be in your headphones again next week