No One Is Meaner to Me Than I Am

 

 

 I am a champion at beating myself up-- even after years of recovery. I sharply criticize myself for how I look, how I act, for my many mistakes, for operating out of fear when I want to have power over my life through faith-- and the list goes on.

Most of the time, I'm not even aware of how nasty I am being to myself. It's so ingrained inside of me. It's a natural reaction. I promised myself in early 2023 that I was going to "wake up" and begin living life from my conscious mind instead of reacting to life from my subconscious mind. I broke that promise. As a result, a year that should have been the best year of my life was filled with knee-jerk, fear-based decisions that destroyed my greatest hopes for personal happiness.

Since late last summer, I have mercilessly beaten myself up over the disaster I created. But now, I've decided it's time to stop. In Christian churches we are in the season of Lent. Many denominations urge people to "give up" something for the season. It's been tradition for people to give up trivial things, like ice-cream or chocolate or favorite TV shows. But I've been encouraging people to give up being mean to themselves.

No one benefits from verbally abusing themselves. Over the past many months it hasn't brought about a single positive change in my life. So, I've decided that I can't go back and change the past, I can't undo the damage I did to myself, but I can move forward with a stronger intention of staying in the present moment and making decisions about my life that are based in conscious, positive thinking. No more fear-based reactive decisions that are detrimental to my accomplishing the dreams within my heart.

If you also have a daily habit of beating yourself up, focus instead on all of the things you do right. Focus on why it is you don't accept your own humanity and the fact that none of us can escape from making mistakes. Focus on my you don't accept your body, or personality, or sexual-orientation, or intelligence-- or whatever else you deem to be unacceptable about yourself. Then challenge the beliefs behind them. Are they truly your beliefs? Or are they Mom's or Dad's? Or are they religious beliefs or societal beliefs that you chose to adopt and can now choose to throw in the trash?

Focus on letting go of fears and on catching yourself when you are on the verge of making a fear-based decision. Would you really rather play it safe or would you really rather grow beyond your comfort zone and experience the life you were taught to fear?

The more we challenge our negative, fear-based thinking, the stronger we will grow in making reality- and life giving- choices that will make us into new creations focused on growth through personal empowerment. You will need the help of your Higher Power for this assignment, so list him/her up today as you trade being mean to yourself for being kind and loving toward yourself.