If You Can’t Say Something Nice

Our words have the power to build up or tear down—whether we’re talking to someone else or to ourselves. {Tweet this}

We don’t like to hurt someone’s feelings, but what about our own feelings? Why are we often harder on ourselves, telling ourselves things we would never say to someone else?

Our words and thoughts work together, and they have power. Our thoughts fuel what we tell ourselves and our words embed negative thoughts in our minds. And we begin to believe them without question.

The enemy loves this because it makes his work easier. When we tear ourselves down we are more vulnerable to Satan’s attacks. His lies are harder to identify because the negative thought pattern is already there.

The words we speak set the tone of our attitudes and our environment. – Danise Jurado, Fulfilled

Do you know someone who is always putting herself down? Do you enjoy being around her or do you find it exhausting? When our negative thoughts and words become habit, that behavior will come out around others. They will be able to see what we think of ourselves and hear how we speak to ourselves.

Think about how you talk to yourself. Would you want others to hear you? And what would they think?

God knows everything and still He showers us with grace. As we receive His grace, we need to give ourselves some grace too. We can retrain our minds to think differently and replace the lies with God’s truth.

Remember the advice, “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all? It applies to ourselves too. If you look in the mirror and can’t say something nice about yourself, walk away. When you look again, make an intentional effort to say one nice thing about yourself. It doesn’t matter how big or small it is. What matters is changing the way we think about, and speak to, ourselves. 

The first step doesn’t have to be a big one, there just needs to be a first step.

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If you are reading Fulfilled by Danise Jurado with us, we are in week 3 with Chapter 4—Breaking Free and Chapter 5—Change. Danise offers good practical steps for breaking free from the chains that keep us from spiritual freedom and for making change where we see change needs to be made.

Identifying the lies we’ve been told or believed for a long time can be difficult. They can be so engrained that they seem normal to us. But as we look to God’s Word for His Truth, we find these thoughts don’t line up with what God says. There have been times when I had to think back (sometimes way back) to discover when it became a “normal” thought. Maybe it was because it was said to me repeatedly or from a past mistake or failure. For me, finding the source of that thought helped to diffuse the power it held over me. And without that power, I could work on letting it go.

What has helped you identify and diffuse lies that seemed like “normal thoughts?” 

In Christ,

Laura 

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Linking up with Everyday Jesus, Grace & Truth, Thought Provoking Thursday, Blessing Counters, Faith Filled Friday