How to Hush Your Critical Voices (Continued)Two Fallacies About Self-acceptance"Playing Small Does Not Serve the World"How Has Your Perception of Self-acceptance Changed?Related LinksRelated ContentShare your opinions with eSight Careers Network:
In
Parts A and B of Principle Two (Self-acceptance), I discussed the three levels of self-acceptance. The first level is acting as your self-advocate. The second level is not disowning any part of yourself. The third level is acting compassionately with yourself (being your own best friend).
In
Part B, I referred to seven tips from
Cheryl Rainflield about how to lessen the critical voices you hear in your head (or, as Dr. Phil McGraw calls them, your "inner tapes"). Here are five more ways to hush those critical voices which sometimes creep into your self-talk.
How to Hush Your Critical Voices (Continued)- Give the Critical Voices a New Job
In the past, these critical voices may have helped you survive, but it's time for something new -- something that helps you now.
Give those critical voices a new job they can do, instead of the one they originally took on. Try to talk to them. Thank them for the job that they did (protecting or helping you when you needed them to), and gently let them know that the job is no longer helpful -- but that you have a new job you desperately need filled. It's a new job only they can do: protecting you from others' criticisms and negativity, giving you messages that build up your self-confidence, or providing whatever you think that is meaningful and truly helpful.
This job has to be important. It can't be just some willy-nilly thing, or those past-critical voices won't take you seriously. And it has to be something positive, something that is vital to feeling good, something you can't do alone.
Those critical voices might not take you up on your offer the first time you talk to them. But, if you let them know they're the only ones you think who are strong enough to do it, who are smart enough to do it or who can do it best, they'll likely accept your offer. Thank them in a real way for trying to protect you in the past, and let them know that this is the best way to protect you now. Then those parts will assuredly come around. And you'll have a strong team on your side. Critical messages are very strong but loving messages are even stronger.
- Replace Those Messages With New Loving Ones
Criticizing yourself probably served a purpose as a child and maybe even helped you cope or survive. You may have thought that, if you criticized yourself first, it wouldn't hurt so much when other people criticized you. Or you may thought it would make others criticize you less, if you were the one to do it. Or perhaps you had no choice but to absorb the things that were constantly said about you.
Whatever the reason, criticizing yourself doesn't help you now; it hurts you. And you don't deserve to be hurt. So try to give yourself new loving messages. Make up some new messages for yourself and remind yourself of them all the time.
This is a great job for those critical voices. Ask them to do this for you. You need their help, and they can be powerful allies. Here's how you (or they) can do it.
Every time you hear yourself start to criticize yourself, take a moment to notice that, and then give yourself a new loving message. It often helps to write out these messages and put them everywhere you'll find them. You can also ask a friend or a lover to help feed back to you those loving messages. You may need to hear these loving messages from others for awhile before you are able to start giving loving messages to yourself. But sometimes the most powerful loving messages come from yourself.
Try to give as many loving messages to yourself as you can.
- Release the Critical Messages
Try to release your critical and negative messages. You don't deserve to be emotionally hammered. You deserve kindness, respect and love -- especially from yourself. Realize that playing critical messages in your head is a form of hurting yourself, and try to find compassion for yourself to let go of those negative thoughts.
Some people like to make a ritual out of it, using a tangible act that helps them let negative thoughts go (such as writing out the messages and burning or tearing them up). Others visualize something that helps them to let go of these thoughts, such as seeing the negative messages as red shapes (or whatever color they choose) and pushing them out of their bodies.
Use whatever method works best for you.
- Be Compassionate With Yourself
More than anyone else in the world, you deserve your own compassion. You are the only one who is with you always. And you are the one who, ultimately, can hurt yourself or heal yourself the most.
Withholding compassion from yourself doesn't help you, and it doesn't help the people you love either. The more compassion and love you're able to give yourself the more you're able to give others -- both from your heart and by example.
You deserve your compassion and love. You truly do. You won't make yourself into a "better " person by criticizing yourself or being harsh with yourself. You won't make people love you more by emotionally beating yourself up. But, when you give yourself compassion, you open your heart to yourself. You allow yourself to be who you are. And, in blossoming into your own self, you encourage others to do the same. You'll be able to give and receive love more easily, and you'll feel better, happier and more alive. Know you are beautiful and just right the way you are for how you need to be.
- Forgive Yourself
Whatever you think you've done wrong (whatever you judge yourself for), you probably judge yourself far more harshly than anyone else would. Let go of that judgment. Forgive yourself. We all make mistakes -- everyone of us. We all have times we can't live up to our ideals. Ideals are good things when they remind us what we're trying to reach through practice and growth, but remember that we may not always be able to reach those goals.
Let yourself be. Let yourself know that you are doing your best. And, when you forgive yourself truly and wholeheartedly, your critical voices will lose some of their power and you will find that you are more beautiful than you thought.
Letting go of critical messages can be hard to do. But criticizing yourself just continues the negativity that others have tried to give you. It's not the route to feeling good. Giving yourself loving messages is the way to feel good.
You can do it. You can find a way to hush those critical voices, increase your loving messages, and eventually replace the old messages with new ones so praising yourself, loving yourself, and having compassion for yourself becomes your second nature.
Next time you hear a critical message about yourself, take a moment to breathe and let that message go. Recognize the beauty in your soul and give yourself the loving messages you need.
Go to Top of PageTwo Fallacies About Self-acceptanceIt's interesting how self-esteem seems to push more people's buttons than a lot of other issues in psychology or pseudo-psychology (depending upon one's perspective).
In the June 2002 issue of
Chatelaine magazine, columnist Kim Pittaway reduces the issue of self-esteem to the Stewart Smalley routine from "Saturday Night Live" -- essentially, "I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and doggone it, people like me." Pittaway writes:
"We couldn't be more wrong. As it turns out , high self-esteem isn't all it's cracked up to be. In fact according to new research, high self-esteem might actually cause more problems than it solves. At best, researchers say people with too plentiful self-esteem are like television's Niles and Frasier -- self-important bores who think they are better than those around them. At worst, inflated self-esteem is connected to violent behavior."
Views such as Pittaway's permeates one of the first of two fallacies about self-esteem and self-acceptance, according to
"The Six Pillars of Self-esteem" by Nathaniel Branden. "One is the belief," he writes, "that, if we accept who and what we are, we must approve of everything about us. The other is the belief that, if we accept who and what we are, we are indifferent to change or improvement."
Without accepting who and what we are, where will we find the motivation to improve and change and grow. Part of self-acceptance (and thus self-esteem) is being realistic about our abilities, our actions, our thoughts, and our emotions. It's not having to make ourselves superior by being overly grandiose about our talents and achievements or inferior by disowning them.
We do ourselves or our children no good by over-inflating everything little thing we or they do any more than we help them to grow by being nit-picky and hypercritical.
Contrary to Pittway's assertion, self-esteem isn't about winners and losers in the world. It's about being the best "you" you can be without hurting yourself or others in the process.
Go to Top of Page"Playing Small Does Not Serve the World"I'll sum up my understanding of self-acceptance with a quote from Marianne Williamson that was used by Nelson Mandela when he first became president of South Africa in 1994:
"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our Light, not our Darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant , gorgeous, talented, fabulous?'
Actually who are you NOT to be?
You are a child of God.
Your playing small does not serve the world.
There's nothing enlightening about shrinking so that other people won't feel unsure around you.
We are born to manifest the glory of God that is within us.
It is not just within some of us;
It is in every one.
As we let our light shine, we unconsciously
give other people permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our fear, our presence automatically liberates others."
Go to Top of PageHow Has Your Perception of Self-acceptance Changed?Do you look at self-acceptance differently than what you did when we first started the unit. How has your understanding changed? What have you done to improve your self-acceptance?
Share your thoughts with us by using the
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