Kinder and Gentler with Myself
I’ve found its easy to be gentle with friends and family because we stand outside ourselves and look at them through the eyes of compassion and understanding. We see their challenge and all the circumstances they are up against and afford them the benefit of the doubt. We are wonderful supporters of friends and family.
I find that I’m not as wonderful a supporter of myself. I’m tough on me..sometimes unfairly tough. Where did I learn to treat ME with less concern than I give to others? I learned “do unto others” why didn’t I learn …? Never mind how I got here. My focus needs to be on what I’m going to do to transform tough criticism into objective, focused support and growth. Thats what I really want! [Focus on what you want not what you don't want] I want to support myself to learn from my mistakes without beating myself up in the process.
To change my habit of non-support and self inflicted criticism, I need to: 1. recognize my self inflicted behavior 2. Be willing to change my bad habit without criticizing myself for having a bad habit. 3. Catch myself in the act of bad habit 4. Change my action in the midst of the bad habit i.e. replace the belittling, critism, beating me up action with a understanding and focus on positive thoughts about resolving the issue before me 5. Be dilligent about reversing my bad habit AND give myself time to make the replacement habit a permanent habit i.e. remember the bad habit was not developed overnight and changing the habit will not happen overnight either.
Problems are tough enough to solve…beating my self up for having the problem or not finding the answer quickly doesn’t help…it actually hurts ME. I need to be kinder and gentler with me. Everybody’s got problems and EVERYBODY makes mistakes. We don’t always see the mistakes of others and that makes it seem like they don’t have any but life distributes problems to everybody and nobody’s got all the right answers.
Be good to yourself…be your BEST friend. Be Kinder and Gentler with yourself.
