Crowded streets are cleared away one by one

I read this today on a Facebook page that I follow, and it resonated: 

 

"If you start your process by thinking "I am fat and ugly and I hate my body and myself, and I need to do something about this so I won't be such a worthless failure anymore" then the minute you make a "mistake" or "slip-up" in your plans, you will quickly fall back into your old habits because it plays right into the story you keep telling yourself: that you're a worthless failure. In a way, you believe you don't deserve anything better than the way you feel right now, so why bother?

If you start your process by thinking "I have some habits that are really not good for my mental or physical health and I need to work on this so I can live a more fulfilling, active, and happy life" then when you make that same "mistake" (and you will, because nobody is perfect) you can easily move past it because you have a new story: you deserve to feel better in your life. There's nothing wrong with you, you aren't a worthless failure, you're just human and humans sometimes make questionable choices. Not a big deal, you can make a different choice next time."

 

I try to think of myself as a healthy fit person, who eats well and works out, so that can become the reality. But actually, that top sentence is still my resounding thought on most days. The mind is such a powerful thing, and it is important to change my pattern of thought so that my mind can be my best friend instead of my worst enemy, but its so hard to convince myself or anything other than what I have thought (or been told)over the last decade or two....