If being hard on yourself worked

To be super honest with you: I found this quote while mindlessly scrolling through my Instagram feed today. In my defense, I made the conscious choice to do so. Yet the intended 10 minutes turned into 30. Well. But hey: towards the end of my mindless scroll I found the quote - and felt how my whole being started to resonate.

As much as I dislike this - because it is such a present pattern and it feels like it governed most of my life - being hard on myself really never ever worked. Yes, sure, sometimes I achieved something because I pushed through. But pushing through and being hard on oneself are two completely different things.

When I reflect about this now, this is what I come to understand: It is about the underlying energy with which we do stuff. It is about our attitude towards life. It is about our - and now it gets deep - ability to see the truth.

I can personally say that I’m hard on myself because: I want to see the change faster. I can be fricking impatient. I sometimes struggle to accept that things take time. If you ask me, this is the root cause of being so hard on ourselves. We are so focused on the destination that we forget to be ok with the process.

(next to being afraid of making a mistake, because making a mistake could mean not feeling safe. And this is something we avoid at all costs)

And the truth could be that we’ve been, individually and collectively, creating results that we don’t want. I wrote “could” because I didn’t know. It is just that I have this very strong gut feeling that the outer world would look differently if we’d be a little less hard on ourselves and see ourselves for the beautiful and perfectly imperfect human beings that we are.

What do you think? What do you sense? I feel the latter is the better question. Because putting so much emphasis and importance on thinking “got us here” in the first place. Anyway. You get where I’m going. See what comes up for you and do what you need to do. 🙂 

What can help us to be less hard on ourselves? Is there a different approach that could “work”?

I pondered that for a while. The words of Alan Watts came up. In one of his tasks, he reflects on and shares that the physical universe is basically playful, that it isn’t going anywhere, and that it does not have some destination that it ought to arrive at.

He shares the analogy with music:

I highly recommend watching it.

And then: play.

What if you look at your life through that lens?
What if you live your life through that lens?

This week, I have enjoyed doing it, practising it, and failing at it. It was so fun (and actually deeply transformative) that I wanted to share it with you.

What do you need to be less hard on yourself?

Have a great week ahead,
Christian

P.S. If you are celebrating, Merry Christmas! May you have a peaceful time filled with more of what nourishes you and less of what drains you. Remember how fuckin’ powerful you are. Remember your infinite potential, and engage in the story that you know deep down supports yourself and everyone around you.