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Essential Practice 2

GENTLENESS:

Changing the Messages We Give Ourselves

‘Peace begins with a smile.’

MOTHER TERESA

Imagine if every morning you woke up with a radio station blaring full volume inside your head. It would drive you crazy. In fact, that very tactic is used to torture prisoners into submission. And yet, that is exactly how we all live – with voices inside our heads telling us crazy, negative, self-defeating messages.

Take a moment to think of some of the thoughts you may subject yourself to on a daily basis, without even realizing you’re doing it. We all have our own individual ones, but here are a few favourites: ‘I don’t fit in’, ‘I’m too fat’, ‘I’ll never meet anyone’, ‘I’m going to end up broke and alone’, ‘I’m a failure’, ‘I’ll never get anywhere’, ‘It’s not fair’, ‘She doesn’t like me’, ‘He’s going to leave me’.

Get the picture? Your voices may be slightly different, but they are all coming from the same place. A place of fear. Fear that there is not enough, that we are not enough, that anything good we may have will be lost, that things are ultimately not going to be OK.

It’s as if we each have an internal propaganda machine generating messages of fear and inadequacy so that even when things are going well, the machine is at work warning us that it will never last or things will never be this good again.

‘We have been taught to believe that negative equals realistic and positive equals unrealistic.’

SUSAN JEFFERS

To compound and complicate things, many of us have come to believe that the messages being broadcast by our negativity transmitter are in fact helpful. We tell ourselves that they protect us from disappointment and loss by ensuring we are realistic. We mistakenly believe these messages are our friends – that they stop us getting carried away and having dreams that will never be realized, that they keep us firmly on the ground.

In fact, the opposite is true. And there’s a much better source from which to generate the messages we give ourselves: LOVE. That may sound a little hippy-dippy, but think about it. Would you talk to your best friend, or someone else you love – a child or a partner – the same way that you talk to yourself? You may be quite comfortable telling yourself that you’re useless or stupid or a failure, but you’d be unlikely to say it to someone you really cared about.

‘You cannot have a positive life and a negative mind.’

JOYCE MEYER

Every time you say something cruel or unkind to yourself you are wounding yourself, whether you are aware of it or not. Think how you feel when you receive a compliment. It’s not always easy to let positive messages in, but think how good you feel when you do. Remember that burst of confidence. Now compare that with how you feel when you’re criticized.

Just as you can’t expect to lose weight if you live on a diet of fast food and sugar, you can’t expect to live a peaceful and happy life if you’re living on the mental equivalent of an unhealthy diet.

What’s more, we often unwittingly pass on these internal messages to others – particularly (if we have any) our children. So the abuse we give ourselves gets handed down the generations – unless we make a conscious decision to intervene.

I love my children more than anything in the world. They are the most important part of my life and when I’m with them I am happiest – and yet, I find parenting hard. I do my very best to carve out as much time to be present and active with them as possible, but I’m not entirely sure that my nerves are built for the noise, the intensity, the constant requirement to be selfless and to remain calm. It takes everything in me not to nag them to quieten down and stop everything childish, which would obviously be devastating for their childhoods!

I see other mothers who seem to find it less of a struggle. Perhaps they have grown up in bigger families or have tougher nerve endings. I have worked extremely hard to practise patience and to pause when necessary before reacting, but, on the other hand, I also have to remember to forgive myself. So, for instance, even when I do the ‘right thing’ and get down on the floor to play Lego, my kids can sense that it’s not the easiest thing for me. I will do it and I will stay there and engage, but somehow it’s a struggle, even if I’m pretending it’s not, and consequently they can tell. But it has taken me years and years not to feel guilty, to accept that I have limitations in that area and that I really am doing the best that I can. When I accept and forgive my own weaknesses, then I can be lighter in the moment, because I’m not trying too hard to be perfect and in the end, my kids benefit too.

GA

There is growing scientific evidence to suggest that negative attitudes can shape our experience of reality. Just as the placebo effect has been shown to produce improvements in patients’ health, there’s now evidence of a nocebo effect: up to 80 per cent of patients who’re told they’ll experience negative side effects from a treatment may experience them even if they’re given nothing more than a sugar pill. In trials, patients who’ve been told they are being given chemo when in fact they’re being given saline have been known to throw up and lose their hair.³ It is what we believe about a situation, rather than the truth, that influences our responses.

EXERCISE: A New Script

This exercise is to help you start reprogramming the propaganda machine in your head.

Pick one of the negative messages that you give yourself. Write it down so you can see it for what it is: mean, unkind, negative, unhelpful. The problem is your brain usually doesn’t see it that way. Your brain thinks it is protecting you by giving you that message. So, one step at a time, you are going to have to retrain your brain. Later on we’ll work with specific tailor-made affirmations (here), but for now let’s use a message as an antidote that fits almost every situation.

Underneath the sentence you have written, write this: ‘My name is [______________]. I am a good and kind person. I do not need to please everyone. I do enough. I am enough’.⁴

Now cross out your original sentence and then say out loud the new message you have given yourself. Every time you notice a negative thought coming into your head, repeat your new message until the negative thought has gone.

Each morning and each evening for the next 14 days, when you brush your teeth, look in the mirror and say your message out loud to yourself three times. Look yourself in the eyes and say it tenderly, as you would to someone you care about. Are you cringing? If so, that’s good – it means you’re hitting a live nerve. Morning and night, eyeball to eyeball in the mirror, three times. Try it. You’ve nothing to lose but a bit of pride, and everything to gain!

How will you ever know whether there’s a better way unless you try?

This technique for reprogramming our internal message machine can feel incredibly awkward when we begin. ‘What if someone hears me talking to myself?’ It’s ironic that so many of us have no problem with bombarding ourselves with negative messages but then feel embarrassed by the prospect of giving ourselves kind, positive and encouraging ones.

You’ll be amazed at how changing the way you talk to yourself will make a difference in your life. For a start, you’ll begin to enjoy your own company more – who wants to spend time alone with someone who’s going to be mean or moan all the time? But more importantly, it starts to change how you actually feel about yourself. Having positive thoughts coursing through your mind can’t help but lift your spirits … and your attitude.

And then, of course, the magic multiplying effect of this exercise starts to kick in. As you feel better about yourself, your perception of the world around you starts to shift, and your relationships start to miraculously improve. And this is just the beginning of the process. Please don’t take our word for this: try it out for yourself. The changes may be almost imperceptible at first, but they will accumulate. There is so much more that is good to come.

TIP: Write your message on a Post-it note and, if you feel comfortable to, stick it to your bathroom mirror. Otherwise keep it somewhere you’ll see it often to remind yourself that you are in the process of learning a vital, life-transforming new habit.

I’ve found great benefit in creating an internal intolerance towards self-criticism. Granted, it isn’t foolproof and is a work in progress, but it works more often than not. The second a negative thought even reaches the periphery of my mind, I try to banish it – kind of like Dr. Evil’s ‘shhh’ in Austin Powers – humour really helps! If I were to let the thought develop, it might look like: ‘If only I looked like so and so’ or ‘If only I was right for that job, but I’m not, so I’m just not going to try’. It doesn’t matter how big or small the thought; I let it go before it gets beyond the ‘If’. For me, just the act of refusing to let a negative thought into my consciousness is liberating.

I spent years doing the opposite and letting the negativity sit there and grow until it led to further self-deprecating thoughts and inaction. Suddenly, I’d find it was 20 minutes later and I’d forgotten to wish my colleague happy birthday, follow up on something important, or sign up for something that would have been enjoyable or even life-changing, because of self-obsessing and essentially self-harming.

GA

One day my teenage son, who had exams fast approaching, came to me and said he felt ill. ‘Push through it,’ I told him. ‘Just get one more hour in.’ His face fell as he dragged himself back to his desk, and as he went I realized I was passing on exactly the lesson I’d learned in childhood – ‘Don’t stop, ever. Even if you’re ill, you’ve got to keep working or you won’t amount to anything’.

I’d carried that same message into my working life as a journalist and it had eventually resulted in my burning out. And yet, here I was, all those years later – despite having worked on myself – passing on exactly the same harmful message to my son.

I boiled the kettle, made him a mug of honey and hot lemon and insisted he close his books and lie down on the sofa and relax instead. The relief and gratitude that swept across his poor tired face reminded me that knowing how to be kind to himself would carry him further in life than any uplift in his grades that the extra hour’s study might have given him.

JN

Reflection

‘Imagine how much happier we would be, how much freer to be our true individual selves, if we didn’t have the weight of gender expectations.’

CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE

If I don’t take care of myself I can start thinking I am only my job or someone’s wife or mother. Or I can think I am my body weight, my looks or my brain. Before long I’m telling myself I’m fat or lazy or dumb or hopeless.

And then I remember the truth. That who I am is not dependent on any thing I own, have or do. That I exist beneath and beyond the facts of my life – that I’m a spiritual being on a human quest.

Action: Today I will be kind to myself.

Affirmation: This is who I am and I feel glad to be me.