Okay, I admit it. I have a habit of checking in with myself — keeping score.
- What did I accomplish today?
- What did I do well?
- What did I do wrong?
- What am I kicking myself for?
- What SHOULD I be doing?
- Am I on track with where I want to be?
Sound familiar? Yep, that’s the issue…it is FAMILIAR. And when something is familiar, it’s a deeply ingrained habit. We have habits of thought, just like we have habits of actions. In this post, I’ll share some tips on how to change this way of thinking, so you can enjoy your life! Also, I’m sharing my favorite resources — the ones I use regularly to support my recovery.
When something is familiar, we go there first. It’s our normal. Everything else feels strange, maybe even uncomfortable.
After thirty years of judging and criticising and keeping score with myself, I finally started to catch myself in these negative thought habits. I realized they were sabotaging my recovery efforts and began to make new choices about what I filled my mind with. This goes a long way in recovery.
So why do I still find myself keeping score?
These habits of thought tend to still show up at times. When they do, I have two choices:
- I can follow the thought, wallow in it, identify with it and believe it. Result: I feel bad about myself for not doing more, being more, accomplishing more. Nothing good can come of that…it fuels stress and possibly even pushing me to DO more and more until I am burned out.
- I can catch the thought, realize it’s just a THOUGHT and release it. Why does that feel so HARD sometimes? Because it’s not familiar. Most of the time, we love getting caught up in the sexy negative thinking. It’s simply not as cool in our society to be positive. If you don’t believe me, just watch TV for awhile or read any popular magazine.
The key to changing is to change. Hmmm….
Said another way, the key to changing is to PRACTICE what is not familiar and what supports you in that change. So, let’s declare today a self-criticism free day! And if you want the bonus assignment, how about making today a criticism free day overall — no judgments or criticisms about yourself or anyone else. Try it and see how you feel at the end of the day. You may find yourself feeling more at ease, more peaceful, more joyful. Once you have that experience for one day, you might even try one day per week or even several days per week. Eventually, you may find yourself feeling happy for no reason.
That’s what happened to me when I finally got out of my own way and started using my thoughts to support my joy and my recovery.
Tips for A Criticism Free Day
- Catch your thoughts - become aware of the thoughts you are thinking. Catch yourself in self-criticism or judgment. Notice the thoughts you are having and see if you can just take a deep breath and let them go. Take this a step further by using a positive affirmation to replace that thought. You are in charge of what you think — notice how positive affirmations make you feel as opposed to self-criticism.
- Stop comparing - if you find yourself looking at others and making mental comparisons (how they are dressed, how they look, are they ahead of you in life, behind you, etc.), become aware of this. Comparing yourself with others, whether you come out on top or not, is a no-win proposition. This kind of thinking keeps you in a loop of always keeping score, everywhere you go and in everything you see. If you catch yourself doing this, stop and take a deep breath. Breath love and forgiveness into your body and remind yourself that YOU are the only person that matters here and there is no contest in life. We are all one, playing in the same game of learning to love ourselves and have happy lives.
- Journal - write down a goal for a criticism free day. Set your intention for how you want to feel. At the end of the day, write down what you learned, what thoughts came up and what you did about it. This is another opportunity to be criticism free! This is a chance to learn without judgment. Set another goal for yourself and keep practicing! This is how you change those thought habits that aren’t supporting you — with awareness and practice!
- Celebrate - celebrate any step you take toward ending criticism and judgment! Even if it’s a baby step, it’s still significant. Decide how you will celebreate yourself for taking a step away from what’s familiar and creating a whole new familiar that supports you. Sure, it may feel “hard” to do something that’s not familiar, but the only way to make it feel easy, is to keep chosing to do it again. It’s like when you start a new job. It feels scary and uncomfortable at first, but after awhile, you know what you’re doing, you have work friends and it becomes your new familiar. If you looked back, you’d probably be surprised you ever felt that way! Most of the time, we forget to celebrate, even the small steps. Give yourself this gift — you deserve it!
First Aid for Ending Self Criticism
The Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) really helps me shift my thinking when I really get stuck in an old thought habit. I learned EFT from Carol Tuttle, who has a technique of EFT that is simple and easy to follow. Anyone can do it — right at home!
I do EFT often myself and also, with my clients. My clients love EFT because they are empowered to use this technique on their own once they learn the process and get some tailored EFT scripts to help them. Hiring a coach is a great way to be guided through this process — but you can also get any number of excellent tools to use at home on your own!
- Carol Tuttle – Carol is having a 2-day 50% off sale on ALL of her products! Check out Carol’s online store for her CDs and DVDs that teach you EFT and other energy techniques that have helped me tremendously in changing my old thought habits. Carol just had a grandson and to celebrate, she’s having a 50% off sale on all products on July 12 and July 13th only — check them out it’s a great deal!
- Gary Craig – Gary created the Emotional Freedom Techniques and has several training and certification tools to help you learn to use EFT effectively. His work is highly regarded — I love Gary Craig’s website, which is full of great information, including how EFT has been used with eating disorders recovery.
- HayHouse – Louise Hay, the founder of the self-help movement, and all of her hand-picked authors write about creating the life you want through positive thought habits (affirmations). Louise Hay’s book, You Can Heal Your Life, is always on my desk for quick reference. It’s gotten me through many tough times and helped me turn my thoughts around. I’ve always believed that if you have hope, yu can pick yourself up from anything.
Awesome, Heather! Your post very much reflects what I have been implementing in my life most recently already. I recently declared a new rule for myself: no more berating myself. I had a bit of a set-back the other day, and, typically, I would go into a downward spiral of negative self-talk. Why did I have to do that? I’d been doing so well! That was so unnecessary! …and on and on. I decided the negative talk would do me absolutely NO good, and, the best thing to do would be to go back to the positive thinking and feeling state I’d been in before the setback. From experience, I have seen that the berating is NOT what will prevent a future episode. You’d think it might, right? Because that’s how we were brought up. When we did anything we shouldn’t have done, we were told it was bad! We were berated. In the hopes that it would keep us from repeating the same action in the future. But that’s not how it works, is it? It’ll scare us for a little while and make us feel guilty and bad, but, eventually, that fealing will wear off and we’ll want to try if the end-result might be different if we try it again. As a kid, it may be that we, again, try on our mother’s make-up, or have a sip of wine, or whatever it was our parents were punishing us for.
No more criticism. Of ourselves or others. I love it! Today is officially a criticism-free day!
(Ay-ah, as I’m writing this, the little voice is squeaking in the back of my head, reminding me of all the things on today’s agenda that I might feel critical about. Ok, I hear you, now can we let it go?)
much love,
Emily
Comment by Emily Jolie — July 14, 2007 @ 11:57 am
P.s.: By the way, you’ve been telling me about EFT for so long now, and I think I am finally ready to go deeper into it! I watched Gary Craig’s video and downloaded the manual. I look forward to exploring it more and learning it, so that I can use it for my own benefit and teach it to others!
Comment by Emily Jolie — July 14, 2007 @ 12:02 pm
My name is Frida and I’m from Sweden. I have a short
question for you that I hope you could answer. I’m
actually writing a book about eating disorders in
different kind of ways and also other forms of anxiety
about food, and I think that it would be interesting
to get in touch with you (if you think that you have
something to talk about). I’d love it if you answered
directly to my e-mail, flfrida@yahoo.se. If someone
else would be interested in sharing their experiences
or information (everything; overeating, anorexia,
sugar addiction, bulimia, ortorexia and so on) please
contact me. Obvouusly it’s anonymous and you will of
course get at copy of the book.
Comment by Frida — July 16, 2007 @ 1:10 pm
Dear Heather,
(First – please forgive my lousy English, I’m not a native speaker.)
I have no words to descrice my feelings when I’ve found your blog few days ago, and no proper way to thank you.
I’m a 30 years old recovering bulimic, doing my first steps to healty life. after 14 years with eating disorder, i’ve decided to put an end to my suffering and to stop abusing my body and mind. this terrible disease took over my whole life, in the last 3 years i wasn’t able to accomplish anything.
Haven’t been binging/purging for a month now.
Your blog helped me so much in the last days especially because, as you wrote, there is so little information out there regarding the physical aspect of recovering. also I’m proud of myself for not b/p, my physical condition right now makes me so frustrated.
I feel totally out of balance (it’s funny, cuase as bulimic i had this illusionary feeling of a balance, and now everything is a mess), my body refuse to digest properly, my skin got crazy and so on. I’m trying to convience my self that it’s a process, maybe a painful process, but it worth the pain. however, i’m experiencing real anxiety for the first time of my life, depression and some feeling that i can’t describe.
Reading about your journy, knowing that my distress isn’t abnormal, knowing that recovery IS POSSIBLE, gave me so much HOPE.
So, one more time – thank you.
your’s,
Shely.
Comment by shely — August 1, 2007 @ 5:33 am