What to Do the Next Time You Are Being Cruel to Yourself — Part #1

We all mess up. We all have bad days. Days where our minds are soured. Sometimes it’s little things that trigger memories of the past or old habits that never died. Sometimes it’s major screwups where you may wonder how you have survived into adulthood.

The worst is when we make the same mistakes over and over, for that umpteenth time in our lives (like the many times I’ve accidently walked into traffic while staring at my phone…).

When those messups occur, no matter how small, there is a universal human tendency to react by being a cruel to ourselves. The thing you forgot to do, the task you messed up, the thing you broke… Whatever it may be, we react with cruelty. Typically personified in this little bastard version of ourselves that lives in all of our heads and LOVES to come around to rub salt in our wounds.

Here is a typical one for me. I mess something up that I have gotten right 100 times before and the little voice of unreason (that sounds just like me) kicks in with…

“Seth, you are so fucking stupid.”

Doesn’t that seem harsh written down like that? Sitting on your screen. It’s cruel and angry and unfair.

In my head though, it’s casual and quick. It’s in my voice, directed at myself. It’s not out of place, as it’s just one more time that I’m being a bastard to myself.

My guess is, if you are part of the human race and not a robot reading this, that you may have experienced this to from time to time as well.

What I Do When That Happens

First… Take the cruel statement out of your head for a second. Imagine a person standing in front of you saying whatever cruel thing you typically say to yourself. They are looking directly at you as they say it.

Then ask yourself this simple set of questions:

Would I ever let a person say that to me in real life?

Next…

Would I ever want to be around a person that talked to me like that?

Finally…

Would I ever let that person be around me again?

I’m hoping you answered NO, NO, and NO. For all sorts of complicated reasons, your answers might be Maybe or even Yes, but generally your gut feeling to all three is going to be a resounding NO!

Why does something that is in our heads and seems second nature, suddenly seem abusive when put into the mouth of someone else? For the same reason that when I write “Seth, you are so fucking stupid” out on the screen here, it seems cruel.

It externalizes it. It makes it real.

And when that happens, suddenly the weight of these things we say to ourselves become evident. We can see the nature of how the words we choose and the way we choose to use them is serious business. It makes us immediately take count of the fact that we have let our minds get away with being cruel far too many times. That it’s something to be mindful of and catch ourselves in the moment. That we can deal with these moments in much healthier ways and ideally, be kind to ourselves when we mess up instead.

I hope you find this helpful the next time it happens.

PS — This is also a great technique to try before saying something to someone else in a moment of anger. Picture saying it to yourself first. Feel vindictive? Feel way too harsh? Feel like maybe you went too far? If so, avoid the regret and change it up.