So you are very self demanding and have lots of rules for yourself? You must be very respectable.
A couple days ago, I had some girlfriends staying over for a couple of nights as part of their road trip and one of them said “I have these rules that …” I wish I hadn’t forgotten the rules but you can substitute for your rules –the more respectable the rules better this exercise works.
What a nice and very unexpected surprise when one of them responded in a light hearted way “it must be very sad living by those rules”. This comment completely won me over. We tend to think people with rules must be so morally proper and true to their values. People who know who they are and are true to themselves.
I disagree. To me these kind of rules are for people who need preset answers because they don’t trust their own free judgment of a situation on the spot. That’s why I’m taking her response and applying it to your rules.
What a smartass you think? Here is a question for you: Are those rules helping you set a healthy discipline based in love? Or an enforcement based in self imposed image or fear of what you might do without them?
Last part of the “rule exercise”, answer with honesty this question: what would you do without your rule?
There is one other thing that makes as look as respectable as if we had lots of rules and that is to be self-demanding. I read the Spanish actress Penelope Cruz a few years ago say “I’m my hardest critic”. It’s not infrequent that actors, sport players and other famous “successful” people would say that.
Not sure why they like to say that and why they always do it with such pride. Perhaps they want to seem respectable, perhaps they are proud of it and thank this “trait” for being key in their success or most likely they don’t know what they are talking about.
I have this respectable trait too, I’m my worst self-critic. It’s a great trait, it keeps me nice and tight in warm small box with a comfy little pillow. Too bad I need to stop that because it’s killing me.
I’m being so demanding on myself –the word auto-exigente in Spanish conveys the meaning better- that I’m totally unproductive. The psychological pressure on my head is so big that feels like physical pressure and often times makes me not operational.
I’m starting my own company which takes big commitment and energy, but I’ve realized I have barely made any progress last weeks because I’m overwhelmed by what I demand to myself and by how I beat myself up when I don’t meet those demands. This hard self-criticism blocks me and therefore makes me less productive, with results in more criticism. The term death-spiral couldn’t be more appropriate.
And it’s also affecting me in other aspects of my life. I’m considering cutting vacations off because I’m not meeting my expectations and “monitoring” my fun because I have all these unconscious judgments about myself. That’s not fun. It’s torture.
Since as some wise person once said: “we are not here for a long time, we are here for a good time”, my number one goal for the next weeks is to distance myself from this inner critic, be less respectable and more loving with myself.
Time to go into a life-spiral, how about that?