Are you practicing comparison or judgment? Yup. Are you practicing blame or loathe? Affirmative. Or are you practicing compassion and love? . . . If your answers were opposite to mine (no, no, yes) , you’re in the right track. If they coincided, you’re... not. Your mental switch might be in need of some acute adjustments— or of a complete remake if you’re like me. Then and only then, will we be in the right track with those others. Last Wednesday, during my weekly session with my psychologist, Lucia, she asked me to recall the last time I was kind to myself. I couldn’t remember. I couldn’t remember ever being consciously kind to myself. I’m so used to having my inner critic berate me for every mistake I make, for every situation I mishandle or basically, for anything and everything that doesn’t go as I planned. I have my personal Simon Cowell* settled inside my head unfailingly judging away, never ceasing to disappoint. “If you spoke to your friends the way you speak to yourself, would they still be your friends?” A nervous snigger escaped my lips. This, I could answer. No sweats. “Of course they wouldn’t like me, they’d hate me”. Her unflinching facial expression revealed she wasn’t surprised. In fact, she expected this response, “Why do you say that?” This time, to mask my discomfort I let out an apathetic chuckle, “Because they wouldn’t appreciate my unremitting criticism. It’d be unpleasant to be around me. If I were them I wouldn’t like me either.” Change of topic. Lucia knows exactly when to stop prodding; she knows I’ll shut down if she doesn’t. Plus, I always come back the next session having meditated on our last chat. This time, after leaving, I kept on thinking about the reasons responsible for my self-depreciation; the whys behind my lack of self-compassion. And it all came down to expectations: My friends’ expectations, my teachers’ expectations, my parents’ expectations, but most importantly, my own expectations. I’ve always had this never-ending need to prove myself. My ego encourages me to continually try to exceed people’s expectations by making my own even higher. I accept nothing less. My entire self-worth is dependent on my achievement and on everyone else’s acceptance. So when I don’t have evidence of either of these to cling to, my self-worth vanishes. And there’s nothing easier than maintaining a negative opinion of myself. A lot of us, self-haters, are experts when it comes to sitting upon a throne of self-pity and disappointment. Sometimes, it even feels like it’s the only thing we’re sure we’re good at. Besides, it’s tempting to stay in this wormhole—in this I-don’t-measure-up black spiral—waiting for the day to come when someone will finally pull us out. The thing is, if we keep on waiting for someone to come, we’ll be stuck in here till we breathe our last. We’re actually in an I-don’t measure-up-to-myself black spiral. No one will ever be able to change our own expectations of ourselves. This change will gradually come the moment we let some self-love, self-respect and self-worth in. There’s a reason why these all start with “self”, we can’t find them in anyone else. We’ve got to change the way we treat ourselves, that’s where our heartache comes from. Easier said than done, I know. But we can start by following these two basic norms: 1) Take care of how you speak to yourself; you are always listening. Our self-talk habits, like the ones where we ask ourselves, “Why am I such an idiot?” should be replaced with questions exploring the circumstances of our mistakes. We must look for anything that can be taken as positive. Practicing this will help us reform our over the top expectations. 2) Stop labelling and judging others, even if you don’t say it aloud. Once we label someone, that’s how we’ll see and think of them regardless of the evidence showing us otherwise—It’s the same with us. Stopping this will help us create an awareness of how labels limit our thinking. Who knows, maybe being less judgmental towards others will help us do the same towards ourselves. “What are you practicing”, is maybe the bravest of questions. It brought me face to face with the complicated emotional situation I’ve been in for quite some time now. It made me ask myself all questions I’d been holding back. It gave me answers, which only led to more and more questions making my walls crack a bit. And I’m starting to think that perhaps some compassion might’ve squeezed through. *Simon Cowell, English reality television judge.
3 Comments
Bon
3/30/2016 06:44:48 pm
The more posts you write, the deeper you go. This is introspective and totally speaks to us the readers because we've all been there in some way or another. The two take-aways are so relevant especially in the world that we live in: words are powerful and they'll stick with us if we're not careful. And we label, but the more we do the more we become afraid of the labels others might be giving us. It's a vicious cycle. Thank you for sharing this...#beautifulwork
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Cristina
4/7/2016 07:35:30 am
Dani,
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The anecdote of this blog is when the author tells us that he/she always judged him/herself. The main idea is that we should stop judging ourselves to be mentally healthier. My takeaway was basically that I shouldn't be too hard on myself when I make mistakes (I am human and humans make mistakes). This story builds up as one reads it, that's why I believe this is a really good blog.
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Daniela Ontaneda16 year old Junior at Colegio Franklin Delano Roosevelt who's taking the IB diploma program. Archives
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Future Blog Posts:
-Free to Learn by Peter Gray reflection
- If you could change someone's life - If you could change one thing about yourself - Should students be allowed to grade their teacher - What happens after death? - Are precognitions and deja vu different? - Mysteries of the mind - Mentalism - The positive of experiencing pain - What is existentialism -Impact of media on society |