Stop criticising and start acknowledging yourself
Susan Grandfield • 30 September 2020
When did you last acknowledge yourself?
How often do you stop and recognise all that you do each day?
I am pretty sure I am not alone in admitting that I don’t do this very often. In fact, up until recently I didn’t do it at all!
I am really good at acknowledging others and recognising their efforts, no matter how small. I am like a cheerleader for all the people around me who I see doing great things everyday, I am awesome at encouraging and supporting others to see their achievements and yet, I rarely cheer myself on!
Being totally honest with you……I used to do the opposite.
If I had 5 things to do in my day and I did 4 of them (and did them to a phenomenally high standard I might add!) I was likely to go to bed thinking about the one thing I didn’t do. It’s like my mind couldn’t allow me to recognise the achievements whilst there was something left undone.
On another day, maybe I didn’t achieve anything at all! You know the kind of day when you are busy, doing a lot of things but never really feeling like you’ve achievement anything or have anything to show for it at the end of the day? On those kinds of days I would be even harder on myself. I would give myself a hard time for not producing or delivering anything tangible.
Having coached many people over the years I know for a fact that I am not alone. Maybe the reason you are still reading this is because you know exactly what I am talking about. Or maybe you know someone who is great at bigging other people up and putting themselves down.
Why do we do this to ourselves?
The answer is habit, cultural norms, conditioning, beliefs about praising ourselves, fear of becoming complacent or “too big for our boots”, not realising there is another way to be or something else.
I am not so interested in “why”, I am more interested in the effect of shifting the balance and becoming our own cheerleader!
Since I listened to a webinar in which the wonderful coach, Carolyn Freyer-Jones, was coaching a lady called Sandra on this very topic, I have started to do exactly what Carolyn suggested Sandra do. Each evening I write down at least one thing that I acknowledge myself for.
At first I noticed a whole heap of judgement about what was “worthy” of my acknowledgement but quickly I began to realise that when I took a more objective perspective there were lots of things I could recognise myself as having achieved.
Some days it was the small stuff like; doing the ironing, getting out for a walk even when I am really busy, doing the filing I’ve been putting off or sending a message to someone I haven’t contacted for a while. On other days there was some bigger stuff that I could acknowledge such as; finishing an important proposal for a client, creating a new resource for my website, doing a weights session in the garden or planning the weekly meals for myself and my husband.
The point is…..it doesn’t matter what it is, simply acknowledge SOMETHING.
(Getting out of bed is a good starting point!)
I have noticed that since I have been doing this I have gone to bed feeling lighter and with a sense of kindness towards myself. Clients that I have introduced this too have said that they now feel happier, more confident and more optimistic about themselves and the future. Instead of focusing on worries and concerns about what they are not doing they are enjoying the feeling of noticing what they are doing and that feels so good!
So, what do you think…..are you willing to give it a go?
What do you need help with?
Part 4 - the way forward In this final part of the series, we are looking at the way forward. What does this awakening mean and how do we stay on the path that we’ve started to walk down?
This is an invitation to be curious about the freedom that comes from finally letting go of the need to fit in, to embrace how you see the world and how you want to approach life and the ripple effect that can have on the lives of those around you. It is all about self-acceptance and allowing.
The struggle of an idealist in a world of pessimists, pragmatists and realists is that at times it can feel very lonely, like we’re sitting on the edge of the crowd not being invited into the conversation. Everyone is looking in one direction and when we point out that there is another direction they could look in we feel dismissed, not heard and ridiculed for romantic notions about the world. But it doesn't have to feel that way.
Idealist: “Someone who believes that very good things can be achieved, often when this does not seem likely to others”. Rather than hiding away, agreeing with others, making myself wrong for holding a more hopeful view of the world or criticising myself for being naïve I backed myself and stood behind my beliefs.
We are under the misapprehension that we need to push ourselves outside our comfort zone if we really want to experience life and be successful. But that is not true. Finding our way back to our comfort zone is a vital part of experiencing life with more ease, enjoyment and freedom.
The reality of life is that we forget and fall into the predictable traps of the ego and its susceptibility to the outside world but that finding our way back to inner peace and stability comes from remembering that our experience is created from the inside.
We are incredibly talented at creating fictitious stories about ourselves and going through life without editing them, updating them or realising we can actually re-write them. Discovering how quickly life can change when you start to pay attention to your stories.
We begin this adventure of a lifetime as wide open, expansive, creative, loving, curious and innately wise little beings full of possibility, potential and optimism. But through our experience of interacting with others and the world around us we, unconsciously, wrap ourselves up in patterns of behaving and thinking which serve to protect us from the perceived risk of following that childlike energy. Now is the time to "unwrap" those protective layers and reconnect with who we really are.
Experimenting is fundamentally about trying things out and not being attached to a particular outcome. It is about giving things a go and learning from whatever happens. There is a real freedom in approaching things with an experimental mindset and I believe it can be brought to all aspects of our lives.
Like me, are you also someone who tends to plan moments of bliss rather than allow them to happen?
Ridiculous as that may sound, I realise that when I am in my familiar environment doing familiar and routine activities I tend to plan for moments of bliss or joy to happen sometime in the future, when all of the things I need to do have been done. I am discovering the possibility of experiencing moments of bliss at any time and without the preplanning.
