You Are Your Own ‘Wicked Stepmother’
How to stop letting your wicked inner voice intercept the love you deserve.
We’ve all heard stories of the “wicked stepmother”. The plot involves a father going on an extended trip, leaving his young child in the care of the new stepmother, and promising to write every day.
Day after day the postman arrives and the child runs to the door full of anticipation, but the wicked stepmother intercepts the letters and hides them in a drawer. The child believes she has been forgotten and abandoned.
The Problem
Unfortunately, we are often our own wicked stepmothers. Our harsh inner voices vigorously intercept and screen love and acceptance and ridicule us for believing it is sincere. On the outside, we appear confident and put-together, but on the inside, we believe there is always a catch, caveat, or neutralizing factor that makes normal love and acceptance inapplicable to us.
In one version of the wicked stepmother story, the stepmother stands by the fireplace secretly burning each letter that arrives. We often do the same, figuratively burning the love letters of those who express admiration and respect for us.
We deflect compliments and are unable to accept love even from those few whose sincerity we otherwise trust. We believe that, even with all their sincerity, they don’t really know us.
Becoming our own “Fairy Godmothers” is a big step in the right direction, but it only solves half the problem…
The Partial Solution
How can we stop intercepting the very love that could sustain us? The direct approach, and an indispensable first step, is to retrain our hostile inner voices. This is the focus of “inner child” work. Through inner child work, we can become aware of our hostile inner voices and rehabilitate them. We can transform our wicked stepmothers into fairy godmothers. We can clear our mental bleachers of the booers, and naysayers and become our own cheerleading sections and biggest fans.
Through inner child work, we discover that we can be the hero for the vulnerable child that has been cowering inside us. We learn to start sacrificing for that child and prioritizing its needs — our needs.
Becoming our own fairy godmothers is a big step in the right direction, but it only solves half the problem. Once we have tamed our wicked stepmothers, we will likely find that while they no longer criticize us and starve us of love, they are still critical of everyone else around us.
The Bigger Problem
Why is this a problem? Well, imagine your newly reformed wicked stepmother constantly supporting, encouraging, and telling you that you are awesome and superior, while at the same time continually whispering critiques, criticisms, and negativity in your ear about every person you encounter.
It may not at first be obvious why being critical of others frustrates the process of loving ourselves. After all, shouldn’t we be able to love ourselves regardless of how we think and feel about others (or even love ourselves more because we feel superior)?
The answer lies in the fact that we naturally believe others think the same way we think.
This means if we smile at people on the outside while ripping them apart in our minds, we assume they are doing the same to us. If our inner voices constantly criticize those around us, our brains cue up fight or flight reactions and analyze everything (including assessing the sincerity and goodwill of others) on the assumption that everyone around us is as harsh and critical as we are.
The Rest of the Solution
On the other hand, if we continually cheer people on, seek out and highlight the good in them, and give them the benefit of the doubt, we will naturally believe they are doing the same for us.
This profound discovery lead me to a Mantra I have repeated over and over on an almost daily basis for years.
“Cheer the World On”.
“Cheer the world on”, I have never discovered a more powerful way to create joy than cheering the world on. When I cheer the world on I receive in return a warmer, kinder, gentler world to live in.
A Warmer World
Imagine stepping out into the world each day truly, deeply, believing that the world is cheering you on. Imagine if this was your default frame of reference, your simple understanding of the way things are. This confidence would turn an otherwise scary, hostile, world into a warm, friendly, supportive place.
This confidence can only come from a prolonged inner practice of cheering others on. Only then can you naturally possess the belief that the rest of the world (or at least a substantial portion) is doing the same for you. Only then will your world transform from a place of anxiety and vulnerability to a place of confidence and community.
When you combine cheering yourself on with cheering the world on, you remove all obstacles to accepting and processing the love the world offers you. On the one hand, you support yourself because you have learned to see your own goodness and worth, and on the other hand, you no longer doubt the sincerity of others and the possibility that they might be genuinely cheering you on just as you are cheering them on.
You Don’t Have to Change the World
The best part is that you have the power to make this happen without changing the way anyone around you thinks or feels. It is an amazing, empowering, feeling to realize that you have complete control of the warmth of your world.
Believing others are secretly criticizing you and watching and waiting for you to fail, makes your world unbearably stressful and hostile. The pervasive hostility being curated daily on social media reflects and models a way of thinking that has become a major factor in the epidemic of anxiety flooding our society.
You may not be able to change the behavior of society, your neighbors, or even your friends and family, but reflecting a world onto yourself that you are living in your own mind provides an escape. You can “be” the world you want to live in, and, in doing that, discover that the world is still a warm positive place full of loving supportive people.
The Rewards
If you choose to be part of a world where we all cheer each other on you will change your life in powerful ways. You will become more confident, more social, more open, and more filled with “love-supplies” at the end of each day.
As someone who “cheers the world on”, you will go to the mall, or the sledding hill, or the DMV and find that you are among friends, family, and community. You will smile at people and assume the best of intentions and thoughts in their hearts and minds as well. At the end of a day spent actively cheering the world on you may be tired but you will not feel depleted. Instead, your cup will be running over, your heart will be full of gratitude, and you will bask in a feeling of brotherhood and love for the family of man.
This way of thinking is not a philosophical imagination. Many have discovered this truth and live it every day. I experienced this shift in thinking while in my third year of law school. I have never discovered a more important mantra than “cheer on the world!”
Whenever I sense my world feeling a bit cold and hostile, I reinvigorate my efforts to cheer on those around me. When a guy cuts me off on the highway, instead of thinking hostile thoughts, I sincerely think, “I bet he is hurrying to get home to watch the kids and clean up the house for his frazzled wife”. Those are the kinds of thoughts that change both how you feel about others and how you imagine they feel about you.
In conclusion — What if you need help changing your mindset?
If it sounds impossible to heal your hurts, love yourself, and look beyond the behavior of those around you, if you feel phony trying to think loving, supportive thoughts about complete strangers — especially those you believe deserve your criticism, If the chasm between criticizing and “cheering on” the world seems too wide, there is one who can help, one who declared, “Father forgive them for they know not what they do”. One who said “A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another as I have loved you”.
Fortunately, when you reach out to Jesus Christ, you are promised more than a philosophical path to self-mastery, or a spiritual path to enlightenment. Those things are available, but Jesus Christ’s central offer is to come to you and heal you and change your heart.
The power of Christ is an external power — not something you conjure up from within. It is not a path with a pot of gold at the end, but a pot of gold with a path of discipleship that follows.
People who have experienced Christ’s love don’t just talk about His teachings or His doctrine or His prophecies. They talk about His power and how it transformed their lives, and their hearts, in immediate, miraculous, practical, ways.
One might ask, what is the need for this medium article, or personal efforts to change my thinking if Jesus Christ can just fill me up with His love?
That is a reasonable question, but the ultimate goal of Jesus Christ is for us to learn to love as He does — to become like Him. Most of us (all of us, in fact) are not able to do this because of the wounds we have accumulated, the things the world has taught us, and the things we have done.
When we first encounter Jesus Christ he gives us a big boost, “new eyes”, and a “new heart”. He allows us to forgive others and ourselves and to see things as they really are. He puts us on the path of light and progress, but once we are on that path, with our wounds bound up, and hope firmly rooted in Christ’s power, we are responsible to use principles such as those in this article to seek to become like Him and follow His example day by day.
