Title: Are You Controlling or Loving Yourself? Author: Margaret Paul, Ph.D. E-mail: mailto:margaret@innerbonding.com Copyright: © 2003 by Margaret Paul Web Address: http://www.innerbonding.com Word Count: 835 Category: Personal Growth, Emotional Healing

ARE YOU CONTROLLING OR LOVING YOURSELF? Margaret Paul, Ph.D.

How often do you hear a parental voice in your head that says things like, "You’ve got to lose weight," or "You should get up earlier every morning and exercise," or "Today I should get caught up on bills," or "I’ve got to get rid of this clutter." Let’s explore what happens in response to this voice.

We have a very good reason for judging ourselves: judgmental part of us believes that by judging, criticizing, "shoulding" ourselves, we will motivate ourselves to take action and therefore protect against failure or rejection. We may have been judging ourselves to get ourselves to do things "right" since we were kids, hoping to keep ourselves in line. And we keep on doing it because we believe it works.

Let’s take example of Karl, who is a high-powered executive in a large accounting firm. Karl has had a heart attack and is supposed to watch his diet. Right after his heart attack, he did well avoiding sugar, fats, and overeating, but after six months or so, he found himself struggling with his food plan. In our counseling session, Karl told me he was upset with himself for having a big desert as well as a big meal night before. I asked Karl to put himself back into situation and recreate what he had been feeling.

"Well, I was out to dinner with one of our biggest clients. He asked me a question and I didn’t remember facts, so I couldn’t answer him. As soon as this happened, that voice came into my head telling me that I’m stupid, that I should have remembered it and ‘What’s matter with me anyway?’"

"What did you feel as soon as you judged yourself?" I asked.

"Well, looking back, I think I felt that sad, sort of dark empty hollow feeling I often get inside. And you know what - that’s when I started to eat a lot of bread with tons of butter and ordered desert! I didn’t realize it was in response to that empty feeling that I hate!"

Why such a ridiculous way to start this article – well to prove a point. The first thing most of you did, of course, was think about your shoes or your feet. Even though you were specifically instructed not to, you did it for at least a moment. That is how human mind works. When you consciously attempt not to think of a specific thought, you’ll generally think of it between 6 and 15 times in a 5-minute period.

This works in realm of negative thoughts as well. Focusing your power on trying not to think negative thoughts can and will prompt negative thinking. View thinking as a flowing stream of water, actually its more like a strong river. The current starts off as a trickle and builds into a rushing power that can erode very earth it winds though. You thoughts are much like this river in that you cannot stop them. You can however change flow to your advantage. Changing flow of your thoughts is possible, stopping them is not. Changing flow from negative to positive will keep that river of thought from eroding deep, dark, dismal ravines into your attitude, and into your life.

You can think discouraging, disheartening and depressing things to yourself; or you can think inspiring, motivating and rousing things to yourself, but again you will not be able to stop thinking things to yourself all together. So instead of attempting to build a dam for your river of thoughts, channel and direct them in way you WANT them to go.