Overcoming the Negative Soundtrack
Photo by Dollar Gill on Unsplash
I spent last night in a hotel room watching garbage television and loving every minute of it. We started off with Storage Wars and then switched to Ancient Aliens. We only watched for about an hour but in that hour, we saw dozens of ads for a variety of products; it was basically a long list of side effects for different drugs and then the occasional movie ad.
This is the type of ad-watching I grew up on. Of course, the shows were longer, and the ads were shorter back in the 90s, but it was all connected to whatever station you were watching. On the flip side, when I woke up this morning I had a very different ad experience on Instagram. As I sipped my coffee and scrolled through, I wanted to have just a few minutes of mindless chuckles - in the same way the garbage television provided last night - but instead I was bombarded with ad after ad targeting my deepest insecurities.
About every third or fourth account that I follow - accounts that are people I know or influencers who put out positive content - I saw ads related to these topics:
Hormone therapy for a better morning routine
Hormone coffee I should drink cause all the celebrities are doing it
Something about grapes and my waistline
Which hormone therapy is better when you’re over 40 (I’m 39)
Mocktails that support gut health
Something about a boob gap and which way my ladies point
Quiz for which Hormone therapy is better
Gut health mushroom coffee
How hormone therapy will get rid of my back fat
Weight control for a middle-aged woman
And then something about reclaiming my confidence which seemed nice until I realized it was once again hormone therapy for weight loss
Lately, I’ve had a pretty negative soundtrack about myself. I went through, and am still going through, some health issues that have made exercise and eating well very difficult. So, as I watch my body change, I try desperately to still love myself but the constant reminders from these ads make it feel like I’m running uphill in a storm. I wanted to share all this today because if anyone else out there is feeling like I am I wanted you to know that you are not alone and your negative soundtrack is not who you are. In fact, the negative soundtrack is often the opposite of who you actually are.
We all will have internal battles that we need to fight; that negative voice that tells us we should look, feel, and be different than we are; the one that says don't do that now, watch tv instead or maybe you're an imposter, you don’t deserve to be here. That voice is hard enough to shut down without other voices adding to the soundtrack. According to the Harvard Business Review, "these thoughts are not uncommon" and it's not just ads, "past experiences or criticisms from authority figures hijack our inner voices, resulting in rumination and limiting beliefs." To overcome this, they suggest Functional Imagery Training (FIT) which is a fancy way of saying envision success: remind yourself who you are, what you value, and why you are trying to do the thing you're doing. When you do this, the negative thoughts will still come but it's a lot easier to shut them down and replace them with a more positive soundtrack.
The interesting thing about the ads, is that they operate the same way our thoughts do: If we look up one thing or stop and hover on one ad for too long, we will get more of the same thing and if we dwell on negative thoughts, we are more likely to get more negative thoughts. Fortunately for us, this also means that positive begets positive: this week, I ignored the negative ads long enough so now most of what I'm getting is stuff related to my bathroom renovation, and I don't know about you, but I'll take wallpaper and sconces over reminders that I’m aging any day.
The next time your soundtrack starts to trend negative, take a step back and remind yourself that this is common. Everyone, even the most seemingly successful among us, have a negative soundtrack. You are not alone, and you can overcome it. Just remind yourself who you are, what you value, and replace those ugly ads with some bright shiny wallpaper.
