Dear Blossom
I’ve just closed a 2 paged document that I’ve been working on for the past couple of hours or so – without saving it. I just wanna scream! Good thing I’d printed it off for proofreading before going on the next step with it, so at least I don’t have to do all the thinking from scratch. All I need do is type it all up again. Still….
Re-typing it – though I will have to do that – isn’t great fun. Writing to you is, so I’ve given myself a break to catch my breath, rewind, unwind and see what I can share with you about this.
I am quite pleased with my reaction. All I did was say ‘arrgghhh’ or some sound like that rather loudly. And had my hands rolled into fists of their own accord. When, after a few minutes I still had an urge to scream some more, I thought, why not scream it all out here?
What I didn’t do was call myself names.
Does it happen to you, where you’ve made a mistake and as if that disappointment weren’t painful enough, rude names come rolling out of your mouth as if in competition over which will cause the greatest pain? And when you look at it closely, some of those names may have been what you’d been called by some other(s) at some point in your past (or even present in some cases); perhaps you’d internalised them and treated them as gospel truth. So whenever an opportunity arose, you quickly jumped in and called yourself those names, saving somebody else the trouble of doing so and/or agreeing with them that they were right to have done so.
Is it any surprise therefore that you actually begin to believe that you are the ‘lazy’, ‘stupid’, ‘clumsy’, ‘dumb’, ‘no good’ etc. person that you have been saying to yourself that you are? Is it any wonder then that challenging yourself to rise to the level of your secret aspirations is almost impossible? Because you have engaged all your senses in this downward spiral which becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy…
How to begin to break the pattern? Well, first recognise that you are not perfect, only human, and that is ok. Then acknowledge that you are not your actions, your thoughts nor your feelings. You are who you are. Complete and totally ok as yourself, a human being.
Your actions are what you do, and you will not do perfectly all the time. Accept that.
Your thoughts are what you think, some voluntarily, many more involuntarily. You will not think perfect thoughts all the time. Accept that. You will not think helpful thoughts all the time, but you can learn to relate with your thoughts in ways that would make them work for you, not against you more often.
And of course your feelings are how you feel at any given point in time. They can be so fleeting, yet sometimes we can act as if they were set in stone. And you know, don’t you, that you will not feel perfectly all the time. Accept that.
Then you might want to explore the relationship between your thoughts, feelings and actions and how a change in one could bring about a change in the others. . . In the interim, no more name calling please! Plenty of self-love and self-care instead!
I had another reason to scream today. I received an email which hinted at glad tidings of great joy – which I cannot share just yet. I was so pleased with and excited about that message that I screamed, did a little jig on the spot, jogged into the garden and did some star jumps!
What is making you wanna scream today?
