I Think, Therefore I Am

Article in brief: The author explains how what you repeat to yourself is what you become.

I believe that what you repeat to yourself, you become. If you keep telling yourself you can’t, then you won’t. If you keep telling yourself you are, then you will be.

For years now the power of words has been something I strived to acknowledge, for example by being kind to one another, and by thinking twice before saying anything. Words can truly hurt others, even if you don’t mean them. They scratch a part of your heart and every time you hear that word again it burns a little. To some this might seem silly and they may believe they’re invincible, but to anyone with a heart, words really do matter. Not just words to one another, but words to your very own self as well.

You repeat, “I can’t do this, I just can’t” to yourself in times of distress but it doesn’t make you feel any better. You even tell yourself you’re not good enough so many times that you start to believe it. You wake up thinking of all the horrible what-ifs and you fill your brain with all this negativity, a hurricane of words that make you surrender. We’ve all been there.

A thought or a single word that wanders around your brain might feel like nothing significant at the time, but the more you say it to yourself, the more it becomes a part of who you are. Yes, you become what you tell yourself. Tell yourself that you’re a champ, a warrior, and indeed a survivor of whatever life smacks you with. Tell yourself that you’re kind, that you’re beautiful, and that with the power of Allah, you can become the best version of yourself, and can become who you truly are.

Many times I’ve told myself that my dreams are too big, or that I’m not good enough to achieve what I want, yet I kept trying. With those words in my head I wasn’t able to move along, to continue hustling in the path to my biggest dreams. It wasn’t until I decided that I deserve better from myself that I started to regain back all the motivation I’ve lost. I replaced I can’t with I can, I won’t with I will. It’s a process, believe me, and we’ll still doubt ourselves at times, but as long as we’re trying, we’ll get there eventually.

The hurtful words you fill your brain with aren’t doing you any good; in fact they’re making it harder for you to move along. The next time you belittle yourself, the next time you underestimate what good can come out of you, remember that every time you thought you couldn’t, you did, and every time you thought you weren’t, you were. Treat yourself the way you’d treat the most precious person in your life and remember that you are what you tell yourself to be.