For a long time I was a mean girl. Like, a real bitch. Not a day went by that I didn’t spew snide comments about weight and looks, make cruel jokes that cut down to the bone, or toss around backbiting name-calling and hateful rumours. I was a mean girl.

To me.

I didn’t really realize how bitchy the chatter in my head was until I started a meditation class. From it, I learned a number of techniques. One of which was to visually label the thought with a description word. What was it? Judgment. Comparison. Planning. Worry. Anger. Expectations. I would visually slap a label with one word in uppercase letters across a thought as it drifted into view. It was very effective and enlightening. Slowly, I started to see the pattern of the labels I used most regularly: judgment, criticism, and inadequacy. I realized that my thought pattern, like a mean girl, was narrating a nasty story about myself. And I was blindly embracing that story. Some of the chapters include:

Chapter 1 – Wannabe: You’re not a writer. You wish. Only people with real talent are writers. You just want to tell people that you are writer so you can look smart or cool or interesting or whatever you need to make yourself feel better about your boring life. My advice, don’t even bother trying. You’ll just be disappointed. Just stick your head in the sand and wait for this ride we call life to be over. Snap.

Chapter 2 – Fat: It’s what you are. Just keep drinking boatloads of wine and eating chips every night and you are well on your way to having one of those fat lady guts you used to judge and laugh at when you were thin. Need I point out the irony? I thought not. And did you just cut the label out of a sweater you bought in a plus size store? Nice one, loser.

Chapter 3 – Grass: It really is greener on the other side: It’s simple: Everyone else is better than you. Duh.

Chapter 4 – Choices: You’ve made some bad ones. Certainly compared to everyone else who have always made super excellent choices and are living amazing, interesting, and rewarding lives. Duh, like see Chapter 3.

I’m sick of this story. I want it to be history, damn it. I will no longer be a frenenemy to myself. I’m working at changing how I think about myself through awareness, meditation, and a daily gratitude journal. And you know what. It’s working. Sure, I have lots of days when I pick up transmissions of that old story and I can feel my synapses clicking into the familiar patterns of those thoughts, but I now have the tools to shift this and create new and better patterns to settle into. I’m writing a whole new story because I can and I’m worth it.