Do You Have Compassion for Yourself?

As I continue in my lifetime quest for good thoughts, it has occurred to me that there is a whole different category of unrecognized thoughts, specifically the thoughts you think towards yourself. And, as I continue to prove my maxim to myself, that life will be infinitely better by choosing only good thoughts, it appears an exposure is in order. Much of our thinking, unfortunately, is centered on ourselves. We spend a lot of time thinking thoughts about ourselves, to ourselves. We make assessments, we pass judgments, we draw conclusions, we assign value and lower value all in accordance with how we have learned to think about ourselves. And on the inside, in a language no other human can hear, we say things to ourselves. Sometimes we say things we would never say to another person. Some of our self-talk borders on cruelty. When you boil it all down, this is our central problem. The more we get this right, the better every other category of our life will become. The more we get this wrong, or worse cease to even register it’s effects on our lives, the more miserable and defeated we will continue to be. Life is short. Do you have compassion for yourself?

Unless I’ve been taught incorrectly, there are no creatures in the animal kingdom that actively oppose themselves. You’ll never see a dog or a cat sitting quietly lamenting some damage they did to the couch. The couch was there and they marred it up. Yet, human beings, capable of reasoning thought as expressed in internal dialogue, are quite different. In our humanity, heavily influenced by the world and its false portrayal of how we oguht to be, we learn to think bad things about ourself. We cooperate by falling prey to these “ideal” standards, cleverly paraded before our eyes in an endless stream of “ideal” celebrities or “ideal” body types or “ideal,” supreme levels of unbridled confidence. We look at it and we cannot help but to fall short of it. How could we not? It is in many ways an impossible standard. Add to that our propensity to judge and evaluate and critique and discern. Then we spend our days assigning these false values to other people, disappointed when their own humanity creeps out. We are sort of all in this together. Your dumb stuff is my dumb stuff. Your absurdity is my absurdity. Your secret sins are my secret sins. Yet, it never seems to dawn on us that for all of our so-called failures and errors and mistakes, we have this mountain of good and right and loving that we do every day. Our good bits far outweigh our bad bits. We have to focus on our good bits. The rest is all part of a treacherous campaign designed to reduce people to levels less than the beasts. In this we need to extend ourselves some compassion, some grace, some space to be a human being complete with all the feelings, the desires, the longings, the hopes and even all the fears. We are all in this thing together. What you want, I probably want and probably everyone else wants as well. We are all on our own journey of discovery. We get stuff right and we get stuff wrong. Sometimes we get things epically wrong. Oh don’t worry, we handle that by succumbing to years of guilt and shame wrongly assigned to ourselves by the same one that designed the treacherous campaign to begin with. Whatever or whoever it is you are working so hard to try and be, it’s likely based on some fictitious person that doesn’t really exist. Have some compassion on yourself.

You may not have learned this yet, but your mind has been being trained since you were very young. Parents, friends, teachers, siblings unknowingly said things to you that shaped who you think you are today. And because they live in the same world as you do, much of it is negative. You have been carefully trained to be negative for most of your life. It is difficult to avoid. But, here’s the rub if you will pardon the cliche, when you are negative to yourself about yourself and you are the only you, you have got, there is no-one left to defend you, to speak up for you, to stand up for you! What possible benefit or improvement or rehabilitation or restoration or repair could come from the practice of constantly berating yourself, assigning less value, diminishing yourself in your own eyes and in the eyes of others? You can’t fix a kid by beating it. You cannot shame and humiliate a person into good, acceptable behavior. You know it doesn’t work that way. You have to love your children. You have to learn to overlook their idiosyncrasies in favor of their strengths, their goodness, where they excel. The more you love them and forgive them, the better they are for it. Talking too loud or being harsh or scaring the hell out of the kid is always wrong. You don’t teach them love, you teach them compliance. Well how about you? Are you trying to work some of these same strategies? Are you cruelly calling yourself names because you fell short somewhere? Or, are you actively employed in entertaining thoughts that lower your value, diminish you, make you somehow less than who you are? You can’t spend the day tearing yourself to pieces and wonder why you are not whole. You’ve been trained. You’ve been tricked. You thought that way for so long that now your thoughts are automated and running on auto-pilot. Begin to change by having some compassion for yourself.

At the end of the day (cliche number 2), you are the one choosing the thoughts you are going to entertain, to get cozy with, to live with, my friend. Why not choose you for a change? Not in an arrogant or selfish way, but more out of some healthy self-respect. More out of some unconditional love because Lord knows the conditions never end. Start voting for yourself. Don’t let you say things to you that you have been saying! Stop that futility today. The least you can do for yourself is to support yourself and be on your own side, even if the whole world opposes you. Open your heart back up and let God heal you up. It’s no harder than that. Do you have compassion for yourself? I sure hope so because the journey will be too hard otherwise.

Just some good thoughts…