Tiny Buddha

Tag: self-criticism

  • When You’re Tired of Fixing Yourself: How to Stop Treating Healing Like a Full-Time Job

    When You’re Tired of Fixing Yourself: How to Stop Treating Healing Like a Full-Time Job

    “True self-love is not about becoming someone better; it’s about softening into the truth of who you already are.” ~Yung Pueblo

    One morning, I sat at my kitchen table with my journal open, a cup of green tea steaming beside me, and a stack of self-help books spread out like an emergency toolkit.

    The sunlight was spilling across the counter, but I didn’t notice. My eyes kept darting between the dog-eared pages of a book called Becoming Your Best Self and the neatly written to-do list in my journal.

    Meditation.
    Gratitude journaling.
    Affirmations.
    Ten thousand steps.
    Hydration tracker.
    “Inner child work” … still unchecked.

    It was only 9:00 a.m., and I’d already meditated, journaled, listened to a personal development podcast, and planned my “healing workout” for later.

    By all accounts, I was doing everything right. But instead of feeling inspired or light, I felt… tired. Bone-deep tired.

    When Self-Improvement Becomes Self-Criticism

    I didn’t realize it at the time, but I had turned personal growth into a job I could never leave.

    Every podcast was a strategy meeting. Every book was an employee manual for a better me. Every quiet moment became a chance to find another flaw to address.

    And if I missed something, a day without journaling, a skipped meditation, a workout cut short, I felt like I had failed. Not failed at the task itself but failed as a person. I told myself this was dedication. That it was healthy to be committed to becoming the best version of myself.

    But underneath, there was a quieter truth I didn’t want to admit:

    I wasn’t growing from a place of self-love. I was hustling for my own worth.

    Somewhere along the way, “self-improvement” had stopped being about building a life I loved and had become about fixing a person I didn’t.

    Self-Growth Burnout Is Real

    We talk about burnout from work, parenting, and caregiving, but we don’t often talk about self-growth burnout. The kind that comes when you’ve been “working on yourself” for so long it becomes another obligation.

    It’s subtle, but you can feel it.

    It’s the heaviness you carry into your meditation practice, the quiet resentment when someone tells you about a “life-changing” book you have to read, the way even rest feels like you’re falling behind in your own healing.

    The worst part? It’s wrapped in such positive language that it’s hard to admit you’re tired of it.

    When you say you’re exhausted, people tell you to “take a self-care day,” which often just becomes another checkbox. When you say you’re feeling stuck, they hand you another podcast, another journal prompt, another morning routine to try.

    It’s exhausting to realize that even your downtime is part of a performance review you’re constantly giving yourself.

    The Moment I Stepped Off the Hamster Wheel

    My turning point wasn’t dramatic. No breakdown, no grand epiphany. Just a Tuesday night in early spring.

    I had planned to do my usual “nighttime routine” … ten minutes of breathwork, ten minutes of journaling, reading a chapter of a personal growth book before bed. But that night, I walked past my desk, grabbed a blanket, and went outside instead.

    The air was cool, and the sky was streaked with soft pink and gold. I sat down on the porch steps and just… watched it change. No phone. No agenda. No trying to make the moment “productive” by mentally drafting a gratitude list.

    For the first time in years, I let something be just what it was.

    And in that stillness, I realized how much of my life I’d been missing in the chase to become “better.” I was so focused on the next version of me that I’d been neglecting the one living my actual life right now.

    Why We Keep Fixing What Isn’t Broken

    Looking back, I can see why I got stuck there.

    We live in a culture that profits from our constant self-doubt. There’s always a “next step,” a new program, a thirty-day challenge promising to “transform” us.

    And there’s nothing inherently wrong with learning, growing, or challenging ourselves. The problem comes when growth is rooted in the belief that who we are today is inadequate.

    When every action is motivated by I’m not enough yet, we end up in an endless loop of striving without ever feeling at peace.

    How I Started Shifting from Fixing to Living

    It wasn’t an overnight change. I had to relearn how to interact with personal growth in a way that felt nourishing instead of punishing. Here’s what helped me:

    1. I checked the weight of what I was doing.

    I started asking myself: Does this feel like support, or does it feel like pressure? If it felt heavy, exhausting, or like another form of self-criticism, I paused or dropped it completely.

    2. I let rest be part of the process.

    Not “rest so I could be more productive later,” but real rest—reading a novel just because I liked it, taking a walk without tracking my steps, watching the clouds without trying to meditate.

    3. I stopped chasing every “should.”

    I let go of the belief that I had to try every method, read every book, or follow every guru to heal. I gave myself permission to choose what resonated and ignore the rest.

    4. I practiced being okay with “good enough.”

    Instead of asking, “How can I make this better?” I practiced noticing what was already working in my life, even if it wasn’t perfect.

    What I Learned

    Healing isn’t a ladder you climb to a perfect view.

    It’s more like a rhythm—one that includes rest days, quiet seasons, and moments where nothing changes except your ability to notice you’re okay right now.

    I learned that sometimes the most transformative thing you can do is stop. Stop chasing, stop fixing, stop critiquing every part of yourself like you’re a never-ending renovation project.

    Because maybe the real work isn’t fixing yourself into a future you’ll finally love. Maybe the real work is learning to live fully in the self you already are.

  • How I Found my True Self in the Space Between my Thoughts

    How I Found my True Self in the Space Between my Thoughts

    “I am not my thoughts, emotions, sense perceptions, and experiences. I am not the content of my life. I am Life. I am the space in which all things happen. I am consciousness. I am the Now. I Am.” ~Eckhart Tolle

    Everything changed the moment I learned I was not my thoughts.

    There I was, reading Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth, when I read this line: “What a liberation to realize that the ‘voice in my head’ is not who I am. Who am I then? The one who sees that.”

    I felt a shift. Wait, what?!? How can I not be my thoughts? Aren’t my thoughts who I am? They are in my head all day, every day. I thought they were what made me… me!

    This mind-blowing moment hit me deeply. Right then and there, I changed. Once my mind was out of the way, my true self emerged.

    For nearly forty years, I lived on autopilot. I did not like a lot of the thoughts in my head, but I had no idea that I had control over them. Instead, I cringed, tried to push them away, distracted myself by staying busy, and worked hard on my image and contributions to the world.

    My deep, shameful secret was that no one would want to know me if they knew the mean thoughts I was ruminating on in my head. I felt like a truly awful person deep down. Whoa. I am so sorry, past self, that you lived like that. I hold you in love. Deep love.

    Separating me and my thoughts has become my daily practice. I remember the first time I was able to dialogue with my thoughts. Weeks after reading that mind-blowing passage, I accidentally spilled the contents of my vacuum cleaner on the kitchen floor.

    “You’re stupid. What a mess. What a waste of time. Look what you did.” These mean words flew through my mind. I sat in the middle of the floor and put my hand on my heart.

    “Who is saying that?” I asked.

    A swirl of dark energy inside and around me got tighter and darker and meaner as it growled, “Me.”

    “What is your purpose?” I asked with a mix of curiosity and fear.

    “To keep you in line,” it sneered.

    “In line with what?” I asked.

    “You’re such a failure. You don’t know how to do anything right,” it continued.

    The swirl tightened, and I kept my hand on my heart to protect myself.

    “What do you want me to know?” I asked.

    “I have to keep you safe,” it said.

    “Who are you keeping safe?” I asked.

    Immediately, an image of myself, age eight, appeared in my mind’s eye. She was sad, sitting on the floor in the front hallway of my childhood home. My parents were at work, and my babysitter refused to do her hair before school. She had decided that at eight I was old enough to do my hair before school. This left me confused, sad, and lonely.

    “Oh, honey,” I felt my heart open to her. “What do you need?”

    She looked at me through tears and said, “Can you do my hair?” In my mind’s eye, we moved in front of the hallway mirror as I combed her hair and put it into pigtails.

    “I see you and I love you,” I told her. She looked relieved and smiled tentatively from the corner of her mouth.

    I felt my love pouring into her, and the dark swirl lifted, hovering nearby before leaving my energy field.

    As I processed this interaction with this fear of failure part that was protecting my sad inner child, I was able to stay in my conscious, healthy adult mind and release that inner voice.

    I know that the critical, egoic part came online to protect my inner child from feeling sadness and loneliness. As children, rather than judge or dismiss our caregivers as wrong, we blame ourselves, and that is what my younger self did until I reparented her. I assumed I was wrong for asking my babysitter to do my hair instead of recognizing that her neglect wasn’t my fault.

    Now, when I make a mistake or spill something, I do not hear that mean voice as strongly. If it comes up, I know how to dialogue with it.

    I have come a long way since I spilled the vacuum cleaner contents. The mean voice that once dominated my thoughts has lost its power.

    The most profound lesson I have learned is this: We are not our thoughts. We are the awareness of them, the consciousness that observes and chooses them. This knowledge allows me to step out of the stream of negative self-talk and into the spaciousness of the present moment.

    I invite you to try this. The next time you make a mistake or face a challenge, pause. Notice the thoughts that arise, but do not latch onto them. Instead, ask yourself, “Who is saying that?” In that space of awareness, you might discover, as I did, old beliefs that are ready to morph and an inner child just waiting to be noticed.

  • Healing from Chronic Fatigue: The Amazing Impact of Self-Compassion

    Healing from Chronic Fatigue: The Amazing Impact of Self-Compassion

    “If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.” ~Dalai Lama

    In my mid-thirties, my active and adventuresome life as a broadcast journalist collapsed. It began with a trauma, followed by flu-like symptoms that stuck around for thirteen years. Almost overnight, I lost the pep to walk around the block, much less file reports for the evening news.

    A battery of doctors diagnosed me with chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS), among other diagnoses. They said I’d have to live this way since there was no reliable cure. I became one of the medical mysteries I used to cover.

    Needless to say, I was terrified and grief-stricken. To add insult to illness, I beat myself up for ‘failing’ to get well. I should be able to master my new vocation of healing, reasoned my Type A personality.

    I used every ounce of energy I had to research my own health story. Intravenous vitamins, antiviral medications, sage-burning healers—I tried them all. I eliminated the foods I enjoyed and washed my elimination diet down with mounds of herbs.

    Sadly, I was also feeding myself bitter pills: self-pressure and self-criticism. I felt ashamed that I couldn’t make my body well, save a career I loved, or actualize the family I dearly wanted.

    There were enormous reasons for grief. But I didn’t have the support in and around me to feel this maelstrom of emotions. My mind swooped in to distract me.

    I blamed myself mercilessly, even though my symptoms started after I was sexually assaulted by a man who walked away free. There’s something unhealthy about a society that rarely punishes rape, even though an American is sexually assaulted every sixty-eight seconds, according to the Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network.

    We also know that people who experienced adverse childhood experiences have higher rates of chronic illness as adults. There’s mounting evidence that adult stressors and trauma can also topple our health. This is what happened to me, although it took years to make this connection.

    No matter whether we’ve experienced big ‘T’ trauma, little ‘t’ trauma, or the unavoidable insults of being human, we need self-compassion. This quality was once illusive to me. But after years of illness, I started softening.

    It was too painful to endure the pressure of trying to be a perfect patient. The hard-driving approach I adopted in my journalism career didn’t work when I could barely cook a meal.

    Exasperated by the medical maze, my yoga mat and meditation cushion became my medicine. I’d stretch like a cat in my backyard patch of grass. Trees, birds, and poetry became my companions.

    Eckhart Tolle’s voice was a melody to my nervous system. I steeped myself in his words each day. Instead of lamenting all the things I couldn’t do, I began to actually enjoy the imperfect present moment.

    You could say I accidentally fell into self-compassion. It’s not that I gave up on healing, but I began treating myself kindly for my very real suffering. I resonated with Naomi Shihab Nye’s poem Kindness, in which she writes:

    “Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside, you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing. You must wake up with sorrow. You must speak to it till your voice catches the thread of all sorrows and you see the size of the cloth. Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore.”

    I awakened with sorrow and spent many insomniac nights mired in it. Much as I wish joy had become my teacher, suffering got the job.

    Soon, I started noticing kindness in and around me. My parents would drop by for a movie. We’d curl up on the couch, ditch my anti-candida diet with a bowl of popcorn, and sink into the relief of other people’s stories.

    Meanwhile, my state disability ended, and I was petrified about how I’d support myself as a single woman without a job. One day, a flier came in the mail saying, “Kindness is like a boomerang that comes back to you. We’re dedicated to financially supporting members of the media in a life crisis.”

    That was me! I’d never heard of this non-profit and don’t know how I got on their mailing list. I applied, got financial aid, and managed to save my house from the clutches of foreclosure!

    In the face of crisis, life’s generosities abounded. A friend listened to my heartbreak. My mom brought homemade chicken soup. One yoga teacher came by with superfood treats.

    Since I paused my pursuit of a cure, I decided to use my spoon-sized energy for an online writing class. Here, I found a community of kindred spirits. A fellow writer told me she recovered from chronic fatigue syndrome through a type of mind-body healing.

    This approach was brought forward by John Sarno, Howard Schubiner, and other physicians who realized the role of unresolved emotions in perpetuating chronic symptoms. Miraculously, her story gave me a sudden boost of energy and catapulted my recovery!

    I stepped into a new paradigm and realized I could overcome my seemingly endless flu-like symptoms. Rather than attacking viruses, I learned to soothe my brain and nervous system.

    No wonder I was hypervigilant. I’d first experienced a massive trauma, then suffered the stress of living with chronic symptoms I felt powerless to overcome. I’d subsequently lost my ability to support myself financially and function in the world during the prime of my life.

    My dear father also passed away during these years, as did three other close family members. My brain was on overload and became stuck in a hypervigilant state—exacerbated by fears that I was ill for life.

    In a training I took a year later, Dr. Schubiner described fibromyalgia as PTSD for the body. I finally felt seen and understood. This was the polar opposite of how I felt with most of the fifty practitioners I saw over my CFS saga.

    While allopathic medicine is miraculous in fighting infections and saving lives, it often neglects the role of emotional stress and trauma on our physical health. Physician and author Gabor Maté writes, “All of the diagnoses that you deal with—depression, anxiety, ADHD, bipolar illness, post-traumatic stress disorder, even psychosis, are significantly rooted in trauma. They are manifestations of trauma.”

    I needed to explore my storehouse of trauma, which I did through meditation, writing, and somatic therapy. I also shifted my beliefs about my condition and moved slowly back into activities. It took months of dedicated practice to retrain my brain so that I could safely inch out of my bubble.

    I brought mindfulness to personality traits like people-pleasing, pressure, and perfectionism since they can fuel chronic symptoms. I once heard a physician named John Stracks say, “When I think of why people develop pain, self-criticism is at the top of the list.”

    I wanted tools to soften my harsh inner dialogue, so I dove into Kristin Neff’s work. The research psychologist says self-compassion fills us with good-feeling hormones like oxytocin, while self-criticism fuels stress hormones like cortisol. This alone causes a cascade of physical symptoms.

    When our subconscious brain senses danger—even if it’s an internal, psychological one such as “There’s something wrong with me”—it activates our nervous system. In flight or fight, we might feel anxious or aggressive. In freeze, we can feel immobile or dead.

    Neff describes three elements of self-compassion: mindfulness, common humanity, and self-kindness. Here’s the gist of each one as I understand them.

    Mindfulness: We acknowledge and witness our physical or emotional pain as a felt experience in our body. We might say something like, “It’s hard to feel so sad and exhausted.”

    Humanity: We remember that suffering is part of being human. Although our circumstances are unique, we’re not alone in this universal experience.

    Self-Kindness: We treat ourselves as we would with a dear friend, offering ourselves the supportive words we yearn to hear. When we’re struggling, we ask with sincerity: What do I need right now?

    With self-compassion as my companion, I started speaking to myself tenderly. An indescribable relief would wash over me. Instead of feeling abandoned by life, I felt seen and witnessed by the only one who knew what I needed: myself.

    This dovetails beautifully with mind-body healing. A big part of my recovery was tracking sensations in my body with open curiosity. Fatigue felt heavy. Pain was burny. Brain fog felt spacey.

    To the extent I could, I stopped fighting or fleeing from my feelings and started holding them with curiosity. Often, restlessness and rumination reared up. When I stuck with it, sometimes my system settled and my symptoms shifted into emotions.

    Other times, my body spoke to me. Please don’t push so hard. Don’t say yes when you mean no. Tell me I’m okay just how I am. I need to do something fun.

    As I tended to my hurts in this new way, the physical symptoms began subsiding. This took patience and persistence. Many months later, I was back in the land of the living. Not only that, I was experiencing life in a more authentic and embodied way than I had before the CFS.

    This isn’t woo-woo mumbo-jumbo. Neuroscience shows that our brain creates pain, fatigue, anxiety, and other stress-related symptoms. It does so based on a perception of danger, whether that’s a wayward car, an angry spouse, or harsh inner dialogue.

    “Certain behaviors can bring us to a state of high alert without our even realizing it,” writes Alan Gordon in The Way Out. “There are three habits I see again and again in my patients that trigger fear and aggravate neuroplastic pain: worrying, putting pressure on yourself, and self-criticism.”

    When our nervous system shifts into a threat state, it communicates through symptoms. Sensations from dizziness to dullness are encouraging rest and inactivity. With ongoing stress, our brain can become sensitized, firing memos to our body in rapid succession.

    Kristin Neff’s research on self-compassion corroborates this. “Pain is often caused by tension and resistance, so when we soften a little bit as opposed to a harsh reactive stance, it tends to reduce the amount of pain we physically experience,” Neff says in The Healthy.

    Recently, I felt tension flare when speaking with a curt customer service agent who couldn’t help with a large payment I was supposed to receive. It was, apparently, stuck in limbo. My stress level rose, and I felt a knot in my throat—surely full of all the things I wanted to say to her!

    After two hours, my money was still missing in action. My frustration soared as I’d frittered away precious time I’d set aside to write my blog, conveniently on self-compassion. (The irony is not lost on this writer.)

    Instead of trying to fix it further or rush back to work, as I would have done before, I acknowledged that I was angry and scared. I reiterated how impossible the modern age is sometimes. And I said to the trembling part of me, “I am sorry you’re dealing with this stress. What do you want and need right now?”

    It turns out that I needed to growl (literally!). I needed to walk (briskly). And I needed to practice somatic meditation. I did all three and felt a wave of calm energy. The oxytocin potion, perhaps?

    I was ready to return to work with vigor and fresh material for my blog, conveniently enough. That jives with studies showing that self-compassionate people are less anxious and depressed than self-critical people.

    If self-compassion feels like a foreign concept to you, you’re simply a modern Homo sapien. For a long while, it was like a distant planet to me. With intention, we can cast our gaze towards self-kindness and move steadily into its orbit.

    The next time you feel hurt, scared, or symptomatic, you might pause and ask yourself: How am I feeling right now? What words or deeds would feel supportive to me? You may be surprised by what you find in the medicine chest of your very own heart.

  • Thinner is Not Better – Healthy, Connected, and Happy Is

    Thinner is Not Better – Healthy, Connected, and Happy Is

    “Standards of beauty are arbitrary. Body shame exists only to the extent that our physiques don’t match our own beliefs about how we should look.” ~Martha Beck

    I have so many women around me right now—friends, mothers, clients that are on a diet—constantly talking about their weight and how their bodies look, struggling with body image.

    I am profoundly sad about the frequency and theme of those discussions.

    At the same time, I deeply get it; it is hard to detach from our conditioning.

    I too struggled with body image at one point in my life, and for a very long time. I suffered from anorexia in my late teens and early twenties. I was skinny as a rail and thought I was not thin enough. I hated the way I looked. I was never perfect enough.

    I controlled my food intake as a way to regain control over my life, as a way to maybe one day be perfect enough that I might feel loved. I almost ended up in the hospital, as my weight impacted my health, physically and mentally. I had no period, no healthy bowel movement. I was so unhappy and depressed. I had no energy.

    The messed-up thing is that the skinnier I looked, the more compliments I received from a lot of people, from family to friends: “You are so slim and gorgeous.” To me, this just validated the way I treated my body—and myself—with control, self-criticism, and harshness.

    Then there were the magazines, showing skinny models, getting so much positive attention. I was obsessed. The more my body looked like those magazine pictures, the better; though I could never quite get to a point where I looked at myself in the mirror and liked what I saw. It was an endless circle of judgment, control, and unhappiness. 

    It took me many years to change the way I saw my body and debunk the standards created by “society” for women.

    For many years I bit my tongue each time I would hear other women around me comparing and judging their body size and shape, repeating the same narrative of needing to lose weight. These conversations felt like an unbearable ringing in my ears, a knot in my stomach, the story in my head of “I am not good enough.”

    I was in the process of creating a new set of standards for myself, of what it was to be a woman in this world, but the old stories were hard to escape and easier to follow because they were the gold standard. I did not have any role models of women out there, younger or older, loving their body just the way it was.

    There was a point, though, when it was just too draining. I noticed that it was not the striving to get to a perfect body that brought me love. What brought me love was being vulnerable, authentic, sharing my inner life, supporting others, having deep talks, being kind with myself and others, and doing the things I loved.

    From then on, I started to soften and release all those standards that had been gifted to me. I allowed myself to be okay with how my body looked, to enjoy food, to enjoy movement, to enjoy my body. I learned to truly love my body, and with that came a different type of respect: I learned to rest when my body was tired. I learned to eat really nourishing food. I learned to move every day in a way that was respectful to my body and that I enjoyed.

    Thinner is not better. Healthy, connected, and happy is.

    Practicing yoga helped me so much in embodying this new belief, and studying neuro-linguistic programming as well.

    The truth is we are “society”—all of us, women and men—which means we are the agents of change. So let’s pause, reflect, and choose new standards. Is this constant need to lose weight healthy or serving anyone?

    There are a few different things to separate and highlight here.

    If your weight negatively impacts your health or your life, if you feel heavy in an unhealthy way and can’t do the activities you’d like to do, that is a different story; and yes, please, take care of your body, through what you think will work best for you: exercise, nutrition, mindset, support.

    Your body is your vessel to experience life, so finding your way to a healthy body is a worthwhile investment. And daily movement and good nutrition will have such a positive impact on your vitality and health, physical and mental, so yes, go for it, with love, softness and kindness—no control, judgment, or harshness.

    But if you feel that your body is strong and healthy, but you don’t like the way it looks… I feel you. I was there. I felt the shame, the discomfort, the sadness, the feeling of not being good enough. Allow yourself to feel this pain. It is okay, and human nature, to feel concerned about your appearance. We all want to be part of the tribe, to be loved and admired.

    But then, ask yourself, is it me that does not like the way my body looks, or is it because of society’s beauty standards? Is it because of all the noise from my friends, constantly talking about weight and looks? Do I want to transmit those standards to the next generation? To my sons? To my daughters? Is it really the most important thing for us women, to look thin and good? Is this story serving us all? Is it love?

    No, it is not love, and it serves no one. Not the women suffering in silence because they believe their body is not slim enough. Not the partners of those women who can’t appreciate their true beauty and fullness. Not the daughters that will believe the same messages and suffer as well. Not the sons that will not know how to recognize beauty in its diverse shapes and forms. Not society as a whole, which will be robbed of having a happy, compassionate, loving, self-confident population.

    So let’s choose differently. Let’s celebrate our different body shapes and weights and strength. Let’s feel good and enjoy life, movement, and food without counting and restricting and denying love to our bodies and selves.

    Let’s stop talking about our weight constantly and find other ways to connect.

    Some might say that I am too slim to really speak about this subject, that I have it easy. This is not quite true. My body has changed so much throughout the years. I went from an ultra-skinny teenager and twenty-year-old with anorexia, to a healthy weight in my thirties, to ups and downs with weight throughout my two pregnancies and breastfeeding journeys. I have seen my body change quite a lot and have been judged for how I looked oh so many times. I have been judged for being skinny, or envied for being slim, and I have been judged for gaining weight.

    Today I am forty-three. My body is not as slim as it used to be. I have a bit of fat around my belly, and my breasts are not as round and firm as they once were, but I feel strong and healthy. And I am SO grateful for my body for enabling me to experience life so far, and for creating life and feeding life, that I don’t want to ever criticize or shame my body again.

    I have learned to love every scar, my stretch marks, my extra skin, because they are the witness of my life, my loves, my years.

    So thank you, body, for everything you allow me to experience.

    The alternative to loving my body—the constant internal criticism and self-doubt—is too draining.

    We, as humans, are society, so let’s change this conditioning. Let’s never transmit this idea of what a woman’s body should look like to our daughters, to our sons. Let’s invent a world where it does not matter what you weigh as long as you feel healthy and good within. Let’s change the chattering from what diet we are on to how our heart is feeling.

    Let’s celebrate bodies, in their diverse beauty and forms.

  • I Worry I’ll Never Change – Here’s Why I Still Accept Myself

    I Worry I’ll Never Change – Here’s Why I Still Accept Myself

    “Our journey is not about changing into the person we want to become. It’s about letting go of all we are not.” ~Nikki van Schyndel, Becoming Wild

    I recently went on personal retreat to once again try to heal my wounds, see my patterns, and find my purpose. I loaded my car with journals from the last two decades and a book of poetry dating back to 1980. I packed my cooler full of nourishing food, but then added a six pack of beer and an expensive bottle of wine—completely unaware that I was about to sabotage my personal growth by continuing to numb my pain.

    I had decided to use my retreat time to review my journal writings, pull out any wisdom I wanted to keep, and release the rest in a burning ceremony. On my first day, I labeled each journal with the year it was written and organized them all chronologically. This task felt arduous yet satisfying when I sat back and looked at the twenty-five volumes all laid out neatly in order.

    I spent the next three days re-reading each and every one. Re-living the emotional angst of problems in this relationship, then the next … and the next. Teasing out the patterns of insecurity, sabotage, and grieving. Re-visiting the same themes and my same desire and commitment, after the ending of each relationship, to be this person who stopped drinking in excess, meditated daily, ate healthy foods, and took good care of her body.

    Over and over, I had glimpses of this centered, calm, wise woman who I’d like to think is the real me. Yet over and over, I’d jumped into another relationship, lost myself, and repeated the pattern. Pages and pages full of the same story, only with different characters and at different times. As I read each journal, I tore out pages to burn, cut out sections to keep, and drank to numb the pain.

    On the fourth day I finished organizing the scraps of paper I wanted to keep and sat back with immense satisfaction. By early afternoon I had my fire going and drank my first beer of the day as I burned … and burned … and burned. Words turning into ashes. I stayed emotionally distant, cut off from my feelings, not making much of a ceremony of it after all.

    Feeling restless, I downed the last of my beer and pulled on my hiking boots. The trail outside my cabin began with a steep decline, winding along the side of the mountain and deep into the woods. As I walked, I kept thinking, “I haven’t changed. I’m still the same. What will it take to change? Why can’t I be that person I say I want to be? My life is one big loop.”

    I thought maybe the answer was that I just needed to be more self-disciplined. However, I immediately noticed the word “discipline” repelled me. If there is one thing I know about myself, I am not one to obey rules or codes of behavior—and I already punish myself enough. So, no, self-discipline wasn’t the answer. It was clear that I had spent a lifetime trying that approach and beating myself up for not succeeding. I kept on walking.

    At some point I questioned if maybe this was what life was really all about: the striving to be someone we are not. By that time, I was walking back uphill and had to stop frequently to catch my breath.

    Standing alone in the woods with my heart beating hard, staring blankly at the trees, I wondered if maybe the answer was just to embrace who I am. It’s pretty clear, after reading over my life for twenty years, I haven’t been able to change.

    My mind continued to whirl: But I’m not able to accept those parts of myself that drink too much or can’t stay focused. I don’t want to be that person who is overweight. I really do want to meditate. I stopped again, looking down the mountainside from which I had come. Apparently embracing myself wasn’t quite the answer either.

    By the time I had returned to my cabin, I no longer wanted to drink. I reflected again on the common thread throughout the years and suddenly saw the essence of myself that is timeless.

    It was there in my poetry from over forty years ago, in the heartbreak when I sabotaged yet another relationship, and in the yearning to be different.

    In a flash of insight, I recognized—contrary to the self-criticism that had been running through my head—the unchanged me was not a bad self. She is someone who wants to do better, who wants to be better, who recognizes the impermanence of time and seeks to grow.

    As I saw her, I knew this was the me I could totally embrace. I briefly thought about starting a new journal with this great insight, then laughed because I knew, if I did, I’d be reading it in twenty years, shaking my head, and saying “nothing has changed.” Then I would beat myself up for not being who I thought I wanted to be, and the cycle would just continue.

    In this recognition, I knew that those parts of me I so strongly criticized weren’t going to go away. And while I couldn’t embrace them, I could accept them with greater compassion and love.

    I saw the truth that even if I don’t meditate daily, exercise, eat healthy all the time, and have a full and balanced life, the part of me that strives to do those things is always there. She was in every page where I said I wanted to make those choices, and she’s been with me all along. She is the one I need to accept and embrace; it’s not who I want to be, it’s who I am.

    The review of my life helped me understand it’s a process. That timeless part of me may come and go, just like I have my moments of awakening to my wisdom and then forgetting it all. Sometimes the me who struggles to make healthy choices is going to hijack my life. I can accept that is a part of being human. It’s not self-discipline I need, it’s self-acceptance of my duality. Both my wise woman and my saboteur.

    I am a wise and powerful woman. I am a kind, sensitive, and caring soul. I love deeply. I care deeply. I feel deeply. I don’t need to escape from who I am; I simply need to remember. Ultimately, what really needs to change is that I need to nurture self-compassion and self-acceptance at the deepest level.

    My last day at the cabin, I awoke to sunshine and blue skies. I felt good and strong. I spent part of the day shopping in the craft stores of the nearby village, and before I knew it, I was halfway to the liquor store. I kept trying to convince myself it was okay, but recognizing I wanted to make a different choice, I managed to turn around before it was too late.

    I chose a waterfall hike and scrambled past the tourists, up to the top of the falls. The rocks were a slippery slope, but the irony of that and the potential of me drinking didn’t quite register until later. When I reached the top, I sat a moment to meditate. As I closed my eyes, I embraced this timeless essence and felt so much peace and gratitude for her presence.

    My inner saboteur tried to take over again when I got back to my car. Sitting in the parking lot, I asked myself, “What do you hope to accomplish by getting a drink?” Then, I laughed at the quick and witty answer, “A hangover.” I drove back to my cabin, made myself a healthy meal, and drank a glass of water.

    I understand now this journey is a day-by-day, moment-by-moment reclaiming of who I am. I also understand the part of me that has been in control when I’ve forgotten my essence isn’t going to disappear overnight.

    However, I no longer fool myself into thinking anything is wrong with me. I recognize and embrace my commitment to growing in wisdom, strength, and joy. And I embrace all of who I am, while having compassion for the parts of me that struggle.

  • If You’re Trapped Under a Pile of “Should” and Tired of Feeling Unhappy

    If You’re Trapped Under a Pile of “Should” and Tired of Feeling Unhappy

    “Stop shoulding on yourself.” ~Albert Ellis

    I was buried under a pile of shoulds for the first thirty-two years of my life. Some of those shoulds were put on me by the adults in my life, some were heaped on because I am a middle child, but most were self-imposed thanks to cultural and peer influence.

    “You should get straight A’s, Jill.”

    “You shouldn’t worry so much, Jill.”

    “You should be married by now, Jill.”

    “You should get your Master’s degree.”

    I could go on forever. The pile was high, and I was slowly suffocating from the crushing weight on my soul.

    What’s so significant about age thirty-two? It’s when I decided to divorce my husband of eighteen months (after a big ole Catholic wedding) and ask my parents for money to pay the attorney’s retainer. This is a gal with a great childhood, MBA, and a darned good catch for a husband.

    From the outside, our life looked charmed and full of potential. We’d just purchased our first home, were trying to start a family (despite suffering two miscarriages) and were building our careers. What no one else saw was the debilitating mountain of consumer debt, manipulative behavior, and my intuition’s activated alarm system… sounding off in reaction to the life I’d built and was, for all intents and purposes, stuck in.

    My intuition was done with the low-level warnings. She was sick and tired of being ignored, so she sounded the big one—an alarm that demanded action instead of lip service. I still tried challenging her; what she had presented me with was asinine.

    “But I can’t divorce him. We just got married. What will everyone think? I’m so embarrassed. I should have made better choices. How did I end up here? I did everything right, right? I should suck it up and stick it out; that’s what good Catholics do. This is kind of what life is, I guess… kinda sad, but it seems to work for most everyone else. Ugh, I wanted this… now I’m, what, changing my mind?”

    The alarm was not going to shut off until I sat long enough with those notions to yield honest answers. That was some tough sh*t to sit in. And even tougher to plod through. But it was better than being buried under it.

    This was my first lesson in “There’s only one way out of this mess.” There’s no express lane, no backroad, no direct flight. This ride resembled the covered wagon kind. Bumpy, hot, dirty, and uncomfortable as hell.

    I relented, listened, and tapped into the hidden reserve of courage I didn’t know existed within me.

    The time had come to quit living according to the “should standard” everyone else around me had subscribed to. The time had come to accept this curated life was not the one that would yield happiness for me. The time had come to turn up the volume on this newfound voice and assert to myself (and everyone else) that I was cutting my losses and trusting my inner compass.  

    The time had come to stop shoulding myself.

    Shoulds were my grocery list, my roadmap for life. How was I going to do this adult thing without my instructions???

    I’d already managed to clear a huge should—hello, divorce—and after that, with every should I challenged, another paradigm crumbled. I began to notice shoulds all over the place. After that, my awareness of intention got keener, and I could sniff out the subtle shoulds like a bloodhound.

    SHOULD: When are you having kids?

    CHOICE:  I do not want to have children. (Remember I miscarried twice with my first husband. I was checking boxes on my adulting grocery list. Honesty yielded clarity.)

    SHOULD: He’s too old for you and he has four boys of his own.

    CHOICE:  He is my person. His sons deserve to see their father in a healthy, happy relationship. I can show them love in a new, different way.

    SHOULD: You’re making great money in your job. Why walk away from your amazing 401(k) and great benefits to risk starting your own business?

    CHOICE:  I want to build a life I’m not desperate to take a vacation from. I want to live, serve others, and know when I’m at the end of my life that I chose it and made the most of it.

    Deleting the word “should” is a big first leap in taking ownership of your life. By altering your vocabulary in a simple way, you naturally become mindful of the words you put in its place. Instead of “I should….” substitute with “I choose to….” Instead of “You should…” try “Have you considered…?”

    Keep track of every time you say or hear “should” in a day. Then spend time with each one and get toddler with yourself. Ask why. Ask it again.

    Who says you have to get married or have kids or work a job you hate that looks good on paper? Who says you have to look a certain way or do certain things with your free time that don’t appeal to you? Why are you restless in your life? What idea keeps popping up, begging for your attention? Are you living your truth? What’s in the way? What pile of shoulds are you buried under?

    I get it. We’ve been programmed by our culture and our family traditions to follow the path, stay on course, climb the ladder to success! It’s the only way to be happy, they say. It’s the only way we’ll be proud of you, they insinuate.

    We’ve been indoctrinated with this thought pattern and belief system, and it seems impossible that we have the power to choose otherwise. We have the opportunity, the autonomy, the choice to rewire our iOS and make it what is ideal for ourselves.

    Overwhelm is natural; the antidote is to start small. Find one piece of low-hanging fruit, take a bite, and taste how sweet it is. For example, say no to an invite if you’d rather spend your time doing something else. Allow yourself to do nothing instead of telling yourself you should be doing something productive. Or let yourself feel whatever you feel instead of telling yourself you should be positive.

    Feel how nourishing it is to choose yourself. Experience satiety in your soul. Release restlessness and replace it with intention guided by your intuition.

    Do that and you’ll never should again. Or maybe you will—who says you should be perfect? At the very least you’ll think twice before letting should control you, and you’ll be a lot happier as a result!

  • 5 Things I Let Go When I Was Tired of Playing the Victim

    5 Things I Let Go When I Was Tired of Playing the Victim

    “Placing the blame or judgment on someone else leaves you powerless to change your experience; taking responsibility for your beliefs and judgment gives you the power to change them.” ~ Byron Katie

    I will never forget the day a dear friend of mine told me I sounded like a victim. I can recall I was outraged with a guy who didn’t fulfill my needs and my expectations in love. In other words, he broke up with me, refusing to fill up my cup with the precious things I didn’t know how to give myself: appreciation, self-care, and self-respect.

    “How could he do that to me?” “Why do I have to go through such a thing?” Here’s a small sample of my thought repertoire, full of anger, disappointment, guilt, shame, and blame.

    While complaining, I was expecting my friend to be on my side. Shut up and listen. Accompany me in accusing that man of making me feel miserable and sad. Instead, she chose to be brutally honest:

    “Dear, I can feel your pain. You might not realize this yet, but you sound like a victim.”

    That wasn’t an easy thing to digest. I didn’t talk to her for months after that discussion, but today, I am profoundly grateful for that gift of honesty and genuine truth.

    I took some quality time for reflection and journaling. I got myself temporarily closed for spiritual maintenance. Then I decided to press the reset button and take a deep, profound journey inside of me, to evaluate the only things I could ever control: my thoughts, my actions, and my emotions.

    I wanted to declutter anything that didn’t add value to my life and make room for the things that mattered:

    What did I no longer want to think?
    Was I still hanging on to old beliefs from the past?
    What did I no longer want to feel?
    How did I no longer want to behave?
    What kind of behaviors and relationships was I not willing to tolerate?

    That was a transformational exercise, and here’s what I decided to let go of as a result:

    1. Self-neglect

    I decided to love and approve of myself as I was and take good care of my wants and needs without feeling guilty or selfish. I committed to stop putting my life on hold until “The One” would show up and make me forever happy.

    I started to exercise regularly, eat healthier, make time for my hobbies, go out with friends, travel and see the world. Instead of expecting for someone else to bring joy into my life, I offered that to myself, from the inside out.

    “Don’t wait for someone to bring you flowers. Plant your own garden and decorate your own soul.” ~Mario Quintana

    2. Self-criticism

    I stopped calling myself names, putting myself down, and making myself small so that others would feel good about themselves—a powerful lesson of self-love and self-respect. I decided to eliminate toxic words like “stupid” or “failure” from my vocabulary. I learned to get mindful of my self-talk, as a form of self-care.

    Whenever I find myself thinking disempowering thoughts about how I look or what I do, I stop for a moment and ask myself, “Would I say that to a friend? Would I call a good friend ‘idiot,’ ‘fat’ or ‘stupid’?” I know I wouldn’t, so why say that to myself?

    I started to perceive myself as enough and worthy of love. Not because other people said so, but because I chose to believe it. Before that, I used to hate my body for years. Always on a diet, perceiving myself as too fat to be loved. Not smart enough; not beautiful enough. An “average kind of woman,” so “why would anyone want to be with me?”

    I used to be desperate for a man’s love and approval. It took me months of deep inner work to make peace with my body and stop evaluating my worthiness through a man (or anyone else’s) opinions of me.

    “You are what you believe.” ~Buddha

    3. Negativity

    I detached from toxic relationships, gossiping, and negative people whom I previously permitted to criticize me for being single in my thirties, as if something was wrong with me and I was broken.

    Instead, I decided to surround myself with positive, non-judgmental people who helped me grow, people I could learn from.

    Goodbye, people-pleasing! I stopped saying yes to things I didn’t really want to do, hoping I would be included, liked, and approved of. I set healthy boundaries and stopped seeing people who only called whenever they needed something from me.

    I deleted old contacts from my phone. I had a look at my Facebook profile and unfriended people I wasn’t close to or who only complained and posted negative stuff. I removed myself from Facebook groups I no longer wanted to be part of.

    “If you don’t feel at ease with people, don’t change yourself. Change the people.” ~Cheryl Richardson

    4. Blaming

    I stopped blaming people for the way they “made me” feel. Blaming others for taking our money, our time, and our love is unfair because we always choose how much we give and to whom.

    Instead, I ask empowering questions, like:

    • What could I have done differently?
    • What am I taking with me from this experience?
    • What do I know today that I didn’t before?
    • What’s the gain in pain?

    Such questions are empowering because they liberate us from the conditioning of a victim and the belief that things are imposed on us by other people and external circumstances. They shift our focus away from other people’s perceived shortcomings and toward the things we personally can control.

    “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” ~Eleanor Roosevelt

    5. Comparing

    I stopped comparing myself with other women who seemed to have it all: the husband, the kids, the house, and the dog. I realized everyone was on their own journey and wished them well.

    From previous romantic relationships that didn’t work out, I got clear on what I wanted from a romantic partner. I wanted a lover and a friend. My wish was to feel supported and cherished by someone warm-hearted, fun, intelligent, and kind.

    I got the learning. I trusted the flow of life, and I am married to that wonderful man today. We’ve been married for six years now, and I gave birth to our baby girl last year, at age forty-one. I didn’t do it on anyone else’s timeline, but I have a life I love.

    “A flower does not think of competing to the flower next to it; it just blooms.” ~Zen Shin

    I’ve come to understand that the only person in charge of my happiness is me, and everything else is a bonus. I know this might sound selfish, but it’s not. Self-love is a necessity. Long-lasting happiness cannot come from someone else, but only from ourselves, from the inside out.

  • We Keep Going, One Tiny Step at a Time, and We Should Be Proud

    We Keep Going, One Tiny Step at a Time, and We Should Be Proud

    “Don’t wait until you reach your goal to be proud of yourself. Be proud of every step you take.” ~Karen Salmansohn

    One of the greatest ironies of being human is that we’re often hardest on ourselves right when we should be most proud.

    Let’s say you finally find the courage to start a dream project you’ve fantasized about for as long as you can remember. You push through years of built-up fears, overcome massive internal resistance, and take the leap despite feeling like you’re jumping through a ring of fire, above a pit filled with burning acid.

    It’s one of the most terrifying things you’ve ever done. It dredges up all your deepest insecurities, triggers feelings you’d rather stuff down and ignore, and brings you face to face with the most fragile, vulnerable parts of yourself.

    The fact that you’re even willing to take this risk is huge. Monumental, really. Just getting on this long, winding path is an accomplishment worth acknowledging and celebrating. Most people avoid it. They do what they’ve always done and remain stuck in discontent, wishing they could know a life less limited.

    But you? You’re trying. You’re taking a chance at being who you could be, knowing full well there are no guarantees. You’re a f*cking rockstar. A total badass for giving this a go. But you likely don’t see it that way.

    You likely think you’re not doing enough, or doing it fast enough, or doing it well enough for it to count. You might get down on yourself for not learning more quickly, or having a perfectly honed vision and plan from the start.

    Instead of giving yourself credit for every inch you move forward, you might beat yourself up for not leaping a mile.

    Or maybe you’re not pursuing a dream for the future. Maybe you’re facing a pain from the past.

    Let’s say you’re finally leaning into your anxiety or depression instead of numbing your feelings with booze, food, or any other distraction. Perhaps you’re in therapy, even, trying to get to the root of your complex feelings and heal wounds that have festered, untended, for years.

    It’s intense, draining work that few can understand because there’s no visible representation of just how deep your pain goes. No way to fully explain how tough it is to face it. No way to show how hard you’re trying, every day, to fight a darkness that seems determined to consume you. So on top of being emotionally exhausted, you quite frequently feel alone.

    Just acknowledging the pain beneath the mental and emotional symptoms is an act of immense bravery. And allowing yourself to face it, however and whenever you can—well let’s just say they should give out medals for this kind of thing. You’re a f*cking hero. A total badass for doing the work to save yourself. But you probably don’t see it that way.

    You might think you aren’t making progress fast enough. Or you’re weak for having these struggles to begin with. Or you suck at life because sometimes you fall back into old patterns, even though on many other occasions, you don’t.

    Instead of giving yourself credit for every small win, you might beat yourself up for being a failure. As if nothing you do is good enough, and you’ll never be good enough, because you’re not perfect right now.

    Because if it’s not all happening right now—the healing, the growth, the progress—it’s easy to fear it never will. And it will be all your fault.

    If it seems like I’m speaking from personal experience, that’s because I am.

    I followed a decade of depression and bulimia with years of self-flagellation for not healing overnight and magically morphing into someone less fragile.

    I responded to childhood trauma by abusing myself for acting insecure and emotionally unstable, even when I was actively trying to learn better ways to live and cope.

    And I crucified myself for every cigarette and shot when I was trying to quit smoking and binge drinking, even though I quite frequently went long stretches of time without doing anything self-destructive.

    Through all this internal whip cracking, I consistently reinforced to myself that I was weak for not changing overnight when really I should have acknowledged I was strong for making any progress at all.

    It was like I was watching myself treading water, with broken limbs, while screaming at myself to hurry up and get stronger instead of throwing myself the rope of my own self-encouragement.

    In retrospect, this makes sense. This is how most of us learn growing up—not through validation but punishment. We far more often hear about what we’re doing wrong than what we’re doing right. So instead of supporting ourselves through our deepest struggles, we berate ourselves for even having them.

    Though I’ve made tremendous progress with this over the years, and I’m no longer in crisis, I still find myself expecting instant perfection at times.

    I’m currently pushing myself far beyond the edge of my comfort zone—so far I can’t even see it from where I’m precariously floating.

    I’m writing more here on the site after years of working through an identity crisis I’ve never publicly discussed.

    I’m trying to get funding for a feature film I wrote, with themes that are deeply personal to me, knowing the “low budget” is still no easy amount to raise, and I might fail spectacularly.

    I’m working on multiple new projects with third party companies—something I’ve avoided in the past because I’m a control freak who doesn’t easily trust others to take the reins.

    And I’m doing it all while pregnant—six and a half months to be exact—at almost forty years old. So on top of all the usual fears that accompany big risks and changes, I’m juggling your garden-variety new parent concerns, with a few geriatric-pregnancy-related worries for good measure. (Yes, geriatric. My uterus could be a grandmother!)

    I’m pushing myself into a new league, far outside my little work-from-home introvert bubble, while frequently feeling both physically and emotionally exhausted. And I’m finally giving myself the leeway to evolve after years of saying I wanted to grow but refusing to let go of my comfort to enable it. Really, I should be proud.

    Every time I take a meeting when I’d rather do only what I can accomplish myself, every time I send an email for a new opportunity when it would be easier to passively wait for whatever comes to me, every time I push myself to be the brave, fulfilled person I want to be for both myself and my son, I should throw myself an internal parade. A festival complete with a float in my own image and endless flutes of the best champagne. (I know, I’m pregnant, but it’s internal, remember? Keep the bubbly flowing!)

    But do I do this? To be fair, yes. Sometimes I do. And I’m proud of myself for that. I’ve come a long way from the self-abusive girl who only knew to motivate with intimidation and fear.

    But other times I can be pretty hard on myself. It’s like I have this vision of how this all should work, and when, and I blame myself if I can’t meet my rigid expectations on my ideal timeline.

    I don’t always step back and see the big picture: That there are many external factors I can’t control, and I need to be adaptable to deal with them. That it’s hard to learn new things, and no amount of willpower or dedication can make the process instant. That some things simply take time, and this isn’t a reflection of my worth or my effort.

    I get impatient. I get frustrated. I get anxious and resistant.

    And really it all comes down to attachment. I resist this slow, uncertain process, and bully myself into making things happen more quickly, because I want these things so bad I can taste them, and I fear they may never happen at all.

    I want the freedom these new opportunities could provide. I want the fulfillment of bringing my creative vision to life. I want the things I tell myself I should have made happen years ago, and I want them now so I can focus on the joy of attainment instead of beating myself up for having “wasted time.”

    But none of this internal drama is useful or productive, and it certainly does nothing for my motivation or focus. It’s nearly impossible to create from your heart when it’s totally eclipsed by anxiety and fear.

    The only way to do anything effectively is to accept where you are, let go of the outcome, and throw yourself into the process.

    So going forward, when my mind tries to bully me into doing more than I reasonably can or shame me for my pace or my progress, I’m going to remind myself I’m doing better than I think. We all are. And we all deserve more credit than we likely give ourselves.

    We all deserve credit for facing our demons, chasing our dreams, and showing up every day when it would be easier to hide.

    We all deserve acknowledgment for every tiny step forward, no matter how slow or timid, because creating change is hard.

    We all deserve recognition for the many internal hurdles we overcome, even though they’re not visibly apparent to anyone else, because often they’re harder to tackle than even the most challenging external obstacles.

    And we all deserve the peace of knowing that who we are right now is enough. Even if we have room to grow, even if there are things we’d like to achieve, we are good enough just as we are. And it’s okay to be right where we are.

    It’s okay to be messy, inconsistent, and not always at our best. It’s okay to feel insecure, unsure, lost, confused, and scared. It’s okay to make massive advances on some days and just get by on others.

    Would it be nice if we could instantly transport ourselves to the idealized future we see in our heads? Sure. But that’s not really what it means to “live our best life”—despite what our YOLO-promoting culture would have us believe.

    Living our best life is embracing what is, while working to create what can be. It’s doing the best we can with what’s in front of us, and accepting that nothing else is guaranteed. Because this is the only moment we know for sure we have.

    I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to get to the end of my life and realize I missed most of it because I always felt it needed to be more—and that I needed to be more—to fully appreciate and enjoy what I had while I had it.

    So today, I’ve decided to be proud. Of my strength, my efforts, my progress, and the fact that I keep going. Whether I’m wounded, weary, or worried, I keep getting back up. I keep moving forward. I keep evolving. I am doing the best I can. So are you. And that’s something worth celebrating.

  • How to Tame Your Inner Critic: A Simple Habit to Rewire Your Brain

    How to Tame Your Inner Critic: A Simple Habit to Rewire Your Brain

    “I acknowledge my own worth. My confidence is growing.” ~Unknown

    Sometimes I feel like a spider whose web is repeatedly torn down. I plan something and start taking action. Then life happens, and setbacks threaten to sap my energy and enthusiasm.

    Whenever I take on too much, I can feel as if I’m juggling a million balls. And doing it badly.

    You’ve probably seen T-shirts saying, “Things are a bit crazy around here.” That could easily describe me when I allow myself to become overloaded.

    It’s easy to feel stressed and to slip into harsh self-criticism. Especially when I hold myself to unrealistic perfectionism or get swept away by impatience. Or when I start comparing myself to others who seem to be in a better space.

    But all’s not lost. I love to keep learning. That keeps me hopeful about finding solutions, no matter what the problem.

    I keep identifying and adopting simple science-based actions that yield big payoffs for well-being. The simpler the practice, the more easily it fits into my busy life.

    So, what can be done when life gets too stressful and setbacks lead to harsh self-criticism?

    The Tug of War in Your Brain

    Until relatively recently, scientists believed that the brain could not develop beyond a certain age. The adult brain could not change, it was thought, apart from gradually shrinking from your late twenties onward. So, if your brain habitually criticized and demotivated you, then that was how you’d remain.

    That view is simply mistaken, as science has discovered. Your brain can develop, even during adulthood.

    There’s hope for us all, provided we start respecting ourselves enough to practice self-care.

    How would you like to start rewiring your harshly self-critical brain using a simple five-second habit? I’ll share a transformational habit I’ve adopted, but first let’s understand this a bit more. Once you understand why a practice works, it’s easier to make it part of your life.

    Stress and negativity do remarkable things to your brain. When stress overwhelms you enough to keep your mood constantly low, your brain starts to gradually change. The core component of your brain, the grey matter, grows less dense in some helpful parts of your brain. But it grows denser in some self-critical parts.

    It’s almost as if there’s a tug of war between these two parts. An overdose of stress weakens the helpful parts, allowing the self-critical parts to dominate.

    That’s the bad news. Fortunately, there’s good news.

    Your brain can keep developing, and the unhelpful changes can be reversed. You have “stem cells,” so named because they can develop into various types of new brain cells. Also, new connections can develop between the cells in your brain.

    You can encourage such helpful developments by the actions and thoughts you embrace. In effect, you can assist your brain to keep developing in a helpful way.

    Before I describe the simple but powerful five-second practice, there’s a story I want to share. It will help illustrate how the practice works.

    My Story

    I had once accumulated a lot of weight, was on statin treatment for high cholesterol levels, and couldn’t shed the excess weight despite regularly exercising. I attributed this to being over forty. I knew I was on a conveyor belt headed for a coronary bypass operation or heart attack and was keen to escape.

    Then a noticeably trim classmate from my medical school visited us and ate surprisingly small portions of some things but surprisingly large portions of others. They too were over forty years old. What did they know that I didn’t?

    Health and well-being are, to me, priceless treasures. People often destroy their well-being in desperate pursuit of material things. They can end up ill, sometimes forfeiting even the material things they craved.

    I didn’t want to be yet another person sleepwalking toward a heart attack. I decided to investigate the secrets of staying trim despite middle age. I was strongly motivated, and in a helpful way.

    There were many challenges. I needed to grapple with the scientific literature, to untangle the conflicting information about how to eat well.

    My other big challenge was that I love delicious food, especially when eating in company. I was wary of solutions that took all the enjoyment out of food, or tended to isolate me from friends and family.

    Eventually I found an approach that transformed my health for good, but the details are for another time. The point here is that I had many setbacks and failures along the way. Despite the setbacks, I succeeded in permanently reducing my waist circumference by several inches and no longer need the statin treatment.

    There’s one practice that helped me, more than anything else, to recover after setbacks. It’s so stupidly simple that its power easily can be underestimated.

    But it works, as long as it’s practiced consistently.

    I call it REBS. You’ll discover why.

    REBS Tames Your Harsh Inner Critic

    When I was a young child, I was fascinated by orderly lines of ants. I spent ages observing them and perversely enjoyed drawing a stick or finger across the line. That would confuse the ants, and chaos would ensue.

    However, in a little while, the line would form once again. The ants recovered and resumed doing what was important in their lives.

    Let’s say you decide that something is important in your life and you plan how to act accordingly. Perhaps, like me, you’re keen on avoiding a heart attack and you decide to start eating better. Let’s say you’re armed with the relevant knowledge and know exactly what to do.

    You start out enthusiastically, until a setback happens. Perhaps someone presents you with a box of your favorite chocolates.

    Before you know it the chocolates are somehow all out of the box and inside you. Within half an hour! Many people might consider that a triumph, but let’s say that you consider it a setback.

    This is a crucial moment. What do you do? Start criticizing yourself?

    What if, instead, you treat this setback as a temporary blip? You focus on resuming your journey of eating well. When you sit down for your next nourishing meal, you accept your stumble but congratulate yourself for getting back on track.

    Even when you don’t stumble and fall, you keep congratulating yourself for each small advance. Each nourishing meal, in this context, becomes a small triumph and an occasion for self-congratulation. Each half-hour without grazing on snacks becomes another small triumph and another occasion for self-congratulation.

    Imagine rewarding yourself for every small advance, with a quick self-congratulatory phrase. Especially when you get back on track after a setback.

    You can, in this way, create a steady stream of self-congratulation that is based on real advances. You don’t settle for empty words. Instead, you acknowledge and celebrate doing each small step, which carries you in your chosen direction.

    When your mind is busy with this reality-based self-congratulation, there’s less room for harsh self-criticism, or brutal perfectionism, or comparing yourself to others. You start to transform your self-image and self-confidence.

    I call this practice REBS, short for reality-based self-congratulation. It’s a rebellion against your harsh inner critic, who can otherwise be a demotivating tyrant. It helps the self-respecting part of you to prevail over the harshly self-critical part of you.

    You start to unleash the self-repairing power of your brain, even as you transform your self-image.

    Setbacks become an opportunity for you to recover and practice REBS. The more you do this, the harder it becomes for setbacks and stress to keep you down.

    Which self-congratulatory phrase could you use? The simplest is probably “I’m doing this, I’m okay.” Your “it” can be the smallest meaningful step imaginable, such as sitting down for a healthy meal.

    Keep this practice firmly based in reality, anchored to your small helpful steps. Then you’ll be able to do it meaningfully and with conviction. But do it at every opportunity, no matter how small your triumph.

    In summary: Take a meaningful small step, then treat yourself to a quick dose of REBS (reality-based self-congratulation). Repeat, and keep going.

    Suffered a setback? Pick yourself up, resume your journey with the next small step, and treat yourself to a quick dose of REBS.

    Is This Relevant to Other Situations?

    I used my experience with eating well as an example. But we could apply this to a wide variety of situations.

    If you feel worn out from taking care of others and have forgotten how to take care of yourself, then your small step can be as simple as listing your own needs.

    If you’re a recovering workaholic, then your small step can be as simple as taking a short walk, or meditating for a few minutes, or freeing up an evening for playful relaxation with your partner.

    If you’re a sales manager who’s just lost a big deal, then your small step can be as simple as identifying the next good prospect.

    If you’re a doctor or health care professional overwhelmed by the demands on your time, or complaints from patients, then your small step can be as simple as taking a short break to regain perspective and consider your options.

    If you’re a business owner trying to cope with unhelpful staff or business partners, then your small step can be as simple as choosing the most important points you want to communicate to them.

    If you’re scurrying around at work like a headless chicken, then your small step can be as simple as putting other tasks aside and focusing on just one important task in your long list.

    If you’re confused about some decision, then your small step can be as simple as listing your options, in order to consider the pros and cons before choosing.

    If you applied for a better job but didn’t get it, then your small step can be as simple as listing other opportunities.

    If you have a disabling illness, then your small step can be very small indeed. It might be as simple as getting out of bed, or walking a few paces without a stick, or contacting a friend.

    If you’ve had a bitter argument with your partner or child, then your small step can be as simple as reaching out with a gesture of reconciliation. And so on.

    You decide what actions are good, helpful and important in your life at this time.

    This practice can be applied in all areas of your life: personal, family and home life, community life, work life etc.

    The Payoff

    We all make unwise choices and experience setbacks. Your harsh inner critic can sometimes make you feel worthless and unlovable. REBS (reality-based self-congratulation) allows you to rebel against the tyranny of that inner critic.

    It reminds you that you’re always worthy of respect, love, and forgiveness. Even when you stumble—and especially when you stumble.

    Is this simple five-second practice the answer to all life’s problems and challenges? Of course not. Does your brain get rewired immediately? Of course not, it takes consistent practice. REBS needs to become a habit.

    Do you still have to decide what really matters to you, make plans, and solve problems? Of course you do.

    But REBS is a very useful companion on your journey. That’s because it takes almost no time, yet works powerfully to help you grow out of overly harsh self-criticism. You start to respect and take care of yourself.

    Instead of brooding over setbacks, you begin treating each setback as a springboard for small helpful steps, accompanied by self-congratulation.

    You become less easily discouraged. In a subtle way, you become almost unstoppable in pursuit of whatever you value deeply. Your perseverance starts to resemble that of determined ants who re-form a broken line, or of a spider who resumes spinning a destroyed web.

    Success is no longer confined to the distant future. Instead, it starts to inhabit each meaningful small step that you take in your chosen direction.

    You start to rewire your brain. Your inner critic starts to transform into a helpful cheerleader. Instead of a constant stream of negative self-talk, you start to enjoy a steady flow of self-congratulation.

    Your confidence grows, and your life starts to become more meaningful, fulfilling and joyful.

    This practice of reality-based self-congratulation (REBS) costs virtually nothing. It requires only consistency, so that the helpful new neurons and connections in your brain become well established.

    A surprising benefit is that REBS pulls me into the present moment. Instead of brooding over past failures or fearing future uncertainties, I focus increasingly on a small step that carries me in my chosen direction.

    REBS has helped transform my life. I have a clearer head and feel more at peace, others often remark that I’m now much more fun to be with, and I’m better off in almost every way. Despite all my flaws and the frequent, inevitable setbacks of life, I’m constantly reminded that I’m okay.

    Simple science-based practices with outsize benefits appeal to me because I’m so busy. REBS is one of my favorites among the life-enriching practices I’ve tried and adopted. I love how the practice can be started straight away, and become a treasured, self-empowering part of life.

    Conclusion

    Whatever the setbacks or failures you’ve experienced, whatever unhelpful choices you’ve made, you’re still okay, you’re always worthy of respect and love.

    We all need a bit of understanding and mercy. REBS turns you into a more forgiving and encouraging friend to yourself. It lets the seeds of success be planted in the soil of defeat.

    It helps reduce the chaos of a challenging life to a helpful small step, accompanied by self-congratulation.

    You might want to start this five-second practice and make it a habit. You could start right away and experience the difference.

  • 9 Ways to Silence Self-Criticism and Embrace Self-Love

    9 Ways to Silence Self-Criticism and Embrace Self-Love

    Girl with flowers

    “I don’t know a perfect person. I only know flawed people who are still worth loving.” ~John Green

    Do you ever wonder if that voice in your head is right?

    Do you relive events, scouring through every detail to look for places where you went wrong in your actions?

    Do you ever walk away from a conversation with your inner voice ranting that you should have done better—that you should have said this or that instead?

    That self-critical voice became a prominent friend of mine. I called it the gremlin. The gremlin leapt onto my shoulder after every conversation with a friend or acquaintance. Whispering in my ear in a snarky voice, repeating every sentence and telling me what I should’ve said instead.

    The gremlin and I would have dinner together after a shopping trip and review how much I’d spent, critiquing what I should have left at the store. We would then scrutinize the meal I’d just eaten and have a dash of dessert, since I had already gone overboard. This would inevitably be followed by a vicious verbal attack on my body.

    The worst part was that the gremlin played on my insecurities, exposed my weaknesses, and actually made me more critical of others (in an attempt to silence my criticism of myself).

    I realized how detrimental a friend the gremlin was when I was diagnosed with depression and anxiety. During a group therapy exercise, I could not write down two people who I thought would have something good to say about me. I just sat there with tears from my ugly-cry falling in my lap. It robbed me of any joy in relationships with others and myself.

    It was a devastating eye-opener.

    Allowing the gremlin to run the show had eroded my self-love and ruined my self-esteem.

    Self-criticism had dirtied my mind into thinking that nothing would ever go my way. I had nothing left inside that seemed admirable. All that I had experienced and achieved up until that point had no meaning for me.

    I eventually managed to break it off with my self-critical voice and built unconditional self-love. But it took consistent practice in searching for my own valuable qualities.

    These are some of the methods that worked for me:

    1. Confront your own gremlin.

    Confrontation is difficult, especially if it’s a part of yourself that you’re confronting.

    But if you want to rid yourself of your gremlin, you have to do it.

    How?

    One of the first things I did was consciously examine every thought. I listened to the tone of my internal dialogue. I found that it was not a loving or supportive voice.

    It was hard to recognize at first, but with practice I heard the distinct voice of my gremlin. I began to question its validity. Were its criticisms actually true? Was it taking things out of context?

    I questioned the beliefs about myself that the gremlin had been whispering to me all those years. I realized I had taken many things out of context, and my inner criticisms were extreme and punitive.

    Would it surprise you if I told you it is actually very satisfying to call out your gremlin and put it on sabbatical? It is a relief to confront the unending criticism and listen for a more supportive voice. When you stop taking its criticisms to heart, you’ll finally open yourself to self-love.

    2. Choose gentle observation.

    This world is a competitive place, and it’s easy to fall into the trap of scrutinizing your abilities. You have a lot invested and want to control the outcome of your experiences. This can create high expectations and disappointment when things do not run smoothly.

    At one of my past jobs, if I made a mistake, I would end up falling into the pattern of berating myself all day long. This accumulated until I no longer felt I did a good job, lowering my self-esteem.

    Now I choose to gently observe my productivity and monitor my progress. If I make a mistake, I correct it to the best of my ability and move on.

    It is through repeated acknowledgement that your self-love is able to blossom. Create a habit of recognizing a kinder vision of yourself—one that is more humane.

    3. Forgive yourself, and then forgive yourself again.

    We all make mistakes, but even tragic ones do not warrant withholding self-love. Self-forgiveness is an art that needs to be practiced and reinforced, especially when you’ve got a harsh internal self-critic.

    My gremlin has berated me through the years about not being a dedicated parent due to my time spent on self-care. To prevent myself from slipping back into depression and anxiety, self-care has become my lifeline and a way to maintain good health. Occasionally I have to put it before my family so I may attend groups or self-improvement classes.

    My family feels the impact of it, and when they protest, my self-critic whispers until I feel guilty.

    So I forgive myself for the time I’ve spent away. I forgive myself for forgetting something important that they told me because I was preoccupied with keeping my mind quiet. I forgive myself for putting myself at the top of my priority list.

    Forgiveness is a skill to be honed and perfected. The main benefit is freedom from the scorn of your inner critic. So forgive yourself daily.

    Every night before you go to sleep, make some time in your bedtime ritual to forgive yourself for something, even if it’s just a small mistake or done out of necessity. Tell yourself it’s okay, that these things happen, and see if there is a way to improve the situation.

    4. Expand your view.

    Sometimes you only see what is in focus. But when you focus on something too closely, you miss all the beautiful scenery. A Monet painting looks like mere splotches if you scrutinize it closely. But when you look at it from a distance, its beauty is breathtaking.

    In the past, whenever a friend hadn’t returned a call or was late for a night out, my gremlin would tell me they didn’t like me anymore. It would tell me it’s me and I was sliding down the popularity scale.

    But this was never the case. Whenever I expanded the view, I realized my friends had their own lives keeping them busy, and they missed me as much as I missed them. When we would finally get together, we had a great time, and I would experience all the love that was available to me.

    Your inner critic will always focus on the negative possibilities and make everything your fault. But when you expand your view, you’ll see the world is a very intricate, complicated piece of art meant to be appreciated as a whole.

    5. Let go of judgment.

    Life unfolds, and conversations evolve in the moment. It is when we look back with the benefit of hindsight that we judge ourselves for what was said and done. This habit is difficult to break.

    Recently, I had a conversation with my daughter. It really could have gone better. We ended up yelling, screaming, and crying. I let my emotions control my responses.

    My gremlin started in, and I immediately shut it down. I could have easily let it rage on with the judgments. I recognized that I could’ve done a better job of pausing and controlling my emotions.

    When you recognize those moments in which you’re judging yourself, show yourself compassion. You didn’t know how that moment would develop. You were just doing the best you could.

    It’s okay to think about what went wrong, but only in the spirit of improving yourself so that you don’t make the same mistakes.

    6. Choose something different.

    The inner critic often falls into certain thought patterns, and recognizing these patterns can help you develop different ones. A common phrase your inner critic may use, for example, is, “You always . . .”

    My self-critic would tell me, “You always interrupt people when they are talking.”

    It was true. I felt an inner excitement to share my experience when someone was talking with me, and I would interrupt them. I started to purposefully pause and became a deep listener. It has given me a deeper connection to the people I encounter.

    Listen for your inner critic’s distinct phrases; it’s a key time to evaluate the situation and try a different approach or reaction. This is probably one of the only times your inner critic is being helpful.

    When you choose a different way to act or react, you hone your skills and gain confidence in making choices that are beneficial to yourself and others.

    7. Remove the shackles.

    Sometimes being chained to your self-critic becomes comfortable and keeps you in familiar surroundings. The voice tells you to stay put, or you risk failure.

    What part of you is afraid to try something new? The freedom to explore new opportunities can uncover talents you possess, build upon your strengths, and may even lead to a new career or hobby.

    I benched my inner critic and started playing ice hockey at forty-three years old despite the fact I couldn’t skate at first. I gained new friends, improved my health, and learned some teamwork skills.

    The next time you recognize that your self-critic is keeping you safe, sign up for that class you’ve been eyeing or do something epic. Call that crazy friend of yours who is always going skydiving, and give it a try. You may just find an activity you become passionate about.

    8. Recognize yourself in others.

    We can often see others’ strengths more clearly and forgive their mistakes more easily than our own. But the qualities you see in other people are in you as well. It’s called the mirror effect.

    If you practice thinking kindly of and speaking kindly to others, it’s easier to recognize your common strengths.

    For example, pick two people now. What strengths do you admire in them? What do you normally compliment them on? Make a list of those strengths. Where do you see them in yourself as well?

    Optimize how you can rely on those strengths to help build more self-love.

    9. Unwrap your imperfection like a gift.

    Your gremlin has been sharing your imperfections with you for years. Acknowledge how those traits can work for you in your life.

    I have always been obsessive to the point that it has prevented me from finishing projects and kept me up all hours of the night. Simple projects that someone else would complete as “good enough” would become epic projects exacting perfection for me.

    My gremlin would tell me if I didn’t do something the right way, I shouldn’t bother doing it at all.

    But while this obsessiveness can be a curse, it can also be a blessing. You’ll never find me delivering sloppy work.

    For instance, when I was a teenager, I had pleasantly surprised my parents when they had me sand the peeling bathroom ceiling, and it came out as smooth as silk.

    And as an adult, I ran a large craft fair. I’d obsess over every detail for months, but this resulted in every fair going off without a hitch for the five years I helped.

    No matter what perceived flaws you have, you are an extraordinary human being. When have these flaws actually been helpful, and when have they hindered you? Choose to work on two flaws that would vastly improve your life, and accept the others as unique personality traits.

    Live free from Self-Criticism and Embrace Self-Love

    Since I’ve been challenging my inner critic, I no longer waste time putting myself down. Instead, I have developed a deep appreciation for my personal strengths and feel more confident. My depression is gone, and my anxiety has subsided. My mind doesn’t race after every conversation, and I feel a sense of peace most days.

    You too can experience this kind of freedom.

    It takes a simple awareness that will develop easily if you pick one or two of these methods and start to use them mindfully. Your skills at recognizing your self-critic will slowly build until you are not listening to it at all.

    Give yourself permission to let that cantankerous voice go and replace it with a supportive, empowering recognition of your strengths.

    Radiate so much love for yourself that the gremlin will be stunned into silence.

  • How to Stop Being a Victim of Your Own High Expectations

    How to Stop Being a Victim of Your Own High Expectations

    “The outward freedom that we shall attain will only be in exact proportion to the inward freedom to which we may have grown at a given moment. And if this is a correct view of freedom, our chief energy must be concentrated on achieving reform from within.” ~Gandhi

    If someone asked you to recall the last time you were kind to yourself, would you struggle to bring up that memory?

    At one point in time, I couldn’t remember ever being kind to myself.

    I grew up with a lot of expectations from a demanding mother and other caretakers. Their expectations were all about them being in control and always being right.

    It was more than confusing; it left me with a need to prove myself constantly, and it gave me an inner critic that berated me at an early age.

    Years later, I got a job in corporate America where expectations were clear-cut and measured. Positive encouragement and regular successes made me feel good about myself.

    I became addicted to that feeling. My ego encouraged me to continually exceed other peoples’ expectations by making my own even higher. My inner critic accepted nothing less.

    Then I started my own business. I expected success to come quickly, easily, and be beyond anything I had experienced before.

    It certainly bypassed my expectations—in the worst way possible.

    This is a story of failure and how life got better when three small changes worked together to free me from being a victim of my own expectations.

    Take a look, and imagine what these changes can do for you.

    Change One: How You Treat Yourself

    Not only had my third attempt at creating a successful business failed but also the man I loved turned out to be a lying, thieving con artist who left me emotionally and financially broke.

    Life became nothing more than dealing with shame, runaway anxiety, and panic attacks that flung me out of bed at night.

    Then I tripped over a bag of books one day that I’d packed for a fundraiser. One fell out.

    Have you ever heard of the Buddhist practice called loving-kindness? I hadn’t, but Tara Brach’s book Radical Acceptance that fell at my feet explained it to me. Desperate for any relief I gave it a go.

    The practice begins with expressing loving-kindness first for yourself and then for others. Think you might have trouble with that? Then begin by expressing kindness to someone or something you love such as a pet. Take that feeling and transfer it to yourself.

    That’s how I had to do it. It was both heart- and eye-opening to realize how mean I had been to myself, and for how long I’d been that way.

    Though the full loving-kindness practice can take hours to complete, using this shortened version is a quick, effective way to feel better about yourself.

    This is what I’ve taken as my mantra, but feel free to use your own words: May I be filled with loving-kindness. May I be held in loving-kindness. May I realize loving-kindness as my essence.

    The practice is simple and easy to do: Eyes opened, lowered, or closed, speak the words quietly or silently, and immerse yourself in the feeling of loving-kindness for as long as you can or for as long as time permits. Thirty seconds is fine, but the longer you can sustain the feeling, the quicker you’ll reap the benefits of this practice.

    Not only can you begin and end your day with loving-kindness but you can also easily practice it as you’re waiting for tea or coffee to brew, an elevator or bus to show up, or a person to come back after putting you on hold.

    Aim for a total of six or more practices each day. Not only will that help you make a habit out of treating yourself kindly but it’s also a great stress buster.

    Yes, you have to practice, but imagine how good you’ll feel when you fill yourself with all that loving-kindness.

    Change Two: What You Say That Limits You

    Though I was trying to be nicer to myself, my inner critic was entrenched in the judgmental family attitude.

    When I challenged it to stop judging me so harshly, it was quick to call me out on my own behavior of judging people.

    It was true. I judged, and I labeled.

    Attach a label to someone and that’s how you see them and think of them—even when evidence exists to the contrary.

    And what I was doing to other people was the same thing I was doing to myself.

    So I challenged myself. For every negative label I wanted to attach to someone, I had to come up with at least six different reasons that would stop me from doing so.

    For example, the person who cuts you off in traffic. Instead of labeling them as a stupid jerk, you think: Maybe they got fired or hired today. Or maybe it’s something tragic or serious that’s distracting them. Perhaps they just came from the dentist, and now they’re getting transmissions from outer space!

    It’s a practice that I made a game out of, and like any game, it has rules:

    1. You must focus on the person’s behavior and come up with six reasons that could have caused it.
    2. At least some of the answers have to be within the realm of possibility.
    3. Reject all expectations of finding the perfect answer or even coming up with six of them.

    This practice is doable anywhere and with almost anyone, including kids.

    It helps create an awareness of how labels limit your thinking and creates an awareness of the truth that what we do to other people reflects what we do to ourselves.

    Don’t forget to play it with your inner critic. Listen closely and you might hear grinding noises as it tries to switch gears from beating you up to being supportive.

    After all, if you can be less judgmental toward other people, how can it not do the same for you?

    Change Three: What You Say That Belittles You

    This one is about your self-talk habits. You know the ones when you ask yourself questions like, “How could I be so stupid? ” or, “OMG what a screw-up! Could I not make a bigger mess of things? ” or, “Why do I do this to myself? I’m such an idiot!”

    Yes, labeling is definitely going on here, but this is different. This is all about your expectations of yourself and how you talk to yourself when you fail to meet them.

    Even with the loving-kindness and labeling practices, my expectations of myself continued to run high. My inner critic loved beating up on me for every mistake, failure, or setback, real or imagined. Then one day, a little voice made itself heard, “Not being very kind to yourself, are you?”

    So leaning heavily on my loving-kindness practice, I struggled to be more tolerant of my mistakes. Asking myself questions that would produce a more positive response was a big help.

    For example: “Nothing is a total failure. There has to be something positive about this. What is it?” Or, “Is this really a mistake? Did I really screw up? Is it possible the outcome is acceptable?”

    Think about those harsh ways you talk to yourself and the questions you ask that belittle you. They may be old reruns of taunts and questions other people used on you to make you feel ashamed or to justify punishing you.

    Replace them with questions that explore the circumstances of your mistake or setback. Remember to look for anything that could be construed as positive. Doing so will help you reform your demanding expectations.

    Sometimes, positives can be hard to find. That’s when you really want to be nice to yourself. Do extra loving-kindness practices, and then ask yourself what you’ve learned from what happened.

    Experience can be a harsh teacher. Owning up to what you’ve learned may not be an easy pill to swallow. There may not be a spoonful of sugar to help it go down, but it’s certainly more desirable than beating yourself up, isn’t it?

    Small Changes Have Large Impacts

    These changes are small but powerful because they open you up to possibilities that you may not have considered previously.

    They help you stop being victimized by your own expectations by treating yourself more kindly, by helping you realize that judging other people is closely aligned with the labels and limitations you put on yourself, and by helping you see the positives in supposed failures and cut yourself some slack.

    Changing habits of thought and behaviors is challenging, but if I can do this, you certainly can!

    It all begins with a practice taking less than a minute, six times a day. It’s a small practice of showering yourself with loving-kindness.

    It’s easy to start. It’s easy to do. Just repeat after me:

    “May I be filled with loving-kindness. May I be held in loving-kindness. May I realize loving-kindness as my essence.”

  • Create a Kinder Mind: How to Stop Your Mean, Hurtful Self-Talk

    Create a Kinder Mind: How to Stop Your Mean, Hurtful Self-Talk

    Two Kinds of Brains

    “You have been criticizing yourself for years, and it hasn’t worked. Try approving of yourself and see what happens!” ~Louise Hay

    In my quest to learn to love myself I did therapy, read plenty of self-help books, and took personal development courses, hoping I could learn to love myself like I could learn accounting.

    This was all helpful; however, when I reached the self-talk stage my progress came to a standstill.

    Before then, I hadn’t consciously realized that I used powerfully negative words when speaking to or about myself. I was the first to put myself down, the first to criticize and chastise myself, and my own harshest critic.

    While this helped me push through some physical and mental barriers and, therefore, achieve things that I never thought possible—such as completing an Ironman triathlon and running ultramarathons—these moments were the exception, not the rule.

    I hid behind the excuse that it motivated me in order to justify being mean to myself, perpetuating the cycle. My so-called valid reasons were holding me back from changing my life and loving myself so that I could be happier and more fulfilled.

    I recognized that I spoke so terribly to and about myself because I suffered from incredibly low self-esteem.

    I was trying to measure up to my own high, unrealistic standards of who I thought I needed to be in order to be loved, approved, and accepted. But these destructive and critical habits were actually in conflict with what I really needed, as they didn’t allow me to give myself love.

    I needed to change the way I spoke about myself, and I needed to do it quickly!

    I realized I’d formed these habits as a result of both conscious and unconscious decisions I’d made in the past. And if my thoughts about myself came from decisions I had made in the past, I had the same power today to make different decisions to shape the person that I would be in the future.

    These are some of the tricks and tools that I’ve used to overcome my self-esteem issues and begin speaking to myself more kindly:

    1. Journaling.

    Before I began changing my self-talk, I had used my diary to vent what I was feeling. It was painful to read what I had written. Among the negative thoughts and feelings were momentous and joyous events, but the painful memories and thoughts overshadowed them.

    When I purchased a new journal I decided to focus instead on what I did or said for and about myself that demonstrated love and kindness.

    So for instance, if I felt fat and was beating myself up about my thighs being too big, I would write that I was grateful that my big thighs were strong enough to help me run marathons.

    You too will find that after a few days of consistently doing this you will be able to catch mean thoughts before they spiral into something bigger.

    2. Eliminating the words should/must do/have to.

    I have stopped using these words and replaced them with kinder words such as “I choose to,” as I found that “should,” “must do,” and “have to” were causing me to feel unnecessary guilt.

    As an example, when I set my alarm clock at night instead of saying that “I should wake up early and exercise,” I now say to myself, “I choose to wake up early and exercise.”

    Stop ‘shoulding’ all over yourself and you too will feel much better about yourself.

    3. Smiling.

    In my most recent marathon, instead of beating myself up for not being faster, I started the race with the intention of smiling for as much of as it as I could. It was the best thing that I could have done.

    It made me feel good, and the spectators noticed it and cheered me on, which in turn filled me with more positive energy.

    Try smiling now and see how much better you feel. Imagine yourself doing this all the time when crossing the road or even when answering the phone. You will find that a little smile becomes a big smile in no time.

    4. Saying yes to yourself and no to others.

    I have learned to say yes to myself, which sometimes means saying no to others.

    I now examine my motives for saying yes to someone else. If it is to be loved and/or accepted, it will likely create disappointment when I don’t get what I expect in return.

    Imagine if we all said yes to others only when we really felt it in our hearts. There would be no resentment, and when we do things for others it would be done with joy, creating more positive feelings about ourselves.

    5. Accepting that we don’t all have to like each other.

    I have started to also worry less about what others think of me and my decisions, so long as I am comfortable with my choices, and they come from a place of integrity and honesty.

    This has helped me with my self-talk, as I no longer tell myself that I am a bad person if someone doesn’t like me.

    Just as we don’t like everyone else, everyone won’t like us, and that’s okay. You might be surprised how liberating it feels when you are okay with not being liked by everyone else.

    6. Asking, “How does this decision make me feel about me?”

    I measure every choice against how it makes me feel about myself. I ask myself, “Does this make me feel good about myself? If not, what needs to happen for me to feel good about me?”

    For instance, before I accept an invitation to see ‘an old friend,’ I now stop and ask myself, “Would spending time with this person make me feel good about myself?” If the answer is no, then I make a decision to spend my time with someone else whose presence empowers me.

    Ask yourself this question and you too will make more choices that build you up instead of tear you down.

    7. Setting achievable goals and celebrating progress.

    I now set achievable goals and celebrate them. I also don’t beat myself up anymore if I don’t achieve them, or don’t achieve them in the way I had hoped to.

    You can celebrate your small accomplishments by going to dinner with friends or buying yourself a small gift as a reward. Whatever it is, make sure that you are present in the moment when you celebrate, as this will reinforce that you are a wonderful person and you deserve credit for all the good you do.

    8. Walking away.

    I have also learned to walk away from people who don’t treat me with respect. It’s not an easy thing to do; however, if I allow others to be disrespectful toward me, then I perpetuate the cycle and I am also giving myself permission to do the same to me.

    You too deserve to be treated with love and kindness—both by yourself and others.

    How does your self-talk reflect the way you feel about yourself? Could you be kinder and more loving to yourself?

    Two brains image via Shutterstock

  • How to Transform Self-Criticism into Self-Appreciation

    How to Transform Self-Criticism into Self-Appreciation

    Sad Woman Reflection

    “Stop hating yourself for everything you aren’t. Start loving yourself for everything that you are.” ~Unknown

    They stop you dead in your tracks.

    Critical thoughts.

    Like tiny knives, they slash at your happiness.

    In public, you feign confidence. You can easily squish down your critical thoughts. You push yourself to smile, laugh, and even be the life of the party.

    But when the dust settles, and you are all alone, the thoughts start, first as a trickle: “I shouldn’t have said that. Why couldn’t I say smarter things?” And then they start to crash harder and stronger with, “I am so stupid. I can’t believe at this age I’m not more confident.”

    Do you sometimes feel like you’re drowning in a sea of similar critical thoughts?

    I know how embarrassing and terrible that feels.

    When I teach yoga, I try to help people—to open their bodies, notice their thoughts, and release their limitations. Yet, at times I drown in self-criticism and feel like a fraud.

    Sure, you see my serene face, but a storm of critical thoughts often brews behind my smile. I feel like an imposter because I’m not as serene as I appear.

    Recently, something completely changed my perspective: scientists discovered that the more people try to avoid certain thoughts, the stronger these thoughts become.

    College students were told to think of everything except white bears, and guess what they couldn’t stop thinking of? It’s called ironic rebound. When you try to push thoughts out, they come back even stronger.

    This idea infuses most mindfulness practices. It’s different from telling yourself, “Think positive.” Because if you stamp down the critical thoughts, they only come back stronger. I tested this theory in my contemplative practices.

    When I relinquished rigid control of my inner experiences, I learned to slow down the critical thoughts.

    Where I once felt frustration for my negativity, I now accept my thoughts, challenge faulty beliefs, and make peace with myself. And the more I feel the critical thoughts, the more I can release them. I’ve noticed that the thoughts come less frequently when I don’t try to suppress them.

    You and I both probably accept that criticism, especially toward ourselves, is destructive. So we try to suppress self-criticism. But when we try to avoid a thought, it’s never far away.

    By suppressing, we empower our faulty beliefs. By looking deeply and challenging the belief behind the thought, we finally get relief. 

    Ready to find out how?

    1. Observe your thoughts with curiosity.

    Imagine yourself sitting on a riverbank, watching your thoughts flow by with the stream. Sometimes fast and rushing, other times calm and gentle.

    Resist the urge to push critical or negative thoughts away; learn to welcome and observe all thoughts. This might feel unnatural or even painful at first. I understand. But remember that this is a process that will lead you toward a place of self-understanding and love.

    When thoughts resurface repeatedly, we subconsciously assume they’re true. Scientists call this a hard-wired cognitive bias in the human brain.

    When l catch myself thinking, “You are too quiet and shy and not animated or interesting,” I resist my urge to deny and suppress; instead, I observe and allow the thought into my body.

    2. Identify the underlying belief.

    Now you can dig a little deeper. What belief lies behind your thoughts?

    If you’ve spent a lifetime trying to push critical thoughts away, you may have unconsciously turned them into self-limiting beliefs.  I’d often think, “I’m too shy. Why couldn’t I have said more? Do people think I’m stupid?”

    I believed that because I was shy, I was inferior and somehow deeply flawed. When I used my breath to be in my body, I felt empowered to be in the present. I allowed myself to feel the pain of feeling inferior.

    You’ve observed the thought, so now can you identify the belief that causes the thought? Beliefs are about how you are as a person as opposed to transient thoughts about your actions.

    If this is scary, use your breath to come back to your body and the present moment. Know that you are okay.

    3. Feel the belief in your body.

    Can you identify where the belief is planted in your body? Accept that you cannot control your mind’s content—but you are learning to change your reactions. And take back your power. When you physically identify sensations the belief triggers, you return to the present moment. And you take the power away from the self-criticism.

    You can heal because you’re no longer a victim of your thoughts or deeply rooted beliefs.

    Because feeling is not the same as believing.

    What happens to your breath when you allow the belief to come into your body? Where do you feel it? Maybe in your heart or your belly button?

    When I allowed a belief into my body, a deep pull manifested around my solar plexus, just under my rib cage. It was definitely painful but less scary. And through feeling and clearly looking at the belief, I became empowered to challenge it.

    4. Challenge and dissolve the belief.

    Now that you’ve observed your thoughts and pinpointed the belief, can you challenge it? Negative beliefs about ourselves are simply not true, and they cause the flow of critical thoughts.

    You and I need to release them so we can find inner peace. As scary as it feels, verbalize the belief. Because you must face the untruths head-on to let them go.

    Ask yourself a few questions to unearth the belief. How else could you interpret this belief? Can you see any evidence that this belief is true? What would support that this belief isn’t true? Remember that other people’s words are not necessarily truths—especially judgments and criticisms.

    Now it’s time to let the belief go. Inhale deeply, and feel your lungs fill with air. Exhale completely, and feel your body relaxing. Imagine the critical belief dissolving like a cloud.

    With each breath, you’re releasing your clouds of criticism. Feel the beliefs slowly leaving your body as your exhale and relax. Remind yourself that this belief isn’t true, and you’re letting it go. Continue to breathe until your belief and the pain goes away.

    I challenged the belief behind the thought: “Because you’re shy and not always talkative (thought), you’re inferior and flawed (belief).”

    I compared myself to other charming and talkative people, and I believed that I had to be just like them. I realized that I had family, friends, and students who loved and appreciated that I was authentic.

    When I used my breath, the knot at my ribs dissolved a little bit with each breath, and so did my belief that I was flawed.  I’m empowered to release that belief. And I’m left with profound clarity: the clouds have disappeared.

    5. Uncover your new truth.

    When you clear away your clouds of self-criticism and faulty beliefs, a sunny truth can shine. You’ll learn to appreciate your unique strengths and attributes.

    What surfaces now that you’ve let go of the mistaken beliefs? Perhaps once you felt deeply inadequate, but now you realize you are humble and eager to learn. Don’t be afraid of letting your positive traits out into the world. You won’t become an egomaniac by simply accepting yourself.

    I now see that my shyness has benefits: I’m an intuitive listener, compassionate yoga teacher, and empathetic nutritionist. As I continue to breathe, I feel better about who I am. And I accept my unique way of being.

    You can do this too.

    Become Your Most Powerful Ally

    Over time, you’ll get more comfortable allowing those scary criticisms to surface. Like vampires that fear the sun, when you bring them out into the light, you take away their power. And they’ll slowly dissolve.

    You’ll feel happier because you aren’t hiding your most valuable traits behind critical thoughts.

    And rather than being a prisoner of your negative beliefs, you’re using them to fuel your transformation.

    Let your inner light glow. Brighten the world.

    Because only light can drive away darkness.

    And you’re ready to start now.

    Shall we?

    Sad woman with reflection image via Shutterstock

  • 4 Tips to Start Loving and Stop Criticizing Yourself

    4 Tips to Start Loving and Stop Criticizing Yourself

    Happy Woman

    “You have been criticizing yourself for years, and it hasn’t worked. Try approving of yourself and see what happens.” ~Louise L. Hay

    I used to give myself quite a hard time. I felt like I wasn’t measuring up or doing enough or achieving as much as my peers.

    I decided to make a note of the way I was speaking to myself and treating myself. What I found surprised me.

    I noticed that I’d berate myself for days if something didn’t go exactly to plan, convinced that there was something wrong with me and that was why I had messed up.

    I’d tell myself that I was stupid, useless, and a thoroughly incompetent, unworthy human being. Pretty mean stuff, really!

    I wouldn’t even speak to my worst enemy that way I was speaking to myself. It was time to make a change.

    Are you at war with yourself?

    It’s been said many times that a lack of self-love is at the root of all of our problems, and I agree.

    Our addictive behaviors are so often interlinked with self-esteem issues, not feeling good enough or valuing our own worth. At times, food or drugs may be a way of self-medicating or even self-harming.

    If we’re stressed or anxious, we’re putting too much pressure on ourselves, telling ourselves that things should be a certain way—that we need to be different or try harder. We’re not accepting ourselves and the situation as it is right now.

    When we take good care of ourselves, nurture ourselves, and accept ourselves completely, stresses seem more manageable, healthy choices are natural, and we feel better within ourselves.

    Many of us think we need to be harsh and critical of ourselves in order to progress and move forward. However, evidence suggests that harsh criticism is actually demotivating and stressful, not helpful.

    If you’re sick of being at war with yourself and are ready to love yourself more and become calmer, happier, and healthier, try these four steps.

    1. Speak to yourself as you’d speak to someone you love and want to encourage.

    Would you tell them that they’re no good? Would you give them a hard time? I don’t think so.

    Tune into how you’re speaking to yourself throughout the day. Once you become aware of a harsh tone, work on changing this to a tone that is patient, compassionate, and accepting.

    Giving yourself a hard time isn’t effective at helping you to do your best. I like to remind myself that I’m doing my best, that every experience is a learning experience, and that I’m already good enough.

    2. See yourself as your loved ones see you.

    When I first met my boyfriend I didn’t believe him when he told me he loved me. I wasn’t able to see past my own self-criticism to see what he could see.

    By imagining how he saw me, I was able to perceive myself in the way that he did—all the good points, the strengths, the sense of humor, the quirks, the vulnerability, and yes, the flaws, but on the whole, I could see a worthwhile and lovable person.

    Imagine a person that loves you and picture them sitting in front of you now. Notice the way they look at you in way that lets you know that they love and accept you completely.

    Now imagine you can step into their shoes and see yourself through their eyes, with love, care, and kindness. Notice all your amazing qualities and even all of your flaws, and send yourself a lot of acceptance for all of it. Now step back into your own shoes but bring with you this new perspective.

    3. Make a daily list of the things you appreciate about yourself.

    It could be that you’re a good friend, or maybe you always remain calm in a crisis. So often we’re programmed to notice our deficiencies and the things we lack. Challenge this instinct by noticing the things you appreciate instead.

    Recently, I’ve appreciated myself for being a good listener, for making great cakes for my friend’s birthdays, for my willingness to work on myself, and for the fact that I can now do twenty whole pushups!

     4. Remember that you are a human being and are therefore fallible.

    You and everyone else on the planet are a work in progress. You don’t need to be perfect; you are always learning, always changing, and getting better every day.

    Aim for progress rather than perfection. We are all doing our best with the tools and abilities that we have at our disposal. So give yourself a break and remember that you’re doing just fine.

    I’d love to hear about the ways that learning to love yourself has helped you, or could help you. What strategies do you have for loving yourself more?

    Happy woman image via Shutterstock

  • How to Motivate Yourself Instead of Criticizing Yourself

    How to Motivate Yourself Instead of Criticizing Yourself

    “I define depression as a comparison of your current reality to a fantasy about how you wish your life would be.” ~Dr. John Demartini

    I always wanted to do things “right.” I was the little kid at the front of the room, raising her hand for every question. I was great at pushing myself to succeed and please.

    My drive to be perfect was an asset through college and law school. I rocked high grades and landed a big firm job right out of school. But that same drive drove me right into a therapist’s office at twenty-five, where I was diagnosed with severe depression.

    Then just like any good perfectionist, I drove myself harder to overcome the depression, to be more perfect. I Cookie Monstered personal growth, intensely gobbling up books, lectures, retreats, and coaching.

    Have you ever been cruising along, then suddenly realized you’ve been going the wrong way for a while?

    When I had suicidal thoughts in my thirties after giving birth to my daughter, my intense drive came to a screeching halt. My desire to be perfect had driven me into a deep and scary postpartum depression.

    My thoughts were no longer mine, and for the first time in my life I was afraid of what was happening in my head. Something had to shift.

    So I went on a new journey, one designed to find out (for real this time) how to reduce the daily suffering that I knew I was causing myself. What I learned shifted my entire life. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

    Let me walk you through my journey. Maybe you can discover something about yourself along the way.

    To Motivate or To Berate—That is the Question

    Like all good journeys, mine starts with a hero (me) and a villain (my inner critic voice). Now, that “little voice” for me was not little at all. It was more like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man in Ghostbusters, the mean one with the scary eyes.

    One day I decided to turn toward my Mean Marshmallow Man Voice and ask it questions. Why must I be perfect? Why are you always criticizing me?

    “Because you’re not perfect.” It said, with a booming voice. “You’re not…” and then it went on to list about 2,000 things that I was failing to do, be, say, or accomplish.

    But this time, when I pictured all of these 2,000 things, I started to imagine the person who would actually have done all of those things. Who would this person be, this perfect version of me? Let’s name her Perfect Lauren.

    Well, let’s see. Perfect Lauren would never let the clothes on her floor pile up, or the mail go unread. Perfect Lauren wouldn’t spend hours watching The Walking Dead or surfing Facebook. Perfect Lauren would work out every day, in the morning, before work.

    Perfect Lauren would eat extremely well and would skip Starbucks, no matter how much she loved Salted Carmel Mochas. Perfect Lauren would have a perfect meditation practice every day.

    I saw my entire life flash before my eyes, one long comparison to Perfect Lauren and one long failure to measure up. Did I assume that with enough self-abuse, one day I would become Perfect Lauren? One day I would finally be this fantasy super mom who would always “have it together”?

    Suddenly I realized that my immense drive, the one that had allowed me to be so successful, was not a drive toward the happiness I wanted. I was not driving toward anything at all. I was driving away from something.

    I drove myself to avoid feeling shame, self-criticism, and self-hate. I drove myself to please the Mean Marshmallow Man Voice. I drove myself to avoid hating myself.

    Why do you do things? Do you exercise, eat right, study, or work hard because you love yourself and want good for yourself? Or do you do these things to avoid shame and self-criticism?

    I had spent my entire life motivating myself with negativity. And I was now paying the price.

    Why It’s Hard to Change

    Once I realized how much I compared myself to Perfect Lauren, I tried to stop. It seems simple. Just stop doing it.

    But when I tried too hard, I kept getting stuck in this Dr. Seuss-like spiral of hating myself for trying to not hate myself. My former coach used to call that a “double bind,” because you’re screwed either way.

    For me to finally learn how to change this, I first had to ask myself…why? And yes, I know that I’m starting to sound like Yoda, but follow me here.

    Why did I need to compare myself to Perfect Lauren? Why did it matter? When I pulled at the thread, I found the sad truth.

    I compare myself to Perfect Lauren because somewhere deep in my mind I believe that Perfect Lauren gets the love. Real Lauren doesn’t. So I must constantly push myself to be Perfect Lauren, never accepting Real Lauren.

    Okay, that sounds ridiculous. When you highlight a belief, sometimes it can look like a big dog with shaved fur, all shriveled and silly. I don’t believe that at all.

    I believe the Lauren that leaves clothes on the floor and loses the toothpaste cap deserves love! The Lauren who hates to unload the dishwasher and loses bills in a pile of mail, she deserves love too!

    How to Transform Self-Criticism

    Have you ever looked endlessly for something and then realized it was sitting right in front of your face? It turns out that the solution to my self-criticism and comparison was actually pretty simple—start loving myself more.

    Now loving Real Lauren, with all faults, is not easy. But I’m trying.

    Instead of pushing myself with shame, hatred, and self-criticism, I am learning to motivate myself with praise. Instead of threatening myself, I am pumping myself up.

    And this has changed everything. I actually get more done using positive motivation. And more importantly, I feel better about what I get done. I’m happier, calmer, and feel more at peace with my life.

    If you want to shift your own self-criticism and free yourself from the tyranny of your Mean Marshmallow Man, stop trying to fix yourself and start trying to love yourself.

    Here is a practical way to implement this into your life:

    The next time you notice that you are criticizing yourself or comparing yourself to Perfect You, stop. Hit the pause button in your head.

    Next, say, “Even though I… I love and accept all of myself.” So, for me today, “Even though I shopped on Zulily instead of writing this blog post, I love and accept all of myself.”

    Now imagine that you’re giving yourself a hug, internally. Try to generate a feeling of self-compassion.

    When you do this regularly, you will start to notice what I noticed. Love and self-compassion can shift even the strongest negative thoughts and emotions and allow you to enjoy more of your life.

    And that’s the real goal here, isn’t it? If we keep driving ourselves using self-criticism, we will never be happy, no matter how perfect we are, because we won’t enjoy the process. We won’t enjoy the journey.

    I believe that the happiest people in life aren’t the ones with the least baggage. They are just the ones who learned to carry it better so that they can enjoy the ride.

    The more we generate self-compassion and love, the easier perfectionism and self-criticism will be to carry. And the easier it will be for us to love and enjoy this beautiful and amazing journey called life.

  • A Simple Process to Deal with a Hypercritical Mind

    A Simple Process to Deal with a Hypercritical Mind

    Head Hurts

    “We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.” ~Martin Luther King, Jr.

    “I can’t believe I screwed this up again!”

    “Why did I do that?”

    “This is all my fault!”

    The third grader ruminated as he walked away from the soccer field where his team had tied, two to two. It was their sixth tie in seven games.

    The lone game that was not a tie was a loss. According to this young man, his team’s record was a direct reflection of his worth; therefore, verbal self-deprecation was the only response one should have after such failure.

    His mother waited for him in the parking lot, hoping her ultra-competitive son would cool off from this perceived-to-be-colossal failure before heading home, but she knew how he was and was bracing herself for the usual tirade of self-deprecation.

    The third grader opened the passenger door, felt the synthetic coolness of the air conditioner, and plopped down into his seat.

    “Hi honey. How are you doing?” she asked, trying to gauge her son’s emotions.

    “Bad. We tied again,” he stated.

    “You played well, though,” she remained kind and supportive.

    “No I didn’t. We tied,” he reiterated.

    “You can’t be so hard on yourself. You have another game next week,” she said with concern.

    “Mom! Please just stop! We tied…again! I’m sick of it! I’d rather just lose, but we find a way to tie everyone! We tie the best team in the league, the average team, and then today we tie this crappy team! I’m sick of it!” he shouted, nearing tears, and then explained:

    “I’m sorry, Mom. I’m mad at myself, not at you. I just don’t want to talk about it. I’m a jerk.”

    That third grader was me—still is to a certain extent.

    This third person account was my first memory of being “hyper self-critical,” as my internship supervisor accurately wrote in her evaluation of me a year ago.

    At first I wrote this story in the first person, and I felt the same emotions as I did back in third grade.

    When I wrote it in the third person, I was able to gain distance from the experience, and objectively see how ridiculous I behaved, and how sad it is to see a third grader put that much pressure on himself for something that’s supposed to be fun.

    I am still “hyper self-critical.” Although I may not be throwing a tantrum, yelling at my mom, dad, and teammates, I still have this screaming critic telling me the things I have, am, and will screw up.

    When I was younger, I took great pride in my inner critic.

    I liked that I was hard on myself, that I expected perfection, and when I wasn’t perfect I cursed myself, punched a wall, yelled at a concerned friend or family member, and then isolated myself, promising that I would never screw up again.

    Then, I’d screw up again. The cycle continued.

    I continued this cycle all the way through college. I would start off the semester doing great, and then one missed assignment or one poor quiz score, and I’d berate myself for being stupid and lazy.

    Luckily for everyone around me, I learned to keep my disappointment to myself, so no more self-deprecating rants.

    It wasn’t until I took a class in conflict resolution that I began to question my perfectionist tendencies. In this class we learned a lot about communicating empathetically with co-workers, friends, family members, and significant others.

    However, the internal conflicts, more specifically, the section on self-forgiveness, stuck with me.

    This topic was not a monumental moment that forever changed my life; I don’t really believe in such moments. Rather, it was the first time I pondered the usefulness of being so critical of myself.

    Is it really useful to dwell on mistakes and feel terrible about them constantly?

    No. It was not helpful, but it did not change the content of my thoughts because of this realization, nor did it make me feel any better. Instead I felt frustrated with myself.

    I always looked at mistakes as learning opportunities; however, I never thought of them as acceptable in my mind. I understood that I inevitably would make mistakes, but this understanding conveniently disappeared when I would fall short of my expectations.

    A few months after this class, I started seeing a therapist.

    I justified going to therapy as an educational experience to further my understanding of my major, psychology; however, the truth was I wanted to understand my past and how it has shaped me.

    From therapy, I learned to view past versions of myself from a third person perspective, which allowed me to empathize with the younger me.

    I saw how hard this young boy worked, how much he achieved, and how frequently he felt inadequate and berated himself for everything that could have gone better, either within his control or outside of his control.

    It did not matter to this boy. Coming up short was the result of his effort, no one else. No excuses.

    Eventually, I was able to see some of my failures were not simply a lack of drive and/or intelligence; they were the result of my environment, so naturally I began to blame people, places, and things.

    Mainly I blamed my dad, and my family’s history of bipolar disorder and depression, for my hypercritical mind.

    Seeing things this way allowed me to forgive myself a bit more, but then I was angry with my dad for instilling his hypercritical mind in me.

    A new cycle had started and I felt worse than ever before. As soon as I was by myself, which was often, I would break down thinking about my history, feeling sorry for myself and finally crying.

    Gradually, the blaming dissipated and gave way to acceptance, and I began to actually like the person I am, appreciate my upbringing, and accept but not buy into the hypercritical part of my mind.

    Instead of getting wrapped up in my thoughts and emotions, I learned to see that I am a person having particular thoughts and particular emotions. I am not the thoughts and emotions. I am the action I take.

    I’m all right with the thoughts and emotions that I experience. I’m actually grateful for my mind’s criticism.

    Without the ridiculous criticism my mind concocts, I wouldn’t have my dry sense of humor, my drive to improve, nor would I experience the triumph of realizing that I can have doubts, worries, and negative thoughts, yet still act in accordance with my values.

    I definitely by no means would say, “I’ve figured it out” or anything near that, but maybe I’m just being too critical?

    It’d be unrealistic to expect my mind to think I have perfected anything, but through my experience, I have found the following process useful when dealing with my hypercritical mind:

    • Take a nice, slow breath in through your nose and out through your mouth.
    • Ask yourself, “Is this thought useful?”
    • If it is not, thank your mind for the input and…
    • Act in accordance with your values, not your hypercritical mind.

    You don’t have to feel a certain way or have particular thoughts to act in accordance with your values.

    Photo by threephin