Where Do the Pictures in My Head Come From?
November 30th was No Judgment Day. Who knew?
Lisa Belkin from HuffPo says, “Redbook invented the day last year as a 24-hour ceasefire of mom-on-mom criticism.” Belkin goes on to say, "As it turns out though, mom-on-mom is not the real problem. [The real problem is] “we are too busy criticizing ourselves.”
This idea of criticizing and judging others got me thinking.
Then I remembered the photo from one of my recent posts, "What screws us up most in life is the picture in our head of how it is supposed to be."
Let me ask you this, where does your critical voice come from? Where do the pictures in your head of “how it’s supposed to be” come from? My guess is they came from someone else. You heard the criticism, then adopted it as the truth about you, and began using those statements as your own critical voice.
Have you, as they say, ever considered the source? Take a look at those who criticize, judge or gossip about you. Is everything really perfect in their world? I’m guessing it’s not. We have no idea what issues they’re dealing with.
How would you react if someone judged your child? You’d immediately jump into action to try and stop her from feeling the crushing pain of being judged. You’d explain that her opinion of herself is all that really matters, right?
So why don’t we say the same thing to ourselves?
It’s an unconscious habit, that’s why. Internalizing another person’s opinion and letting it define us is an emotionally dangerous habit. It depresses you; makes you feel alone, and can stop you from becoming the dynamic person you’re meant to be.
“Stop it right now”, as a friend of mine says. Stop adopting someone else’s assessment of how you should be, how you should act, or what you should look like. Stop letting their point of view about you be more accurate than yours.
Don’t forget your children are watching how you handle these things, so they’ll know how to handle these things too.