Growing up I was always big. When I signed up to play football in seventh grade, I had to get a physical before practice started. At the age of 11, I started the season at 5’8 and 168 pounds. By the end of the season I’d gain an inch and 12 pounds.

I don’t know why I remember that.

When I started high school two years later I was six feet tall and over 200 pounds. I also wore a size 13 shoe.

I wasn’t a fat kid.

I was a big kid.

The problem was I thought I was fat. Because I’d always been called “big guy” or other versions of that, I took it as “fat guy” even though no one ever called me fat. This was just my own personal insecurity.

While other people saw big, I saw fat.

I started gaining weight the summer before my junior year of high school. My parents tried to bring it up in loving, concerning ways but every time they did I’d fly off in 15-year-old teenage anger. Looking back, I know they were trying to look out for me. But at the time it felt like they were making fun of me for being fat. Because remember, in my head I was already fat.

Over the course of the next couple years I would stop playing sports, embrace the fat kid I thought I was, and gain over 100 pounds until finally what I saw with my eyes matched what I felt like I was.

I felt like I was fat so I became fat.

It was a self fulfilling prophecy.

—

A few weeks ago I was texting with a friend from college. I had seen something on TimeHop that reminded me of a momentus event from my senior year of college and we were amazed at how that was nine years ago.

I graduated college nine years ago. Wow.

In the conversation I talked about how I feel like I’m still that 21-year-old kid with the whole world ahead of me. Instead, I’m actually a 30-year-old man with a wife and two kids who owns a business and a house.

Those two things are not the same.

That 21-year-old kid couldn’t do the things 30-year-old me does on a daily basis.

So I had to embrace the fact that I’m not a kid anymore. I am, in fact, a real live adult with real adult responsibilities. Not only that, but I actually have the wisdom and knowledge to function as an adult.

Once I began to embrace who I actually was, I began to have the confidence that came with that. I no longer felt like an imposter.

We become who we think we already are.

It works both ways:

If you see yourself as something negative, eventually you’ll end up as that something.

If you see yourself as something positive, you’ll begin to grow into whatever that something is.

So what do you see yourself as?

Are you slipping into a negative version of yourself or are you growing into something great?

Do you need to recalibrate the image you have of yourself?

The beauty of self fulfilling prophecies is that you set them so you can change them at any point.

What do you need to change?

Say your prayers and take your vitamins.

Have a nice day.

-Jonathan