A few days ago, I made a mistake due to not being patient. Unfortunately, my decision affected both my husband and me, and of course, it also got us upset. But hey, as I keep mentioning, life is not always about rainbows and butterflies, and my life doesn’t make any exception at all.
As making mistakes is part of our daily lives, I will not write about the error in itself. Instead, what triggered this article was my response to my own mistake. I think we all agree that no one likes being wrong or that we can get upset at someone else when they make a mistake, but how many of us realize how bully we can become with ourselves?
In my specific situation, I had a debate with my husband. He told me he is upset with me because of the mistake while reassuring me of his love. He had a very mature approach. The less mature reaction was my own, as I started to be judgemental, relentless, and unforgivable towards myself. In other words, I was bullying myself. I had a tremendous internal fight, and I can assure you, it wasn’t the first one. But after that whole oosh faded away, I started thinking about what I do or what I say to any of my clients when they tell me a similar story from their day-to-day life. And it’s then when I realized that I was my own biggest bully.
It is very interesting how we all blame bullies and bullying and how we try as much as we can to treat others with love and compassion. We tend to see the half-full glass when it comes to other people’s stories, but when it’s about ourselves, we completely forget about empathy and love, and we start judging and punishing the person in the mirror.
The saddest part is that when we have our own internal dialog, it’s very difficult to also observe our behavior, making it very difficult to see how much harm we can cause to ourselves. And when it comes to bullying, we are our biggest enemies. And if you don’t believe me, just try it on yourself. I challenge you to pay attention to your internal dialog for a week. Listen carefully to what you’re telling yourself when you do something wrong and how you congratulate yourself when you do something good. Please, write down the positive, encouraging words you tell yourself next to the negative ones. Check your list after one week, as you might be surprised about what you’ll find out.
The good part is that once you realize there is a problem with how you’re talking to yourself, you’ll start looking for solutions to get rid of the bully inside.