I have to admit I have been struggling the past few days. The old patterns have been trying to creep back in, the negative self-talk has got louder; “look at what you haven’t achieved”, “there is something wrong with you”, “you need to push yourself, do more, be more”, “you are not enough”. YEP, thats pretty much been the chatter in my head since last Sunday, lucky me eh? It is not exactly something I am proud of, not because I fear what you or others might think, but because I know I am worth more than that. I deserve to talk to myself in a fair, loving and compassionate way. This behaviour all stems from limiting beliefs, developed in my childhood, it doesn’t reflect who I am today, it’s “old stuff”. Thankfully I have control over that inner critic (we all do by the way), but she sure does like to pop up every now and then, to remind me she is there. The truth of the matter is, all that negative self-talk is completely unfactual, inaccurate and unjust to me. I know that today, however, in the past I was led by that voice and allowed it to dictate my feelings, emotions and actions.
The strange thing is, NOTHING has changed in my life in the past week, to warrant this seismic shift in thinking. I am tipping away nicely on all my goals, my stress levels are low, life is good, all is well, then BAM! Whatever it was, I think it is something we all experience from time to time, and I think we all agree it is not nice, its rather uncomfortable and something we just want to escape. We escape through work, we escape through comfort eating, we escape it through expecting others to “fix it” or “fix us”, we escape through alcohol, we escape through movies, exercise, etc, we just try to ESCAPE that uncomfortable feeling, we numb it out, until it comes back again, and it always comes back, right?
Last night I decided to sit with that feeling, I needed to face it, its a very scary thing to do, to sit, breathe and observe. To ask yourself “What is this?”, “What is going on here?”. I started to write out words, emotions, statements;
“YOU ARE NOT GOOD ENOUGH”
“EVERYONE ELSE IS WINNING AT LIFE”
“YOU HAVE NOTHING”
“NOTHING IS GOING TO CHANGE”
“YOU ARE STUCK”
“YOUR LIFE IS SH*T”
Until that very moment I was desperately trying to escape those words, those emotions, I feared them, but as I sat and read what I had written, I felt relief, it was finally out of my head, out of my body and onto a page! Next I got to choose if I was going to continue with that train of thought or choose better feeling thoughts. Eh…let me see… option 2 please, everytime! I looked at every one of those statements and was able to pick them apart. They were completely untrue, they did not align with my values of positivity, self-love, compassion, empathy and they were based on false realities.
“I think we all agree it is not nice, its rather uncomfortable and something we just want to escape”.
First of all, who says I am not good enough, where is the “good enough” barometer located and what criteria is needed to actually be “good enough”, what does that even mean anyway? The “everyone else is winning” statement, what a load of baloney. I spent years judging other peoples outsides against my insides, people are as happy as they want you to believe. Life is life, we all have our struggles, for some its money, for others its family, or health or relationships, its something for everyone. The key is not to avoid the problem but to develop the resilience to overcome it. One by one, I dismissed each of those statements. This is what doing the work is and it is integral to our growth, our healing and our desire to feel good.
Next I decided I needed to shift my energy and do something nice for me, after all I had been an assh*le to myself for days. So I drove to the coast, I spoke to myself all the way down there and back. I took that time to reframe my thinking and really look at what I was in the process of creating in my life, what I have achieved to date and allowed myself to feel excited about what was coming next. I managed to quiten the inner critic and allowed myself to return to myself again and isn’t that what we are all trying to do here? When we think better, we feel better and then we just are better. We all have goals we want to achieve and changes we wish to make. It is my belief that when we quieten that inner critic, we get out of your own way and allow ourselves to become our best self, again.
“The key is not to avoid the problem but to develop the resilience to overcome it”
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