Stay out of the Self-Condemnation Box!
It’s so easy to beat ourselves up, isn’t it? Sitting there, sipping your coffee, replaying bad decisions in your head? All of a sudden, you look up and time has passed and you’ve just wasted it, thinking about things you can’t change no matter how many times you replay it.
Why do we put ourselves in this place? Better yet, how can we get out?
Well, I can share a couple of personal “a-ha’s” of how I get out of this box. It’s a daily work in progress, and sometimes I can’t find the opening and have to press the reset button. Knowing the triggers of why we go down the “hating me hallway” is key, so I am here to help!
Music is a trigger, especially if you’re a lyric person like I am. That one song will come on and you will travel down memory lane and then BOOM! into the box of self-loathing and self-doubt you go. “Alexa, skip!”
Smells are another trigger. Your olfactory sense will bring alive memories and emotions long forgotten and Febreze-ing it away isn’t going to fix this. When this happens to me, I set a mental timer of 1 minute to allow myself to take it in, and then I let it go. Be very careful with this! This was a coping strategy my counselor taught me; suppressing the memories is never healthy but dwelling in them is even more detrimental.
Places and people are yet another trigger. Don’t go visit the restaurant or pub that you regularly visited at a time where your bad choices escalated. A quick personal example: I would go to this local bar almost nightly after work and the bartenders knew me by name and my drink and it was awesome! Then I met someone there, we dated, we broke up and he moved on and I would go in and be like “have you seen…?” NO! Put a stop to that behavior immediately. There are tons of cool new places opening up everyday for you to have new experiences and I’m pretty sure Titos and soda with lemon is common.
My final piece of advice: Don’t take others’ demons on. We all have our own that we battle, and taking on someone else’s to be that person is only going to put you in a negative head space.
Create a “condemnation free” play list! If you’re on Medium, you’re pretty darn technologically aware, and can most likely create a play list that is going to lift you out of the doldrums of the day to day, and bring you to a better place. Visualizing yourself in a box, trapped with ugly thoughts will also help you stay out of it. Always remember, we are amazing human beings with endless potential. Write it on your mirror, in your journal, or even make it a post so your social media “addictions” become beneficial.
Stay out of the self-condemnation box!
