Your odds of success increase if you stop abusing yourself.
So what’s self-abuse? It’s whenever you insult, bully, judge, punish, or even overly-push yourself. Where, if you were to treat someone else the way you treat YOU, most people would think you’re being an asshole – that’s self-abuse.
Is this something you do?
A lot of us treat ourselves very harshly because we think that it will result in us being more effective, more productive, getting more done. For example if we set our alarms for 6am with the intention of getting up, and then the alarm does go off but we don’t manage to get ourselves out of bed… we start going into monologues like:
“What’s wrong with me?”
“I can’t believe I messed this up!”
“I’m a lazy piece of shit.”
“I don’t deserve love, success, or happiness.”
“I’m a failure.”
A little bit of overkill, right? And again, imagine your friend or brother told you that they didn’t manage to get out of bed on time… would you tell them those things?
Of course not! You’re not a monster. So let’s stop acting like monsters to ourselves. Your odds of creating change in your life rise dramatically if you take a more respectful tone with yourself. In most cases all you need is a little more room to think, some room to breathe, some extra time to practice and get good at this.
So many of us carry this idea that we’re ALREADY supposed to be THERE – like we’re supposed to already have any amazing bed routine, workout routine, diet, meditation habit, and we’re “running behind” because we’re not “already there”. Madness!
Let’s drop all of that now. Let’s start where we are. There’s plenty of time to get this right and life your fullest possible life. Give yourself the space required to take multiple attempts at what you’re doing. Once you get it, you’ll get it for good. So it’s a worthy investment.
A final note: Go the opposite way and treat yourself like someone you admire.
I was talking with someone the other day about this and for some reason I was thinking about the rapper Jay-Z and his producer. What kind of relationship do THEY have? If Jay-Z is putting down a new track for his latest album, and messes up a word, does the producer stop everything and go “You stupid piece of shit! What a failure you are! This album is garbage!”
LOL!! Right? No way! The producer knows he’s in the presence of royalty. And acts like it. He holds a high standard, for sure, but is encouraging, supportive, open, inspired. Let’s be THAT for ourselves.
– Brent Huras