To Change Your Limitations, Change Your Speech - EleVen by Venus Williams

To Change Your Limitations, Change Your Speech

You’d be surprised just how much changing your words can change your limitations.

One of the best ways to train, both in life and in sport, is to work on our weaknesses. And an easy way to confront our weaknesses is to reframe them with our words.

If your self talk tends to sway on the negative side, then read on. If your inner thoughts generally remain positive, but sometimes doubts and fears unexpectedly creep in, keep on scrolling. Even if you have a good habit of talking yourself up, there are ways to make your self talk work for you even harder. We’ve got a proven psychological trick from a world-renowned speaker and celebrity therapist,  Marisa Peer, to do away with negative self talk and to transform your words to remove any limits.

According to Marisa, who wrote the best-selling book I Am Enough which started a revolution of the same name, we can change our limitations by simply changing our speech.

We got in touch with Marisa for advice about overcoming barriers, physical plateaus and other self-limitations. The most important thing to have, she said, is:

“A healthy mindset, because it does not matter how fit and toned and impressive your body is if your mindset is negative. Once you have a healthy mindset, everything else will follow because your thoughts control your feelings, your feelings control your actions and your actions control your events.”

If you’re struggling to overcome a plateau, Marisa says the best way to overcome it is to lie to your mind.

Don’t want to wake up for that 5am workout? Tell yourself as that alarm goes off, I love waking up early.

Hate doing cardio? Say out loud, I love when my heart rate goes up.

Want to be able to do ten pull-ups? Remind yourself every day, I am strong and I will get there.

 

We are who we say we are, and by telling your mind that you have chosen something, you are reminding yourself that you want it. Our minds soak in our words. Marisa’s famous method has thousands and thousands of women scrawling the words I Am Enough in lipstick on their mirror or setting it as their phone background. When we expose ourselves to the same message, day in and day out, “it becomes a fundamental and integral part of who you are.”

Steps to Eliminating Negative Self-Talk

  1. Identify your key limiting phrases. Whether it’s that you think you’re inflexible or that you have a weak left side, make a note of them and write them down.
  2. Rephrase and reframe your limitations. If you tend to make statements with absolutes like always or I’ll never, change it to something that gives room for improvement. For example, “My right shoulder is always tight,” can be rephrased to read as “My right shoulder needs a little extra love and attention.”
  3. Reinforce your new mindset. It can be tough to stop negative self-talk, but one helpful tip is to write out your limiting phrases in lipstick on a mirror where you work out or on anything that you look at frequently, like your phone or computer background, or even a notebook. Cross ‘em out and replace them with more positive words.

If you continually replace negative words with these three simple ones: I Am Enough, you just may see your self-perceived limitations—in the gym and in real life—disappear.

 

Written by: Cyrena Lee

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