Your Relationship with Yourself, Part I
How to be kinder to yourself through bridging thoughts, approving of yourself even before you change, and forgiving yourself quickly.
Think of someone you really like and have a good relationship with and contemplate how they treat you. What kinds of things do they say to you, and what would they never say? Now consider how you treat yourself. Are you a good friend to yourself? Do you speak to yourself kindly? Do you like being with you?
Most people do not treat themselves with enough kindness. It seems to be our natural inclination to criticize and chastise ourselves. Somehow, we believe this is necessary for our improvement.
Your relationship with yourself is the most important relationship you have. The more you work on this one, the better all your relationships will be. When you have your own back and know what you need and how to fulfill your needs, you will not be as reliant on others to provide these functions for you. In your relationships, you can focus more on loving the other person and on having fun together.
The first step to improving your relationship with yourself is noticing and modulating your critical self-talk. In The Untethered Soul, Michael Singer calls this voice your “inner roommate,” and that’s an apt analogy. Conceptualizing it in this way lets you get some distance from it. Imagine it as another person. Some people even name it: “There goes Nancy again; she sure has a lot of complaints!”
If someone spoke to you in the manner of your self-talk, you would walk away from that person and try to avoid them in the future. Don’t let your inner roommate rule the show. Be aware of when she comes online and just notice her. Listen to what she says with fascination, as you might listen in on someone else’s juicy conversation. Be astonished at how rude she can be. Be amused by her determination to point out your flaws.
It’s difficult to cover up that voice with a more positive one. If you can find believable new thoughts, definitely direct your attention toward those. But usually when you try to force kinder notions (“You look so great today!” in response to the usual, “You look ridiculous”), your brain rejects the new idea. Remember, your mind wants to be right more than it wants you to feel good. You have to play along with it to some extent. Be gentle; don’t force anything. Soothingly say, “I hear you, brain. I appreciate your feedback. I know you’re trying to help me improve, but this is not the way to go about it.”
For many people, simply becoming cognizant of the defeating self-talk helps dissipate its power. You can start to roll your eyes at “Nancy” and understand that she needs to have her say, but you’re not going to pay a lot of attention to her. As you learn to create distance between you and your inner critic, you can introduce some kinder ideas. But don’t force anything that is not believable. Use the suggestions below to find beliefs that resonate with you — that seem at least partially true — and guide your mind toward those.
As you learn to create distance between you and your inner critic, you can introduce some kinder ideas.
Sometimes it’s helpful to use what we call bridging thoughts. When you’re not ready for the opposite of your mean self-talk, begin with something in between. For example, “My thighs are so big” becomes “This is what thighs look like.” It’s a more neutral statement, with a little reminder that your body is normal. “I’ll never make my goal” turns into “It’s possible I will make my goal.” And another one: “I’m too negative” can be replaced with “Maybe it’s okay that I’m negative.”
These aren’t positive affirmations in their usual form. They are stepping stones, used to bridge the gap between what you believe now and what you would like to believe about yourself.
Your mind has resistance to more positive formulations because it supposes it’s more effective to hate yourself into improving. It says, “You can’t approve of yourself if you want to change!” Your brain tells you that you have to dislike what you’re doing now in order to do something different.
It is possible to hate yourself (or some aspect of yourself) and use willpower to change, but chances are it won’t be long lasting. Changing and improving is actually easier when you approve of yourself first.
The truth is there’s nothing you need to do or change to be better. Your value is set. You are amazing and divine and worth so much, just for being human. Learning new skills or doing things differently is enjoyable and creates a rich life experience. But however you do things right now is fine, is exactly right for you, and you can love that part of you.
If incorporate these ideas into your self-concept, you will feel unincumbered and also motivated to change or try something different.
Here’s an example. Debbie called in to be coached because she wanted to get up earlier and get going on a few things before her children woke up. She went on about how bad it was that she couldn’t do this, and she has such a hard time making this commitment, and how great it would be if she could be different.
The coach surprised her by saying, “What if instead of being critical of yourself, you believed that the way you’ve been doing it up to now is just fine? Maybe it’s exactly the way you should have been doing it all that time. You were getting extra sleep and that was what you needed.”
The coach gave Debbie permission to love herself and not condemn the way she has been doing it. She said, “If you want to change, that’s great. That would be a different way of doing it, but not a better way. The way you have been doing it is not ‘wrong.’ If you think it is, you are going to beat yourself up and generate discouraging thoughts. That is unnecessary and will hamper your success at changing.”
That would be a *different* way of doing it, but not a better way.
A baby who walks is not of any more worth than a baby who crawls. It’s simply doing a different thing. We have an easier time understanding this with children than with ourselves, but it’s exactly the same. Will a five-year-old be of more worth when she learns the ABCs? No. It’s fun and interesting to put our minds to work learning new things, but it doesn’t mean anything about our worth.
When you want to change or improve yourself, do it simply for the sake of learning new skills because you won’t and you can’t improve your value or worth. No matter what you do or don’t do, your value and worth is set, and it is extraordinary.
Instead of “I should get up earlier,” Debbie can say, “I could get up earlier.” That phrasing is more like, “I could try that. I don’t have to; the way I’ve been doing it is fine, but I could try something different.”
When you come at self-improvement from that angle, it is refreshing and consequently easier to change. It seems backwards, but remember, what your mind initially tells you is often misinformed. Numerous social psychology studies have born this truth: success comes more easily from positive emotion, not negative emotion.
Some of our critical talk comes from wanting to be different (or “better”) in some way, and other versions arise when we believe we’ve done something wrong. In these scenarios, we tend to punish ourselves and be mad at ourselves, believing this will atone for our offences and change our behavior in the future. The brain assumes this is an effective motivator, but again, the brain is often misinformed. It is more effective to skip the punishing thoughts and simply forgive yourself quickly.
It can be hard to do, but relying on logic can help. The thing is done. You do not have a time machine. There’s no reason to go over and over it in your mind. Ruminating is not going to change anything. Work to calm yourself down and recognize that you are doing your best. If there’s something you can do to make the problem better, do that and do it quickly, and then move on.
Remember that you are awesome, and you are doing the best you can. Whatever happened was supposed to happen, and all parties involved will learn and grow from it. Try to see this experience as an opportunity for growth rather than a fatal mistake. Drop the shame and recall your great value and worth.
We can use the Model to see which approach will get us the result we want.
Circumstance: made a mistake
Thought: I’m the worst! I always do things like this.
What would the Feeling, Action and Result be in this Model? You’d probably experience shame and discouragement, you’d hide and continue to self-criticize, and the result is you keep doing things “like this.”
A different Model would look like
Circumstance: made a mistake
Thought: I’m human. I’ll fix it and learn from it.
What will your Feeling, Action and Result be now? Your emotion would be something like compassion and love, you would do work to fix the mistake without a lot of drama, and the result is you learn from it and continue to believe in yourself.
I specifically remember one time when I was able to do this. I was driving my daughter to an appointment, and we were late. I was frustrated with myself, thinking how it was selfish and disrespectful of me to not make the effort to be on time. I was getting pretty angry at myself, and then all of a sudden, I was able to stop. I literally said to myself, “I am going to choose to forgive myself right now.”
I knew that harboring this frustration and shame was not going to improve my behavior but would only make me feel bad about myself. I also knew that I would show up to the meeting angry and aggravated and that I wouldn’t be my best self. So I made a deliberate effort to let it go. Thankfully, I was successful, and I quickly forgave myself. I showed up as my best self and I continued to work on being on time.
Forgiving yourself quickly is the most logical and most effective choice, and luckily it also feels amazing.
Our mind offers us a lot of unhelpful ideas, and nowhere is this truer than in our relationship with ourselves. Left to its own devices, our mind sends up constant critical statements. It believes that this is the best way to improve our supposed weaknesses. Rather than shoot it down harshly, be gentle with your mind. Use bridging thoughts to nudge it away from its harsh assessments toward something more accurate and less painful.
Let your brain know that it’s okay to approve of yourself completely; you can still do something different from this perspective, and you’ll actually be even more efficacious with this mindset. Direct it away from drawn out condemnations for mistakes made. Forgive yourself quickly and remind your brain that its disapproval is unnecessary and detrimental.
Try this on: “What if you believed that the way you’ve been doing it up to now is just fine?”
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