Posted by:
anagrammy
(
)
Date: August 21, 2011 04:20AM
Judging yourself is a thought habit which can be broken. Chances are you judge everything--the weather, how the coffee turned out, the condition of your neck good/not good, the clothes the kids picked for school, the freshness of the eggs, on and on.
My daughter and I worked on this together and she told me how she came to realize that judging was her default mental mode. She was riding the bus and idly looking out the window. Her "monkey mind" ticker tape was rattling off comments about the people on the street. "Probably hooker, thinks he's cool, waaay too fat and MUNCHING right now." As people got on the bus she rated them, "Minus one, Major Loser, Miss Bulemic America." Because the names she called people were funny, she thought she was using humor. It wasn't hard for her to realize why she kept saying to herself inside her head, "You idiot, now you've done it again, Ollie...could you be stupider?"
So she started doing an empathy drill instead. She made up a backstory for the people, "She has back pain but goes to work every day even though is hurting, that's why she's scowling." or "her Daddy is in the army and she hasn't seen him for months, so she is hunched over with the hoody pulled up missing him." An amazing thing happened, the name-calling/judging stopped after about a week of this and never came back.
Now we say this to ourselves, "My apartment may be cluttered, but I am a loving person." or "I may be late to everything and still be someone who is kind." Everytime you criticize yourself, just tack on a quality you are working on or something you are proud of.
I can start you off-- "It may be true my kids watch too much TV, but they are NOT BEING RAISED IN A CULT!" or "I may not own a late model car BUT I OWN MY OWN LIFE."
You are an amazing woman just the way you are. A rug with dots on it does not make you a less successful wife and mother. When you really think about it, you were made to think that your nest, your surroundings, are YOU. Isn't it ridiculous? You are so much more than that. Lint comes and goes. The love you give your children, the way you've nourished your marriage, and the example you set for your family of REAL values--integrity and respect for truth, now that's priceless.
Anagrammy