December and January were pretty rotten months for me.
Many of you know about our infertility story (if not you can read about some of it here and here). To give more detail about it is kind of fuzzy – there are several things that could be a bit suss, but no smoking gun, and it’s not really lifestyle or diet related (as many infertility cases are). Anyway, it is what it is.
When I underwent IVF in December though, basically my body had a meltdown. The megadoses of hormones freaked my body the hell out and I became quite ill, and one thing after the next went wrong.
At the time I felt like there wasn’t a lot more I could handle in life.
And this was the first time I really realised that I can have the best diet in the world, a good job, a good salary, good friends, family and a great husband, but ain’t nothing going to get me out of my funk unless I got my head right.
Kris Carr (one of my idols) has a saying:
It all comes back to what you eat, what you drink and what you think!
The first time I came across the concept of affirmations was actually when I read her book for the first time about two years ago, Crazy Sexy Diet.
At the time I was a vegetarian and pretty much thought that vegans were whacko’s (I’ve also learn’t not to judge ha ha), and that she was in la la land.
Then, my naturopath tried to get me to do EFT, which is kind of similar (I tried it, it’s not my thing at this point in time).
I’m sure that I kept seeing affirmations (Jess Ainscough writes them, Kris Carr writes them) and then one day, I just woke up, looked in the mirror and said to myself:
I truly and deeply love and accept myself and I have supreme confidence in myself.
When I was in the shower I kept saying it over and over again.
When I was driving to work I kept repeating it.
As I was walking I repeated it.
And it dragged me out of my funk.
In January my mindset was
‘this is tough, I hate my situation, I can’t bear to even think about it, what am I going to do, I’m so sad’
In late March my mindset was
‘life is good, I am strong, I am happy, I got this!’
I did other things as well, but I really don’t think anything has had the same profound effect.
I recently watched Hungry for Change and one of the Dr’s in the film talked about it too.
She said she recommends this to her patients – to stand in the mirror, look at yourself for 30 seconds each morning and say:
‘I accept myself unconditionally right now’
But what she said next was what I thought was the best bit.
She said the first day you have all these negative thoughts that come into your head as you’re saying it and you’re thinking ‘yeah right’.
The second day you have all these negative thoughts that come into your head.
The third day you have negative thoughts, but there’s not that many.
And then one day you’ll look in the mirror and the negative thoughts will be gone.
Whether you’re not happy with your body, going through a tough or stressful time, want to empower your son or daughter with self-confidence, or just remind yourself of how awesome you are (I still say my little affirmations daily), then I encourage you to try it.
I’ve officially entered ‘la la land’ and can I tell you, it’s pretty great over here!
Robyn xx
