Especially the inner dialogue that you are listening to each day. You may not realize that you have thousands of self criticizing negative thoughts about yourself until you begin to tune in and listen.
If you are going to learn to love all of who you are, which is one of the difficult lesson for adults to learn, you will find it in this pure heartful space where you embrace the person you have been in all your glory and in all your imperfections.
If you do not open your compassionate heart to yourself, you are guaranteed to be haunted by the cries from within and destined to set yourself up for the next round of self sabotage.
Your critical self talk is a one way ticket to a place of loneliness and isolation.
When people tell me, "But I love part of myself.." I realize they miss the whole point.
Part of you is not the whole of you.
Self love is about loving the whole, complete person you are.
So I ask you to discover where you are not loving yourself, knowing that every word that you say, every thought you think, even if you cannot hear it or you are not listening, affects the way you feel about yourself and ultimately how much confidence you truly have.
For you to be in this place where you can choose to love, forgive and be open-hearted toward yourself, you must initiate a profound practice of awareness to heal and be complete with the wounded child within you. We have all been unconsciously conditioned to make ourselves wrong, criticize ourselves, beat ourselves up, and take the blame.
To make up for all the years of wounding, and the yours of love this part of you needed and did not get, you need a daily practice that will heal the hurt that has closed your heart to yourself.
Every time you catch yourself thinking something negative about yourself or saying something that belittles or shames you, you must be humble enough and wise enough to know that it is just as hurtful as it would be if you were doing it to a young child over and over again.
Imagine taking out a plastic bat or something that hurts and then with every negative thought you think, hitting that child.
It is a terrible image, however that is exactly what happens to that wounded child internally.
The point is to release yourself from the shackles of your own self loathing.
To begin to ease your inner dialogue there are things you can begin to do each day in a healing gesture towards yourself, towards that inner child.
Put down that bat!
Tune into your inner dialogue of negative self talk.
Change your self talk to healing.
Make a list of positive things you can say to yourself when you negative self talk begins.
Continue to image that inner child as wounded and helpless.
Imagine that child as yourself and the age of the wounded child.
As an adult you can speak to that child, and tell him/her that 'I have this now' and that 'you do not have to be worried, scared, or timid any longer.'
You are here to take care of him/her and to heal. Taking the necessary action to free your heart and your wounded-ness will move you through self loathing towards self love.
As you turn your negative talk and judgements towards kind thoughts and loving thoughts your inner child will heal, will become confident, will relieve stress and provide more energy and removes the blindness towards happiness and new opportunities in our lives.
Debbie Ford - Courage