Most times, your inner dialogue is the furthest thing from loving.
Your inner voice is your worst critic.
It’s like an abusive relationship with someone who no matter what you do will always blame and criticize you and make you doubt yourself, and make you believe all the lies and mean things they say to you.
Only in this case, you’re the jerk.
Every time you make a mistake, compare yourself to your friends, blame yourself for something that’s totally out of your control, tell yourself you’re fat and unattractive, how you screwed up that job interview, or every time things don’t go your way.
You blame yourself and you hate it.
These thoughts might not be audible monologues or even articulation of your thoughts, but they’re overwhelming feeling of feeling less than others.
Can You Pinpoint Why You Feel This Way?
These feelings are often past experiences from family, relationships, where you grew up, or culture.
If being so hard on yourself leaves you feeling so lonely, miserable, and stuck, why let it continue?
That’s because self-criticism can be quite addictive.
And addictions tend to grow when we use something to avoid emotional pain.
If you’re always reminded how you’re not enough, your brain automatically takes this assumption as fact and applies it to other difficult things that come along, until it’s a pattern you carry into adulthood.
How to Stop Beating Yourself Up
You know, in the episodes of internal beat-downs, you are always confused and wonder where you went wrong and what other people seem to get right, and what makes you feel different.
No matter your achievements you still feel you’re not enough.
At this point, because you are desperate for answers, you start following people on social media, and you turn to articles, podcasts, and self-help books for encouragement, some explanation, and answers to your questions.
But most only ever pointed out yoga, meditation, fish oils, and so on.
And if with all these list of things to do, you are still not fully at peace or happy.
It could be because those things can’t make you truly happy if there’s an old wound.
Real happiness doesn’t come from engaging in activities that cover your pain or past mistakes.
True happiness comes from drawing a line between dots from your past to your present and making beautiful the very things that hurt the most.
Let go, see a bad habit for what it is, ditch it and take on a good one, and you’ll become every day what you practice.
It’s about challenging your fears and loving yourself as you walk through the process of transition—even when it feels wrong, and make you uncomfortable—accept the emotions and feelings that comes with trying new things, it pays off in the long run.
Why Talking to Yourself Matters
Beating yourself up on a regular basis is also a form of self-abuse.
You push yourself into so much shame and guilt you become paralyzed, unable to grow and change.
When you’re compassionate with everyone but yourself, it becomes a habit to berate yourself—then you feel like shit.
Every time you blame yourself it affects your overall happiness, and creeps into other aspects of your life, stirring up a need to take control, isolate, and desire to be perfect.
What Awareness Can Do
The general rule for building a life full of happiness is to think, do, and feel our way through the process—this applies to Self-compassion.
You might never know what is going on in your life unless you write it down (like writing a daily journal) recognizing it, before finding the right tactics for change.
Make a list of the most important areas of your life right now, the past, and future
Job/career
Family
Relationship
Friends
Uh-oh. I get that this might be uncomfortable…
You could even compare writing that down to adding gasoline to the burning fire.
Uncovering all the mean things your toxic inner disparage mutters all the time.
No, this is not to torture you, it’s to help you confront it because you can only tidy up the mess in your life if you can spot where they’re messy. Recognizing your problem is the first step to coping, managing, and self-compassion.
Also, being aware means recognizing your triggers.
Pay attention to the type of fear you might have for being seen in a particular way, and clarify them, look through every area of your life and get candid with them.
If you can realize whenever you’re vulnerable, and notice your reaction when you make mistakes, you will be able to detect negative thoughts that creeps in those moments.
And that’s when you can truly be compassionate. Be gentle, and speak kind words.
Note, your checklists are the present things in your life, they could change with time, getting a new job,b or moving on to a new relationship, just remember to Keep tabs and update changes. That way, you won’t be caught off guard or drown in self-pity.
Forgive Yourself
Forgiveness can make it easier to become compassionate because the way you talk to yourself is extremely important and connects to your happiness and growth
Everyone has done something they’re not proud of. If there’s something you’re deeply ashamed of or feel guilty about, or a trauma, sadness, embarrassment.
Such as wasting time in abusive relationship, turning your back on a friend, people’s pleaser, whatever it is, it’s time to forgive yourself and move on.
Sometimes we can be a little too hard on ourselves , believing we deserve to carry the burden for a long time, thinking we’re ( taking responsibility for their actions. This is wrong.
Although you’re allowed to take responsibility for your actions and make amends.
Self-forgiveness doesn’t mean you are not forgetting, it’s okay to learn from past events and also to guard the experience.
Commit to The Course, and Practice
If you have decided to practice what you learn that means your pledge doesn’t end with the decision.
It’s like you’re saying, ” hmmm, sounds practical and a bit uncomfortable but I’ll give it a try, I’m definitely going to mess up at some point, but I’ll keep trying because I’ve had enough of feeling less than.”
It’s the best part of your journey to follow through. Whenever I think about the significance of following through, I’m reminded of Zig Ziglar’s advice.
“It was character that got us out of bed, the commitment that moved us into action, and discipline that enabled us to follow through.”
As you start tracking your commitments along the way, you might start to question the challenges of fulfilling your commitments, and maybe think it’s not worth all the work you’re putting into it, or the effort requires more than you’re willing to give.
However, just like anything that interests you is worth the pursuit, commitments, also reuire discipline and consistency.
And there’s no telling the specific time you need to go from working yourself over up to be compassionate.
Think about it, you’ve been talking to yourself in a certain way for a long time, so it won’t be as easy as changing it.
You can’t be committed for two weeks and give up because you didn’t see a quick, big result.
All you have to do is do the work until it becomes effortless. For some people it takes less time, for others, it takes longer.
