Do You Have Self-Sabotaging Habits?

How the power of the spoken word can heal you.

I can’t, I won’t, he makes me feel, she always, it’s too hard, I don’t know, I’ll try….Do any of these phrases sound familiar to you? Do they frequently pass your lips without a second thought? If so, you may be sabotaging your own success. What if upgrading just one of these phrases brought lasting change in an area of difficulty or frustration in your life. At Morningstar Counseling &Wellness Center we understand the power that language holds for us. Language reflects our innermost thoughts feelings, desires and beliefs, therefore it may hold the key to unlocking negative beliefs and set the stage for a facing our future courageously.



Through identifying commonly used phrases we can pinpoint where we are in consciousness revealing limiting beliefs that prevent our success. By bringing these limiting beliefs into our conscious awareness we have the opportunity to evaluate them and make a new conscious choice about what will motivate our success. I believe it was Ghandi who said "A man is but the product of his thoughts, what he thinks, he becomes". His reasoning was that our words influence our thinking, our thinking influences our behavior, and our behavior reflects our character. He also said, "Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony".


So if we are constantly telling ourselves that we can’t do something or that it’s too hard, we’ve given up before we have even started. This may be a reflection of low self-esteem caused by an early childhood trauma or invalidating parental figure. If we hear or say, "I Can’t", over and over it becomes self-fulfilling prophecy and eventually we believe that we can’t and so we stop trying. We end up making half hearted commitments to change that end up in broken promises to ourselves and our loved ones because we are constantly living out our unconscious belief that, "we can’t".


So how does changing one word or phrase create profound transformation? When we choose to be aware and focus on a choice from, "I can’t", to "what if I could?", it eventually leads to "maybe I can" and ultimately to, "I did it!" This creates a momentum of trust in oneself and (perhaps a higher power), that ultimately lends itself to higher self-esteem and self-confidence and a renewed sense of faith. "I can’t" becomes "I can", "It’s too hard" becomes "I choose to make this easy", "I won’t" becomes " I will" and the language of blaming others for our feelings becomes our choice to feel. Changing one phrase is like a pebble in the pond sending out ripples into the unconscious. It echoes in the soul, "What else can I wake up to about myself"?

Tonya Elliott-Walker LMFT