S1:E2 | What Do You Say When You Talk To Yourself? – Part I

by Destiny Malibu | Aug 30, 2022 | Podcast

Destiny Malibu is a world-renowned singer, songwriter, and mental health champion. When she talks about mental health issues, she speaks from experience. She understands your struggle because it’s her struggle, too. She also offers hope for better days. She helps her listeners find joy in the little things, like petting your dog or a smile from a stranger.

On today’s episode, Destiny and her cohost DJ Dezzee talk about the seven pillars of mental health. They really focus on self-love. Why? Because self-love is a REALLY important and fundamental part of good mental health. And today, Destiny shares a fantastic way to practice self-love. It’s simple, it’s powerful, and anyone can do it!

Want to find out more? Tune in to today’s episode of The Destiny Malibu Podcast now!

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Listen to the podcast here

What Do You Say When You Talk To Yourself? – Part I

What’s going on everybody? It’s Destiny Malibu and my co-host, DJ Dezzee. Welcome back to the Destiny Malibu show. We are so excited that you guys are back. We are going to be talking about the seven pillars of mental health, which we are excited to share with you. We are going to be talking about self-love. This is a fundamental part of mental health. I have noticed that myself included, the times when I was struggling with my mental health were simultaneously times that I was struggling with self-love. There were times when I would look in the mirror and have a lot of negative self-talk going on, which fast-forward to now, and I realized how detrimental negative self-talk is.

When you would say negative things out loud and I heard, “Destiny, don’t say those,” what did I do Destiny?

She would hit me across the head.

Not hard. Just a tap like, “Don’t do that, Des.”

It was funny because Dezzee and I on this show are offering different perspectives. I’m someone who struggled with depression, I struggled with self-image. Dezzee didn’t struggle with those things as much.

No. I’m on a different level where not to the extreme versions that you did. I was always confident in myself, even though there are tons of beautiful women out there. No matter what my number was on that scale, I always felt confident about myself.

Dezzee and I had different experiences with each of these pillars that we’ll be talking about, but it’s cool because I feel that in most families, people are struggling with different things. Someone in a family is struggling with depression and someone else in the family has never struggled with that and they don’t understand, which was more of the relationship that we had. A lot of households can relate to that.

A lot of times I notice that people who are struggling with mental health simultaneously usually are struggling with self-image. A lot of people I’ve talked to, myself included, when I’m trying to get an understanding of what they’re feeling, at times, I’ll hear a commentary like I hate the way I look, I hate myself, or I’ve made horrible decisions. I’m beating myself up, which Dezzee knew instinctively that that’s not healthy to do. At this time, when I struggled with this, it was my freshman year of high school that I started to struggle with self-image.

At that age, I was 12 or 13, I didn’t know instinctively that negative self-talk was unhealthy. At that time in my life, I didn’t understand the mind and body connection and how your body does physically respond to your thoughts. If you are looking in the mirror and you’re saying, “I hate the way I look. I don’t like this about myself,” and tearing yourself apart, your body physically feels it. It does affect.

There’s been a lot of studies saying that putting yourself down or being in a negative train of thought can cause and manifest itself in physical illness. We’re learning more and more how important our thoughts are. How often we feel that we have no control over our thoughts, but like with anything, controlling your thoughts takes practice. That was something I did not understand at that age. Dezzee, what would you say to me?

I say something along the lines of, “Don’t say that about yourself. That’s not true. You look beautiful.”

She’s the best big sister in the world. At that time in my life, I have no control over these thoughts. I can’t escape thinking this when in reality, I did have way more control over my thoughts than I was aware of. Starting fundamentally with mental health, it’s important if you don’t have what Dezzee had, which was a natural understanding of being aware of the thoughts you’re feeding yourself.

It’s to put into practice retraining the thoughts that you think, which sounds weird and silly at first, but affirmations are one of those things where you need to look in the mirror and say, “I love you. You’re beautiful. I love your hair. You have beautiful eyes.” Say those things to yourself. This is a powerful one. Look yourself in the eye and say, “You have beautiful eyes,” and connect with your soul. It might feel weird at first if you’re struggling with self-love.

I know I was at that time of my life. Saying those things brought out a lot of emotions. It would make me cry and emotional because I didn’t believe those things at that time in my life. Now with a lot of practice and learning to accept and love myself with open arms, I can look in the mirror and say, “You’re beautiful. I love you. I’m proud of you.” I say those things to myself and believe them. When you practice something like affirmations, even if it doesn’t feel normal at first, it takes a while to build a habit. It takes 30 or 60 days to build a habit. You have to habitually be looking in the mirror and say, “I love you. You’re beautiful.”

Even if it feels weird at first, keep saying it. As you start to build that habit, your body will respond and over time, you will start to build an extremely loving relationship with yourself that you didn’t even know was possible. It starts with your thoughts which are an important factor of self-love. One of the things that I hear often is your thoughts become words and your words become actions. Remember that concept. If you’re thinking nice things about yourself, you’re going to start saying nice things about yourself and then you’re going to start feeling and doing good things for yourself.

Exactly. Very well said.

Fundamentally, as you’re going through this mental health journey, it is important to be aware of how you are speaking to yourself. You need to become your own best friend and hype person. If you are someone who likes compliments like me, words of affirmation are one of my love languages, and we’ll talk about love languages in another episode.

If you’re someone who’s craving words of affirmation, you can give that to yourself. It’s nice when you get it from someone else, but when you are practicing a self-love journey, it’s important to get in the habit of being your own best friend and your hype person. I want you guys to check in with yourself and start to pay attention to the thoughts that you’re thinking.

For part two, tune into the next episode.