I came across it in a link (above) and was wondering if anyone's seen this before:
You can’t expect to have a peaceful mind if you’re always a jerk to yourself.From a young age, most of us are trained to believe that in order to be successful, productive members of society, we have to be hard on ourselves.
I call this The Drill-Sergeant Theory of Motivation: If you’re not tough on yourself, you’ll end up as an unsuccessful, unpopular, and uneducated loser.
And the way most of us internalize this theory of motivation is through our self-talk. Specifically, the way we talk to ourselves in our head is shockingly harsh, judgmental, and even mean:
- God, why can’t I just be cool instead of sticking my foot in my mouth every time I’m in an important conversation.
- I’m sure they think I’m an idiot.
- What’s wrong with me?! How could I think something like that? I’m awful.
What many people don’t realize is that they talk to themselves like this constantly! There’s a running commentary of negative self-talk chronically berating them and putting them down.
And even if you are aware of all this negative self-talk, chances are you’re struggling with it — arguing back, trying to distract yourself, attempting to force it our of your consciousness. And yet, like a Chinese finger trap, the harder you try, the worse it gets.
The result is a mind completely lacking in peace or calm.
You can’t have a peaceful mind if your mind is always attacking you and you’re always attacking it back.
The solution to all this inner conflict is gentleness.
You need to unlearn your old programming that being tough and harsh is the only way to be with yourself and learn a different approach. You need to cultivate gentle self-talk. Firm at times, realistic for sure, but overarchingly gentle in approach.
And the way to retrain your self-talk out of harshness and into gentleness is self-compassion.
Let me head off the objections right away: Self-compassion might sound like hippie-dippy, new-age nonsense. But let me assure you, it’s nothing like that.
There’s nothing mystical or delusional or woo-woo about self-compassion. It simply means treating yourself like you would treat a good friend: Realistically, of course, but with empathy and understanding.
And the best way I’ve found to do this is with a self-compassion diary.
Here’s how it goes:
- At some point in the evening, schedule five or ten minutes to sit down some place quiet with a pen and paper (if you’re doing Scheduled Worry, writing in your self-compassion diary immediately after works really well!).
- Spend a few minutes jotting down the things in your day that didn’t go so well. They could be incredibly small (forgot to drink enough water) to something much bigger (lost my cool and berated a co-worker for being incompetent).
- For each item, imagine a friend told it to you, then think about how you would respond and write that down underneath. For example, if the thing that didn’t go so well was that you showed up late to work for the second time in a row, you might write something like: Yeah, it makes sense that you’d feel a little ashamed. But I believe you’ll work on it and try to be better in the future.
You’re already stuck with yourself for a lifetime. Why not improve this relationship?
― Vironika Tugaleva
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