How Do You Label Yourself ?

Are you a mother, daughter, son, or father?

Are you a nurse, plumber, secretary or shop worker?

Are you a dieter, maintainer, ex-dieter, counsellor?

Are you a smoker, gambler, shopaholic, drinker or over eater?

Are you male or female?

Are you a Norwich City Fan or do you support some other football team...

My point is that people accept labels very easily and then tend to live to the expectation of that label.

I think the label of male works well for me, and I will even accept Norwich City fan, but some of the old labels I used to call myself such as failure, useless, fat, chunky, chubby and big Mike did very little for my self-esteem and by constantly putting myself down to others, excusing my weight by calling myself big boned and generally focussing on just how useless I was at weight management, I didn't get anywhere fast!

The reason I mention it is that I was chatting with a diet consultant who was quick to tell me all the negative things about himself and it reminded me of me. He told me he was fat (which he actually wasn't) and that he gambled too much...

Now when he said he was fat I asked 'Is that all you are?'

Of course, he said no, the conversation opened up and we moved it on until we agreed that he was great at his job and that I needed him to help me fix some problems and we got on and did it.

So what labels do you choose to accept, what labels do you let others give to you and also what labels do you call yourself...

Everytime you give yourself a negative label, then just think to yourself 'Is that all I am?' and then see if you can rephrase it to a positive.

Because you can change a label in the blink of a decision...I can become an Ipswich fan tonight if I want to...but the key is I choose not to as I now like the labels I have for myself and I know which ones I accept when other people call me them.
P.S. You are fantastic! (hope you accept that one!)