Put That Stick Down!
I was chatting to a few of my buddies yesterday about work and one of them really shocked me. He’s a professional guy, a couple of decades older than me, pretty masculine and very intelligent, and the issue he wanted to work on that day was one I never would have thought he’d pick in a million years. What he wanted to figure out was this:
how to stop beating himself up!
Just goes to show that, however together someone appears, inside that head of theirs are the same self-defeating, unhelpful, sneaky, insidious self-critical thoughts as in my head. And yours too, no doubt. Beating yourself up with negative self talk, it seems, is a default programme we allow to run our inner monologue for us, especially when something goes wrong - unless we actively put a stop to it and choose to operate a different programme instead.
As it just so happens I’m getting to be a master at self-compassion, which is the opposite of beating yourself up. Huzzah! This is all kinds of ace, because it makes my head a nice place to live AND because I could offer some great bits of wisdom to help my buddy out. I’m going to share with you one of the best insights about getting out of this shabby little habit.
Ok, so what I learned that REALLY helped kickstart me out of that crappy default thought programme was this:
self criticism does not help you achieve your goals. Self compassion does.
So let me just clarify that - if you are giving yourself crap over things you did wrong, things you haven’t done, things you should be better at, you are making it LESS likely you’re going to be Mrs Superhappyhealthysuccessful in your lifetime.
Say you’re into giving yourself a hard time over drinking wine last night when you’d sworn to yourself that you weren’t going to drink in the week. You’re throwing all sorts of horrible accusations at yourself - you’re lazy, weak-willed, hopeless at sticking to a plan, the worst kind of human; you let yourself down, dagnammit!
The general consensus is that there’s a good reason why we do this, and that reason is that if you don’t berate yourself for the “bad” behaviour, you’re just allowing it to happen. And then, long term, you’ll find yourself drinking more than ever! Yep, without that big mental stick you’re currently hitting yourself with, you’re probably going to slide down the slippery slope of ruin into 2, 3, 4 bottles a night, because the only thing that’s stopping you from becoming a huge lush is that you are good at shouting at yourself.
Right?
Really?!
I don’t think so.
Self compassion does not mean letting yourself off the hook.
It means accepting the fact that you are a human. A falliable, likely to cock it up, imperfect human. You know that, right? You didn’t think you were some sort of superhuman superior race that never makes a mistake? Ok, cool! Well then, if you know that you are a human, accept it. Accept you’re going to fail and accept those failings. There isn’t a human alive who hasn’t gone back on a promise they made themselves - yes, even a promise that really matters, that had awful consequences when broken - and there never will be.
When you do stuff something up, remember that “being human” thing and try being nice to yourself about it. Here’s my rule:
if you wouldn’t say it to your nan when she gets something wrong, then you don’t get to say it to yourself.
Would you call your nan all the names you call yourself when you mess up? Not in a million years, right? So try out some patience, some forgiveness, some compassion, towards yourself and your human ability to not always get everything right, to not always be amazing at things, to not be perfect.
We all fall off all of the wagons we put ourselves on. Every single one. I write about this all the time over at www.naturallyexuberant.co.uk. The trick is learning how to fall and how to get back on with minimal injury, fuss and delay. Self compassion is the leg up we need to make that happen. Self criticism will keep you down in the dirt.
Next time you land in the dust, learn what you can from it. Then brush yourself down, speak kindly to yourself, clamber back onto whatever wagon you were on and give it another go. Leave the beating yourself up stick on the ground where it belongs, safe in the knowledge that sticks do not help us achieve anything of worth. They merely give us a headache.