The Secret to Overcoming Self-Defeating Thoughts

Are your self defeating thoughts preventing you from reaching your goals? salaam aleikum, this is Holly banani. And today is transformational Tuesdays on Tuesdays, I'm going to share with you psychological tips, certain tricks that you can apply to be able to overcome whatever it is that you're going through in sha Allah. So today's cognitive distortion is all or nothing mentality. This is what a lot of people struggle with many of the clients that I work with, they tell me that this is what holds them back, because they have this feeling like either something has to be perfect, or they're just gonna give up either they are, let's say it's, it's a diet that you're on, right. And

either you have to do it perfectly, and you don't mess up and you don't cheat and you don't do anything. And if you do, what ends up happening is that you give up completely, and this is very destructive, because we are not perfect. And I really want you to take perfect out of your dictionary, not stop using it. Stop expecting it. Because when you're expecting that from yourself that everything has to go a certain way, then that's what is defeating you. Now, when you start looking at it as I will have certain setbacks, whatever your goal is not it could be academics, you know, I had one client that was doing their their college studies. And once they got a bad grade,

they're like, you know what, I'm not even going to go to classes anymore, I'm just going to totally give up. And that just spiraled out of control. I had another client who was trying to get healthy, trying to become, you know, in the best shape of their lives. And they caved in, there was something they couldn't resist, I don't know what it was, was it a donut, it could have been a pie, it could have been ice cream, they just caved in, and then guess what their thought process was? Oh, you know what, I knew I couldn't do it. I had this. That's it. So instead of having, let's say just one slice of the pie, they end up having the whole entire pie. And then there's that self defeating mindset,

it's that you start beating yourself up, you start saying, you know what I knew it, I knew I couldn't do this. I knew this is hard. And since I can't be perfect, I'm just gonna throw in the towel. We need to stop this cognitive distortion, because this is what's holding you back. This idea of trying to do things just perfectly, it's a kind of faulty thinking, because it's this inability to see an alternative, right? You can look at it as swerving off the road, right? Whether that's the dyad road, you swerve off, and you have to swerve right back on in order to correct yourself. And those individuals who don't see it this way, they just allow this on, can you imagine if you swerve

off the road, and you just allow yourself to fall off the fall off the cliff, you would never do that, right? We need to just kind of take control back. And not to think of things as either it's a success or a failure. There are a lot of things in the middle. And I think it's it is good enough, right? We have been programmed about being perfectionist about doing things, you know, 100%. And I'm all for being ambitious. But I don't like to use an approach that is ineffective, right. So a lot of times when we set the goal, set the bar so high, then what ends up happening is that we feel defeated when we can't attain it. So some of the do's and don'ts about having this all or nothing

mentality, you know, it's really important to recognize your strength, recognize what it is that you're good at. When you're achieving something, recognize it. recognize the fact that you have been doing your part, let's say if it's about you know, being healthy, and I keep bringing up healthy because I just started a new group get healthy with Harlan, I would love for you all to join. It's a free group. And it's just a group of sisters encouraging one another to be in the best shape of our lives, right because our body is an Amana and we need to take care of our art and mana. And so when you have the right mindset that you know what I'm going to do my absolute best and even if I fall

short a little bit, then that's okay. And that's very important to recognize. You want to also you don't want to focus on your flaws. A lot of times we are just hardwired to see the things our shortcomings and negativity. So don't focus on your flaws. We do need to acknowledge this is where I messed up. Let me learn from it. But you don't want to just dwell you don't want to dwell on your flaw. You want to focus on your strength. The next thing is understand that setbacks are going to happen. It's only natural if you're expecting everything

To go smoothly and you're expecting no obstacles and no shortcoming, since you're setting up your yourself up to fail, recognize that there may be some setbacks recognize that you may make some mistakes along the way. But it's okay. When you're expected you, you allow yourself to respond correctly. You don't want to dwell on self defeating thoughts, right? So if you continuously tell yourself Oh, I knew I couldn't do it. I'm so mad. Oh my god, I'm so stupid. I can't do this. And when you say things like that, you really just It's like putting shackles on yourself and you're trying to run a race right? You put shackles on your legs, you put shackles on your arm? How can you

move forward all at the negative self defeating thoughts really prevent you from reaching your goal. And the final thing to do that you need to follow is find the positive look for something recognize that you're doing something right and when you recognize that then you feel you're you're you know releasing dopamine in your brain and you're feeling good about the fact that hey, I did these things right? And that gets you going don't use the terms the never or nothing and having those absolute words because when you have the always or never mentality, then that is what's going to get you caught up so I'm so happy that you're joining Mashallah, we have sister from Bangladesh and from the

UK and we have all of you joining in if you have some questions, let me know. I have the link to join the group. Okay, there's the Get Healthy with hyla. And I have Mashallah. Excellent nutritionists, experts, individuals who are going to be sharing, I'm not an expert in the field, but I love getting healthy. I've done it several times seen amazing results. And this time around, I wanted to have accountability, I wanted to share the experience with sisters from around the world. And I think it's so important. It's something that we don't really focus on too much in our communities about getting healthy, and I just want all of you to, to be in the best shape of your

life to feel good. And and it was just listed, so you can join it as the healthy Muslim women, right, but anyone can join, right? Muslim, non Muslim, you're welcome. This happens to be the name but it is it is very inspiring. And every Tuesday at around at 1230. Central, I'm going to do transformational Tuesdays, and this is where you is something that will help you to transform because on a daily basis, if we are not actively working on becoming better than we are actually moving backwards. And this was a very definitive term or a phrase that one of my teachers said to me and said, You know how to, if you're not working hard to move forward, you're actually you're not at

a standstill, right. And a lot of times we think that we are at a standstill, it's like, you know, I'm good, I'm good I'm and we become complacent. And we're kind of okay with the way things are. But you're not at a standstill, you're actually moving backwards. So none of us would want to go from let's say it, no one would want to go from being a senior in high school to going back to ninth grade, right? We wouldn't want that. However, we actually experienced that if we're not actively working on being a better version of ourselves. So whether whether that is in our health, whether that is with our personality, whether that is with our spirituality, in every area of our life, we

have to actively work towards being better. And if we don't, we end up going backwards. So I'm just here to encourage you to help you. I know that we're going through some really tough times right now with the pandemic with everything that is going on. I just want to share with you some tips, some psychological tricks that will get you through the day keep you motivated, having that right mindset because it's all about having the right mindset and making sure that we are not our own worst enemy that we are not having thoughts that are holding us back. So inshallah join me tomorrow is going to be drumroll

woke Wednesday, okay, Wednesday and I want you to join me it's all about being you know, being aware being enlightened, I will have some interviews that I will be doing in sha Allah and just each day we're going to address different topics and inshallah just sharing the sharing the lots, so does like a lot here for joining me. Take care and Salaam Alaikum