Are You Criticizing Yourself for being Critical of Yourself? (Also: A Sample Coaching Session on Video!)

My Inner Critic about to scoot down a kid’s slide at Universal Studios. For the record: Marty was planning to slide down *with* me in a 2-person, choo-choo train formation. However, before he was able to link legs with me, I slipped out of his reach, yelping like a surprised puppy as I tore down that slide like nobody’s business. Alas. I skinned my elbow on the way down AND shot out of the bottom of the slide, legs straight out, before landing flat on my butt. Thankfully, nobody saw me. Phew! But I digress…

Do you judge yourself for being judgmental? Are you layering blame and nastiness onto more blame and nastiness? Are you practically in a competition with yourself, racing to see how much guilt, shame, criticism, judgment, blame, and insults you need to dole out before you’ll effectively be “motivated” to change?

Please, pull up a seat and join the club.

As intelligent, perceptive, and competent women, we “know better” than to judge ourselves. We’ve read about the ego, we understand the origins and consequences of fear-based thinking, and we certainly “know better” than to indulge our inner critic. We’re familiar with the concept of self-love, we accept the need to shift away from perfectionism and to embrace our imperfections… but then? Maybe we make a mistake and chastise ourselves for “knowing better” than that. Or perhaps we fall off the diet wagon (again) and then raise our hands to the heavens in frustration. I know better than this!, we rage. Why do I keep sabotaging myself, even though I know better?

Here’s the thing (and I suggest you print this next sentence out and possibly have it tattooed on your body… ideally somewhere highly visible):

Telling yourself you “know better” doesn’t actually make you FEEL better.

In fact, “knowing better” usually makes you feel even worse about yourself, because it adds an extra veneer of judgment onto something that is already pretty raw and tender with criticism. Ouch.

Thankfully, there’s a simple and effective way to put a stop to the endless layers of guilt, judgment, and criticism. As with most of the techniques I share on the blog these days (afformations, anyone?), this one seems totally counter-intuitive at first. However, once you start practicing (and playing with) it regularly, I’m sure you’ll find– as I have in my own life– that it works, period.

Ready? Okay. Picture the scene: You catch yourself being critical for some reason, and then you notice (with a familiar hint of judgment) that you’re criticizing yourself for being critical. You can go one of two ways now:

1. You can criticize yourself… for criticizing yourself… for being critical of yourself. (Um, not recommended.)

-OR-

2. You can accept the parts of you that are feeling critical and judgmental. (Yes, you can.) This is as easy as saying*:

Even though I’m feeling really critical of myself right now, I’m choosing to accept myself and the way I feel.

Ahhhhh… Can you feel the difference that acceptance makes?

Like a breath of fresh air!

*You don’t have to say this out loud, but it totally helps. (For real.)

To illuminate this idea further, and to offer some additional ways to turn down the volume on the nasty voice of our Critical Mind, I thought it would be helpful to share one of the coaching sessions I recorded for a client of mine. This video was sent to her as a one-way stand-in for an actual Skype conversation (thank you, sketchy internet connections!), but I have edited out any identifying or otherwise confidential information about her in this version of the video.

Anyway. This recorded session covers the following topics:

• The defining qualities of our Mind’s Voice (aka the Inner Critic)
• A guided visualization exercise, to allow the Inner Critic time and space to scrutinize our bodies (yes, I realize how counter-intuitive and even sadistic this sounds!)
• The distinguishing characteristics of our Spirit Voice or Source Voice (aka our Inner Guide)
• 3 specific energy medicine techniques that can be used to calm the body’s stress response and to open the door for new perspectives
• An exercise to help you shift away from the Mind’s Voice and towards the Spirit/Source Voice, when it comes to your weight and your body
• What to do if/when you encounter our old friend, Resistance!

Be forewarned: this video is close to 40 minutes long and thus requires more than a fraction of your undivided attention. It’s worth it, though! It will definitely provide you with some practical, easy-to-implement tips that can help you lower stress and self-judgment on a daily basis. As well, it showcases my unique flavor of coaching, which apparently involves a blend of earnestness, silliness, and gigantic hands. (You’ll have to watch the video to understand that last part…)

And just a reminder, if you are interested in partaking in a complimentary coaching session before I start to charge for them on April 1st, please send me an e-mail and we can make arrangements from there.

I hope this article and this video were helpful!      xx –Dana

I’m Not The Sort of Person Who…

Guys. I’ve been on holidays for over three weeks now, and one thing that keeps popping up is my idea of Who I Am. Indulge me for a minute here: Take out a piece of paper or open a blank document on your phone or laptop. (Please make a cursory attempt to do this at least– it’s fun and enlightening, I swear). Answer the following prompts as honestly, as thoroughly, but as spontaneously as possible, and then meet me in the next paragraph for discussion. 🙂

Prompt #1: I am someone who ____________________ (or simply “I am ____________”)

Prompt #2: I’m not the sort of person who ______________________ (or simply “I’m not _______”)

List as many things as you can think of for each prompt. For example, coming into this vacation, some of my answers for myself would have been:

I am someone with high standards. I am someone who believes in doing the best job I possibly can. I am someone who is careful and conscientious. I am disciplined and in control.

I’m not the sort of person who enjoys crowds. I’m not one to let loose in public. I’m not a party-er.

That’s just the start. I’ve also discovered how widespread and totally arbitrary my “rules” about who I am (or should be) are. Many times, I’ve caught myself saying things like “I can’t eat dairy” (i.e. I am someone who is limited by what she can eat), “It’s late– I should really get to bed” (i.e. I’m not someone who deviates from her usual routines), or “I don’t think that’s worth it” (i.e. I don’t splurge on anything. Ever.)

Take a look at some of your own answers. Do they lay out very specific– and, let’s face it, highly unlikely– circumstances under which you’re finally allowed to have fun or to experience joy? Do they make you feel free or do they keep you trapped indeterminately? I don’t wear skirts or shorts. I’m not a ‘two piece swimsuit’ kind of woman. I’m not a swimsuit person, period! I don’t eat meat. I don’t eat carbs. I don’t eat fat. I swore off sugar. I don’t have sex during the day, on weeknights, or when the kids are at home. (Or at all.) I wear my hair up. I usually wear my hair down and part it on the right. I hate my job. I love my job! I gain weight just by thinking about food. 

This idea really hit home for me when Marty and I went to Florida for a week. Originally, we had planned to winter in Ecuador, and when we discovered that you have to fly through Florida to get there, we thought, Well, we might as well spend a week in Orlando! Our travel plans changed dramatically soon after we had booked ourselves into a random resort in Orlando, leaving us far away from Ecuador but still scheduled to fly across the continent and to partake in things like Disney World and Universal Studios for a week. Eek!

En route to Orlando, I nervously peppered Marty with questions on the plane. Do you like rides? What if we hate it there? When’s the last time you’ve been on a roller coaster– what do you mean, ‘never’? I was extremely apprehensive about deviating from our usual vacation MO– camping or staying in a cheap hotel, hiking, logging extensive urban kilometers, discovering hidden gems in nature, etc. The thought of staying in a resort and going to theme parks for a week made me sick to my stomach, especially when I read the cost of Disney admission in our guidebook. Having fun ain’t cheap, sister.

Anyway. We arrived in Orlando and checked into our villa, with my carefully crafted idea of Who I Am rearing its head and ramming into our surroundings at every opportunity. Ugh– I don’t do ‘poolside’. What do you mean, there’s a cigarette butt station right outside the elevator? Gross. Mandatory mini golf fee, are you kidding me? It got worse when we purchased tickets to both the Magic Kingdom and Universal Studios, my hand quavering as I signed the exorbitant credit card slip. You mean I’m paying to spend time in a crowded theme park with a bunch of screaming kids? Am I crazy?! And I have to set my alarm for what time to get there? That’s, like, 4 whole hours before I normally get up… What on earth is happening to me?

Ever the strategists, Marty and I made a game plan the night before heading to the Magic Kingdom. Being the crusty, childless couple that we are, we decided to capitalize on Parade Time throughout the day, bee-lining for the far flung corners of the park while everybody else jammed Main Street to see the floats and to have their photos taken with Mickey Mouse. We don’t do parades. We don’t care about Mickey Mouse. We hate crowds. We are serious adults, for gods sake. It will be the perfect time to get photos without any people in them, for once.

At the park the next day, everything was going according to plan. At 1 pm, we saw the park attendants rope off a generous area for parade traffic and heard some spirited, G-rated music blaring from some speakers in the distance. Let’s head for Tomorrowland!, we mouthed to each other and enthusiastically pushed through crowds of people to make our way as far from Main Street as we possibly could. Marty decided to shoot some photos of Cinderella Castle en route, and that’s when we saw it:

Some poor soul dressed up as King Louie, the orangutan from The Jungle Book, was doing the twist with a young girl in the middle of Main Street. I made a snarky comment–  likely ridiculing people who were shallow-minded enough to unwind and have fun at a theme park of all places– and then Marty dared me to go dance with the orangutan. The default programming flooded in immediately: I hate parades. I don’t like crowds. This song sucks. I would never dance with an orangutan period, let alone in public. What are we doing in Disney World, anyway? But Marty persisted. And I got curious.

This is what curiosity looks like for me– a mixture of sheepishness and disbelief about what might happen next.

Hmmm… Am I really ‘not a parade person’? What if I could enjoy a parade, just this once? Maybe I can enjoy this one, right now? Maybe dancing with a person in an orangutan costume isn’t so ridiculous after all? Maybe it will even be– gasp– fun?!

That’s how this happened:

Yup. I finished that song feeling completely exhilarated and didn’t even have to prompt Marty to join a congo line right afterward. (He was in there before I could even dare him!) Pure joy rushed through my veins for the rest of the parade– not to mention the rest of the day– and I felt like hugging that orangutan when everything was over and the floats were being steered back to the garage. ME! DANCING AT A THEME PARK! HAVING COPIOUS AMOUNTS OF FUN! LOOK AT ME, EVERYONE! 

Needless to say, we happily crowded around the barricades for every subsequent parade that day, and we gasped in collective wonder that evening when the cast from ‘Frozen’ transformed Cinderella Castle into a bedazzled, snowy confection. (I even wept when Jiminy Cricket narrated the fireworks show. I was overcome with emotion about dreams coming true!)

A super cool “Sleeping Beauty” float at the next parade.

I don’t believe anyone who says this display wouldn’t bring them to tears…

Yes. The moral of this story is to examine “who you are” and “who you are not” in light of new opportunities and experiences that come your way. You never know– maybe, like me, you’ve got a parade-loving, monkey-dancing persona just itching to break free from your disciplined, super serious facade. (Or maybe not, in which case, at least you’ll have some incriminating photos taken of yourself for the future…)

 

     

When 650 Equals 450

Closets and boxes and crap… oh my! (Old apartment flashbacks)

I have learned a schwack of lessons during our recent move. (Yes, a whole SCHWACK!) I am still processing the adjustment of everything on an energetic level (which partly explains my dire absence from the interwebs lately). However, while my delicate chakras continue to digest everything that’s happened to us in the past month, allow me to shine a light on a very particular lesson that I must have learned simply so you don’t have to. Read on and learn, dear friends– read. and. learn.

Two years ago, when we left our beloved winter cottage on the lake and came back into the city to rent something “basic and cheap” for Harbour season, we stumbled upon our ghetto apartment in the heart of Victoria. It met our sole criteria– “basic” and “cheap”– so we signed our names on the lease and thus ushered in an era of Pain and Suffering for ourselves. (That was Lesson #1, by the way: “In the future, craft a more extensive/less pathetic list of criteria for winning apartments”. CHECK.)

Anyway. Right after* (*yes, not right before) we had signed our souls away for the low, low price of $650 per month, I asked our landlord what the square footage of our glorious new residence was. I needed this information for tax purposes, and our landlord didn’t skip a beat when she answered “640 square feet”.

Okay– 640 square feet. Small. But manageable.

Since I am a mathematical genius and have a keen attention to detail, I proceeded to take the measurements of Marty’s studio space manually. I needed to know the percentage of Marty’s work space to our whole apartment (yay for home office deductions!), so I wielded the Measuring Tape, divided the size of Marty’s studio by 640 square feet and voila! I had a number I could plug in to the tax forms come tax time.

Aaahhh… Welcome to our bike room slash art studio slash plant storage space slash recycling depot! Yeesh!

During the next two years, we did nothing but complain about our 640 square foot apartment:

Yes, we have a lot of stuff in here, but gee– it feels so cramped in here!

It would sure be nice to live somewhere with 2 million square feet! At least! Then we could fit all of the art supplies, bike stuff, books, etc.

By golly, 640 square feet sure feels small!

(This wasn’t even factoring in our other complaints, like having elephants for upstairs neighbours and that time when the building leaked, flooded our apartment, and ROTTED OUR MATTRESS!! But I digress.)

For nearly two whole years, our apartment felt supremely tiny. We were horrified at the thought of having visitors there, so nobody was allowed to enter unless it was 100% essential. (My mom never actually saw our place, despite coming to Victoria several times during our lease. Cough. And when we needed to have a friend water our plants while we were away on holidays last year, I probably spent about three hours blathering about my supreme embarrassment before permitting her to even cross the threshold of the apartment.)

And then I proceeded to e-mail her helpful photos like this from Arizona, so she could locate specific items that could technically be ANYWHERE on our jam-packed shelves.

Needless to say, when I saw a listing for a much, much larger suite on the top floor of a heritage house, I lunged at the opportunity to jump from our microscopic ship. So we packed. We cleaned. We unpacked. We cleaned some more. And just before we had our final walk through in the old, tiny apartment, I decided to measure the whole place, just for kicks. (Yes, I am a nerd.)

I whipped out Ye Olde Measuring Tape for the last time there, calculated some lengths and checked them twice. A few days later, I plugged the numbers into my trusty adding machine and was stunned to discover that they yielded 445 square feet total, not even close to 640. Thinking I must have made an error in the basic length x width formula, I calculated all the areas again. And then again, when I arrived at the same number and thought to myself that I must have missed a decimal place or something.

Nope. 445 square feet. No wonder it felt so small!

For two years, Marty and I crammed an art studio, a fully-stocked inventory of art reproductions and supplies, a virtual Tour de France of bicycles, and normal things like a bed, couch, and dressers into a teensy-assed 445 square foot apartment! If somebody had asked us out of the blue, “Hey! Do you want to live in a 445 square foot apartment?”, we would have answered an emphatic HELLS NO! If we were methodically checking out places to rent, a 445 square foot place wouldn’t have even made it onto our radar. By a long stretch! And yet we lived in one, quite miserably, for nearly two years of our lives.

LESSON LEARNED: Use a measuring tape and figure it out for yourself.

ANOTHER LESSON LEARNED: If it feels small and cramped… it probably is.

So there you have it! Now you never have to live in a 445 square foot apartment unless you’ve made an informed, conscious choice to do so! Aren’t you glad that I learn these embarrassingly simple lessons so you don’t have to? You’re welcome! 🙂

We are Moving. Enough Said.

It hit me about a month ago:

“Wait a minute. I’m aiming for more ease in my life, but right now, all that I have on my plate is:

• Incorporating our art business, and all the super fun paperwork that entails
• Tax prep (more super fun paperwork!)
• Completing a coaching program
• Consoling Marty when he realizes how many custom paintings he still has to work through on tight deadlines

Obviously, I need to round my life out with something else. Something major. Something all-consuming.”

So we are moving. HA.

(It didn’t transpire exactly like that. But we are definitely moving and we are now neck-deep in cardboard boxes and Magic Erasers.)

Part of me feels elated to be heading somewhere new. Our new suite is spacious– nearly twice the size of our old apartment. It’s also a mere two blocks away from our favourite sandy beach and gets us out from underneath our club-footed, insomniac upstairs neighbours. Truth be told, though: I’m really nervous, too. I’m nervous about moving somewhere new but being plagued by the same old issues. I’m overwhelmed by the amount of work involved in hauling everything we own to a new place. And stumbling across gems like these doesn’t help, either:

For real? This box has been in a PAID STORAGE UNIT for at least five years. How embarrassing! I don’t even want to know what “rarely used toiletries” are in there.

‘Hmm… Well, Dana M., we’d love to hire you on the spot, but we’d feel more comfortable doing so if we had PROOF of your familiarity with a fire extinguisher. You wouldn’t believe how many people lie about being familiar with fire extinguishers on their applications…’

Yeah. Forgive me if I’m mysteriously absent from The Internet for the next few weeks. If you need me, I’ll be framing my Fire Extinguisher Familiarity certificate (W.T.H???!!!) and scrubbing floors. (Seriously. Who issues these certificates? And who KEEPS THEM IN A FOLDER FOR FIVE YEARS??)