Cut Yourself a Break
As we seek to become more aware, to grow, we seek information which speaks to us, we assimilate this information into our life and we go through the process of applying this information/lessons into our daily life’s.
We enthuastilcy apply lessons learned into our daily life. We do this with the anticipation of the result that we believe will occur. The result, often times does not happen as quickly as we expect it to, this causes us to get frustrated with ourselves, which then leads to a self flogging. We beat ourselves up because we assume that we must be doing something wrong. We take an assessment of what changes we have made and we begin to blame ourselves for our inabity to achieve the result which we desire. This self flogging is often the undoing of everything which we attempted to incorporate into our life.
For instance, we recognize that our thoughts are powerful and we resolve to think about what we want and not focus on what we lack. We do pretty good at this, however we find ourselves in deficit thinking rather than abundance thinking. When we catch ourselves in defict thinking, we then beat ourselves up, saying things like, “I am stupid” or “I am not able to do this” or “I just can’t stop thinking negative thoughts”. This type of self talk often causes us to go into a downward spiral or to give up and fall back into our comfortable old way of thinking and acting.
It is very difficult to move forward when we are beating ourselves up for not moving forward. Negative reinforcement of this type does not help to accelerate your growth, as a matter of fact it impedes your growth.
Two things that we always need to be aware of on our journey is that all change is a process and not an event. Meaning that we must trust in what we know and understand that the changes that we desire our happening however they may not happen at the pace we desire, we must be trusting and patient. While we are trusting in our process it is also very important to self assess and make corrections as we go. Acknowledge where we could do better and implement the changes.
We do not serve ourselves by dwelling on things that we could do better, or by beating ourselves up for not being perfect in the process that we are going through.
Love yourself, forgive yourself, acknowledge that you are a student and that some lessons are harder to put into practice than others. Acknowledge that you will slip at times, however know that you will continue to move forward, that you will continue to grow.
Mark,
Great topic. I often struggle with being over cricital with myself and my work. Sure we all need pressure, but we have to realize that, something are out of our control. As long as we try our best. I normally beat myself up wasiting time/not being as productive as I COULD be.. I’m working on that.
Mom used to say, it’s ok to step in poo sometimes, just don’t roll over in it.
Great point Mark.
I’ve actually caught myself doing exactly what you’re talking about this week. Impatience. I have to keep reminding myself to accept and live NOW. This moment. You can only beat yourself up over something that you have done or left undone–IN THE PAST. You can only become impatient for something you want–IN THE FUTURE.
The secret, is that neither exist anywhere other than your mind. So I remind myself with this affirmation:
“I lick the sweet from the corners of each moment.”
Thanks for this blog, Mark.
Chris
Mark,
It is true we can easily bring an attitude of striving and perfectionism into our spiritual practice, which is completely counter to the changes we are trying to make. So we might judge another person, and then feel like a failure, and so judge ourselves for judging them, etc. Down the spiral we go.
Justin,
I love your Mom’s saying. I will be using that!
Many of us are over critical of ourselves. We are often are own worst enemy.
Thanks for your thoughts.
Chris,
Great point, if you are living in the “now”, there is no reason to beat yourself up. It really does come back to living in the present. Great observation!
Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
Brian,
Very good thoughts! Thanks for sharing. I like the example that you used to illustrate your point.
Sometimes I think spirituality or change is like learning a new language. It’s foreign at first and hard to comprehend. We don’t realize that during the frustration process, a part of our brain/spirit opens to accept what was once foreign to us, but now are a part of us.
We all have different ways to learn, to comprehend lessons in life. It’s important to remember that we grow at our own pace. We can’t measure our success based on someone else’s success, although it’s a natural inclination. In the end, all we have is love and forgiveness.
Alexys,
You bring up a great point. Many people do base there progress on the pace of others. It is critical to our well being that we understand that we are all on individual journeys and that we all grow at the rate we are supposed to grow, there is no right or wrong pace.
Thanks for your thoughts!
Mark – what a wonderful post – particularly in light of the *goal* meme.
All too often we set ourselves unrealistic goals and expectations based on others viewpoints and standards and as a consequence set ourselves too high an expectation and are liable to set ourselves up for failure.
Acceptance of self is one of the hardest things to do sometimes.
It’s amazing how no one expects to be able to become an athlete, poet or artist as soon as they start trying, but when they try to guide the energies around and inside them and don’t get an instant result they assume something’s wrong… all too often, they assume there ARE no energies. It takes time to retrain your mind to manipulate energies, and it takes time for those energies to build to the point that they can change things; just be patient, and you’ll get there!!
Nicola,
Acceptance of self and basing our success soley on ourself can be difficult. We are taught from early on in our life to compare ourselves to others, when the only one we should compare ourselves is to ourselve.
Good thoghts, thank-you.
Omni,
You are right, we must learn to be patient and also to appreciate that it is a good thing that everything doesn’t happen in an instant.
Thanks for your thoughts!
Highvbeit.com,
Welcome, thanks for the visit. Glad you enjoyed the post.
You are so right as usual Mark, we have to cut ourselves some slack! We are way too harsh on ourselves,,,esp. women. It seems we strive to be supermom, superwife, supernanny. By the way Mark, I love the new look of your blog, much easier on the eyes.
Matty,
You bring up a good point. Much of our stress is self inflicted, we do this often times to attempt to live up to expectations of our culture and society. It is critical to our well being that we allow ourselves to “Be” and to remember that we don’t have to be all things to all people.
Thanks for your thoughts. You add value to this conversation.
Mark,
This article is quite timely, as someone pointed out to me the other day that I was being way too hard on myself… At first I had a hard time accepting it, but when I sat with the thought for a while it finally hit home. Just like my favorite quote:
“If you had a friend who talked to you the way you talk to yourself, how long would that person be your friend?”
Keep up the great writing!
Matthew
Matthew,
Glad that this writing helped to reinforce what you were already being mindful of. Love how this works! Thanks for your thoughts and encouragement.