Why you can’t “punish” yourself into something great.
Why you can’t “punish” yourself into something great.
Hey Name, guess who didn’t send an email the last two weeks? Me.
I feel like so many of us as struggling to stay connected to things – and, truthfully, motivation is a bit of a crappy thing, isn’t it? When we have it, we feel awesome. And when we don’t… we feel like we suck
HOW IS THAT GOOD?
Anyhow. I’m back at it again. And this whole process of falling away and coming back serves as a great mini lesson for all of us on why you can’t shame or punish yourself into growing.
Here’s what I mean. This is the thought process that got me back to writing you:
I observed what I was feeling and how it was impacting my desire to things.
I tried to understand it without judgment.
I put the feelings and actions into perspective so that this moment didn’t become larger than it really was.
I cut myself some slack and treated myself with the compassion I deserve – I’m humans and humans stumble all the time.
I doubled down in my own self-love by reconnecting to my personal values and things that matter to me.
I moved forward to begin again.
Notice that missing from the entire process above is me punishing myself because I’m a “terrible screw up who can’t keep her shit together.”
Notice what’s missing from the entire process is my using this instance as a springboard to jump me into depression or a cycle of reactive behavior designed to push me down a spiral of caca?
That’s because never in the history of my own life has punishing myself for my missteps ever turned into something loving and awesome.
The only thing that can, is a willingness to SEE what I did, OBSERVE it, and find some compassion for it.
While skipping two weeks of sending (Self) Love Notes is a pretty benign thing, think about how intense your Inner Critic could be when you do something that you perceive has even greater stakes. For example….
Sleeping with someone you don’t really want to sleep with,
Missing a big deadline for work,
Being caught in a lie,
Bouncing checks,
Binge eating,
or anything that YOU feel is a misstep. (No judgment here.)
How harsh does your Inner Critic get then? When it shouts at you, do you WANT to do something different or do you want to shut yourself out, hide away, and feel like shit?
Being accountable for our actions is exceptionally important – but there’s a difference between self-accountability and self-loathing. There is a big difference between being honest with yourself and being cruel to yourself.
Imagine for a minute that a baby is crying and it’s in your arms.
You want it to stop.
Are you going to shake it and yell at it?
Or talk to it with a soothing voice?
Psychiatrist and bestselling author, Dr. Daniel Siegel, suggests we have a COAL attitude to our perceived mistakes in life.
Curious.
Open
Accepting
Loving
Cool. I dig that. (Grin)
The point of this reminder, is that all the things you do that you see as being mistakes, are ALL opportunities for you to find self-compassion and, turn the “mistake” into something even greater.
This is a big idea, I know. And I don’t want to dig deeper here, so I can keep things short and sweet.
But I want to challenge you to answer this question.
How different would it feel for you if, when you “screwed up”, you didn’t punish yourself but, instead, used it as a reason to show yourself more love?
How would that impact your life? How you feel about yourself? Your choices?
Just something to think about.
xx