Over the past two weeks, I’ve had conversations with my clients and workshop participants about topics such as perfectionism, how to deal with your child’s behaviour better, practical ways to reduce stress and how to feel more confident.
What all of these topics have in common is that we beat ourselves up – for not being perfect and for making mistakes, for not dealing with our child’s tricky behaviour in a calm and collected way, for not knowing how to feel less stressed and wishing we were more confident so that we could achieve more.
And the solution to how to beat ourselves up less?
Be kind to yourself
Now, being kind to yourself can feel hard because you know, we weren’t taught how to be kind to ourselves – so we are really learning as we go on this. And it doesn’t happen overnight. But the good news is, that the more you recognise when you are beating yourself up, the more you can swap that inner critic for kind words to soothe you instead.
And when you start extending the same kindness to yourself that you so freely give to others, you:
🌸are giving yourself that permission to be kind to yourself – you aren’t waiting for someone to give it to you and taking charge of this is really empowering
🌸let yourself off the hook
🌸are more likely to practice self-care and take time out for yourself
🌸lower your expectations of yourself and instead have more realistic achievable expectations
🌸feel like a weight has been lifted off your shoulders
🌸have that realisation of, ‘wait, you mean I don’t actually have to put this pressure on myself and there is another way’ – this can be huge if we’ve never challenged our inner critic before.
If this really resonates with you, over the next few days, see if you can notice when your inner critic shows up and see if you can replace those harsh words with some kind ones instead.
Jenna Folarin 