How to get rid of negative labels in your life

"Sometimes I feel like a kid walking around in my mom’s clothes."

It’s a form of insecurity that sneaks up on a lot of us.  Questions are born in these moments when we’re unsure we’re even in our own skin. 

Will they discover I’m a fraud?

How long will it take for everyone to see through me?

What am I doing?

Do I even know what I'm doing here?

Am I a fraud?

Then come the labels.  Fake.  Fraud.  Doppelganger.  Then those labels plant seeds that grow into bigger labels:

•   Idiot
•   Failure
•   Liar
•   Looser  
• Worthless
• Incapable
• Ugly

 These moments happen far too often to far too many people to be ignored.  Let’s not only talk about the elephant in the room, but let’s train it to do our laundry.  Our dirty laundry.

First, everyone fails at something.  Some of us are better than others at recovering from landing in the bottom of pitfalls.  Maybe our parents let us fail enough as children then led us through the path to resilience.  Maybe we have always been strong.  Maybe we have overcome something in our lives so massive that we realized our full potential.  Some of us are not as good at recovering, and we have to wallow in the mud for a while.  Some of us never recover and learn to live in a dark damp world void of light.  The most amazing thing about being a human is that we can change our trajectory at any time.  

 I want you to think about the five most successful people you know.  Use your own definition of success, but really picture them.  Close your eyes and spend some time thinking about them.  Now take out your handy dandy notebook and write down the first five words about their successful personality that come to your mind.

Guess what?  They have failed before.  We cannot achieve success without first overcoming failure.  

Second, you are not a fake.  Unless you have a fake name on your ID and are pretending to be a person other than the one you were born being, and you're not trying to flee from a deadly abuser or in the witness protection program, you are not fake.  The key to being real is becoming comfortable in your own skin.  The first step to becoming comfortable in your own skin is to accept that you are an imperfect beautiful creation.  Even your flaws are beautiful.  People who know you think you're beautiful.  I think you’re beautiful.  

I want you to think of the most successful person you know.  The one that commands a room the moment they enter it and is unafraid to speak with anyone they come in contact with.  They aren’t afraid to ask the hard closing questions, and everything they do turns into something that benefits them, almost as if they have the superpower of bending the will of others.

Guess what?  You are as real as they are.  Cell by cell, breath by breath, follicle by follicle.  Now, I want you to close your eyes again and imagine yourself walking into that same room and filling it with confidence.  Visualize your confidence as a drop of pink food coloring in a clear glass of water.  Slowly, it stretches through every molecule until the glass is entirely filled with pink water.  Really feel everyone in that room respecting you.  Imagine yourself laughing and mingling, rubbing elbows with all of the beautiful people.  Imagine them all wanting to be near you and hear what you have to say, because they want to be like you and to be liked by you. Then, I want you to close your eyes and remember that feeling every time you get ready to walk into a situation where you might feel like you don’t know what you’re doing.  Fill that room with the pinkness of your confidence and use that as the lens you view life through.  There's truth to the old saying about rose colored glasses.

The only people who don’t succeed are the people who were sure they would fail before they even got started.  It might not have even been a conscious though, but on some level of their being those labels are still sticking.  You will never succeed if you let labels like fake and failure rise up above you like real life conversation bubbles.  

I don’t care if you think you’re too awkward, too tall, too fat, if you hate your nose, or if you are too afraid to pick up the phone and talk to your customers, first you identify your pitfalls, then find a way to work around them without falling in.  Any shape and size of person can walk into any room of people with the right attitude and confidence and win.  The image you project of yourself in your own mind is the image others will see.  

The next time you feel like a kid in grown up’s clothes, picture an elephant in a pink apron hanging your clean laundry on the line, and remember that you are real.  You are beautiful.  Put on your rose colored glasses.  Change your labels.  You are:

• Amazing
• Beautiful
• Successful
• Worthy
• Capable
• Respected
• Trusted
• Loved

If you're looking for a group of amazing women who can help you realize your full potential, please email sunshine@yourdamseldiva.com and find out how you can join my Damsel in Defense team.  Head over to my Facebook page and join the safety community.