I’ve always been interested in language. As a child, I consistently heard multiple languages at home, two of which I didn’t speak and never picked up. Later on I did pick up a second language, but not one of the ones I grew up around. I became fascinated that the brain could even understand language, never mind associate the same thing with so many different words. I still to this day think that language, like air travel, is kind of a miracle.

As I have gotten deeper into expressing myself through the written word, yoga teaching, and now with podcasting, language has become more and more important to me. Specifically the words I use, have become more important to me, but maybe not in the way you’d think.

They have become MOST important to me in the way that I speak to myself internally and about myself externally (the stories I tell about myself). Over the last year specifically, I have made this a much more intentional practice. It began with an awareness of what I was saying. Noticing. Taking enough extra breaths to be able to pause and notice.

Once the language I was using with myself became more clear, I was able to find all of these space holder phrases and terms that I said when I really meant something else. That led me to a whole host of limiting beliefs that were like a treasure trove of information that I found by these simple clues in my language. Once I found them (and I am still finding them), I could work with them. See which ones were true for me, which ones I wanted to keep and which ones I wanted to transform into something more supportive.

Some of them are so sneaky and can sometimes be disguised as culture. But the biggest thing is that I was saying these fillers when I really meant something else. And I knew that needed to change. I needed to be in my truth more of the time.

Here are a few examples – (there are so many more)

I would say, “I’m sorry,” for literally everything, when what I really meant most of the time was “whoops”. This is a massive one I think for those socialized as women, and much has been written about it, but I had no idea how deeply engrained this one was until I started to work with it. I still sometimes slip, but I am so much better at saying “I’m sorry,” when I am actually apologetic for something.

“It doesn’t matter to me,” when in fact it really really did matter to me a whole lot. This is about speaking truth and knowing you will still be loved anyways, even if the other person doesn’t like your opinion. It’s also about knowing it’s ok to have an opinion at all, and not just go along to get along because you don’t want a conflict.

“I’m fine.” In retrospect, I would say that approximately 90% of the time when my former self said this, I was straight up lying. Basically whatever was happening was probably just too uncomfortable for me to bear. I was likely feeling overwhelmed by all of my feelings and/or suppressing them. I was likely trying not to burst into tears. I am extremely conscious of this one now and I always try to use a true adjective or feeling instead of this phrase. I also practice the yogic concept of Satya or truth, as much as I am able to.

I’ll just call this grouping “lack speech” which again takes many forms, but often looks like self-deprecation, sarcasm, passive aggression, etc. I used to like sarcasm, but now it just makes me sad. These all just scream insecurity to me. Not that I’ve overcome all of it, or anything like that, but that is where I find the roots of these themes. Work in progress, always.

Hate speech towards the self. This is often a tough one to identify and it’s mostly internal (for me). But I classify this as what I would say to myself or about myself to myself that I would never in my wildest dreams say to another person (out loud or in my head). I wouldn’t even consider it. But yet, I found myself, often on loop, speaking to myself in those horrible ways.

Now a lot of this was internalized stuff from my socialization, all layers of it, but some of it was also developed as coping mechanisms from that socialization and an effort not to feel certain things or feel my feelings at all. When you follow the path of your speech patterns, an entire world of subconscious limiting beliefs open up to you for transformation. There are so many ways to do this and as always, I will say, seek and search out what works for you through experimentation and clear guides.

One way that I will share that has been powerful for me is PSYCH-K. Learning to facilitate this method opened me to so much gunk that was STILL there in my subconscious just waiting to be dissolved. If you’d like to read more about this method, you can do that HERE.

I’ll leave you with an invitation. Get curious about how you speak to yourself. Who is speaking to you in your mind? What is yours? What is not? What are you ready to transform? What “space holder” words and phrases do you use every day? What do these clues tell you about yourself and your experience?