I used to be really hard on myself. I talked to myself in a way that I would never in a million years talk to anyone else. In fact, my mother used to tell me that I was my own worst enemy. And she was right. No one can hit you below the belt quite Ike you. And you’re the only one who can stop it.
If nothing changes, nothing changes.
They have a saying in the Twelve Steps: If you keep doing what you’ve always done, you’ll keep getting what you’ve always got. When you’ve been flattened like a pancake by one of more life-changing losses, and especially if you’re struggling with feelings of regret, it can be hard to be kind to yourself. But if you want to move forward with your life, that’s exactly what’s called for.
The truth is that no one can beat you up the way you can beat yourself up.
It’s natural to need to think things through, to sort and sift, to reckon and reconcile. But sometimes it can get really vicious inside your head. And the problem is that there is no way to ever feel better as long as that voice is screaming at you. The good news is that there is a way to stop being so hard on yourself, to make that voice kinder, and to have it become more supportive of your efforts to move on in the ways you most want to.
Been there, done that, got the t-shirt.
I know how brutal it can get inside your own head. There was a time when I thought it just wasn’t possible to turn off the tape of woulda-shoulda-couldas, what-ifs and if-onlys, and second-guesses that was always playing through my mind, keeping me up at night and waking me up too early in the morning. But it turned out that it actually was possible. And all it took was some new habits that I made by doing a few things differently, intentionally and deliberately, over and over again.
We’re all creatures of habit.
It’s natural to do things the way we’ve always done them. Whether it’s the way we think, the way we act, or the way we feel, it’s all about repetition. Every time we do something one way, we reinforce the odds that we’ll do it that way the next time. The thing about habits is that they’re easy to make and hard to break. So how do you break the cycle?
Practice, Practice, Practice.
If you want to break an old habit and make a new one, all you really have to do is to simply decide that that’s what you’re going to do. You identify the habit you want to change. And then you practice the new one you want to make. It’s really not rocket science. And it really does work.
Click below to watch the short video I made about Practice. And then I’d love to hear your thoughts. Feel free to post them below!