I've reached the point in my life in which I am trying to move past the past and just focus on the here and now. Past hurts and traumas cannot be undone, however, I can reverse the thought processes they produced. The choice is mine and I want to improve my life and the lives of my loved ones by doing so.
This week, my daughter and I are working on our own denigrating self-talk or mental messages we have allowed ourselves to listen to. We are beginning with minimizing where we use words such as "only" or "just" to qualify our accomplishments. For example, "I only knitted a small part of a sweater." can simply be worded as "I knitted some of the sweater." There is no negative connotation there in the second wording. It is a statement of fact without judgement on ourselves. My daughter and I, with the help of my husband, will be correcting ourselves and each other if need be.
We have also been working on saying "I apologize for..." and in sympathy/empathy to another we've been saying "I feel your pain" or "I wish you weren't suffering" rather than "I'm sorry" which is more a commentary on our own state of being (as if to say "I'm pathetic" which neither of us are). We've been doing much better with that and my husband has joined us in this change as well.
No comments:
Post a Comment