Stop being so hard on yourself, the bruises aren't pretty!

I am not sure how I want to put this, but lately I have been thinking about how hard we are on ourselves.  We judge ourselves to a different standard than we hold other's too.  Why is that? Do we think we are better than others? Or do we just like beating ourselves up?  Do we let other people slide because we think they are incapable of doing a job better than us?  Honestly, I think it is more out of insecurity and frustration that we continue to beat ourselves up.  We take it to heart when we don't live up to our own expectations and we rush to judgement on ourselves and consider setbacks as failures.  We all do! You know you do, don't you?  You are your own worse critic, you don't like anything you do, and you constantly think that you could have done it better if you would have just tried harder, or whatever excuse it is that you tell yourself.

The problem is we are harsh with ourselves and we are awful quick to jump to the conclusion that we have failed at whatever task it is that didn't live up to our expectations.  The problem with doing this is your are constantly focusing on the negative, you are painting yourself into thinking you are a failure, you are belittling yourself and undermining your own self-esteem and worth.  If you are constantly doing that to yourself, and you second guess every task you undertake, what do you think others around you are going to think?  Before long everyone around you starts to see you as you do, and it becomes a cycle of abuse and cruelty.  I know that there are some of you out there that think everything must be done perfectly, that if you are off just a smidgen, then your whole project is a ruin and a failure.  Let me fill you in on something, do you know that perfectionism is just a form of procrastination? It really is folks, and guess what, you give a task to a perfectionist and it will never be completed, unless you step in and force them to end their work, because to them, it will never be perfect and therefore it cannot be completed.

I know it is easy to look at yourself and wonder why you aren't further ahead in life, and how you can beat yourself up over little things that shouldn't bother you. I can also understand why you feel that everything you do ends up wrong.  You have have set yourself up into a pattern of abuse that you need to break out of.  It might be something that you have been carrying around for years, it has become so ingrained in your daily life you don't even recognize it anymore.  Or someone in your life has criticized everything you have done and told you that you did it wrong, or you could have done it faster or better this way, or they go out of their way to make you feel bad just about everything that you do.  If any of this is true for you then you need to keep reading, because it isn't true that you are stupid, or dumb, or an idiot, what it means is that you have done something a different way than that other person, and they don't like it. They want to control you and manipulate you and they found that they can do that by using guilt or criticism to wound you.  See, there are those out there that cannot stand to see another person succeed they are so arrogant and set in their ways that they cannot accept that someone could possibly come along and do something any way that is different from their way.  But as I told you the other day there is no wrong or right way to handle a problem or situation, it is just a matter of perspective and working out the details and coming up with a workable solution.  

People that want to control you or manipulate you prey on your fears and weaknesses, they spite you and laugh at you when they are secretly envious, they want to hold you back and make you feel inferior to them because it gives them a rush and makes you feel like you are a failure. These are the people that you have to cut from your life, they are truly undermining your self-esteem and worth, they aren't doing anything for you and keeping you from realizing your own true potential. How can you honestly feel good about your accomplishments or even have a sense of fulfillment in a completed job if everyone around you is telling you that you are no good and nothing you ever do is right. Don't let yourself be caught up in this trap.  Because once you have fallen into it, it becomes so easy to stay there.  I can honestly tell you, that you may have already fallen into the trap in your youth or childhood and that is why you berate and belittle yourself now.  So if you are following me so far, you can see that there are two ways in which you fall into this pattern of behavior, the first is that you are always so hard on yourself that everyone around you begins to judge and see you as you do. Or you have people that have torn apart your self-esteem and question how you do everything.  In both cases the end result is the same, you find yourself always feeling that your best is never good enough and that everything you do fall short of your expectations.

But going back to my original question why are we so hard on ourselves?  The reason is because we have no confidence in the decisions we make or the actions we do.  So my advice to you is to start to do things for yourself, prove to yourself that you can do anything you set your mind too.  That you don't need anyone else's approval or appreciation.  A line from one of my favorite movies is " I have taught myself how to cook, clean, sew, fix a pipe, and pat myself on the back, just so I don't have to ask you to do it".  This should be your motto too. I want you to remember you have nothing to prove to anyone but yourself.  You are your own person, and let's face it you came into the world naked and alone, and we all leave exactly the same way, naked and alone.  So to look for someone else's approval or opinion of what we do is really not worth it at all.

I want you to take pride in all that you do, even if it isn't perfect.  You know why because nothing ever is perfect, if it was we would have nothing to worry about or stress over. I also want you to look closely in the mirror and tell yourself you have come this far all on your own, you can succeed because you don't need anyone.  When you try to please everyone at the same time you end up making some of them happy, but not all, the only person you are guaranteed to make happy all the time is yourself, but that is if you do for yourself and don't care what anyone else around you thinks.  I have told you before when you let someone else dictate how you feel or makes you feel guilty in some way then you have given them way too much power over you, and you need to take that power back.  Further, when you feel like berating yourself or getting mad because something didn't go exactly as planned, you need to really look at it and give yourself credit for accomplishing the task at all.

You must respect and love yourself and accept that you are not perfect, none of us are, so why do you expect everything you do to be perfect?  Now I ask you to cut yourself some slack just like you would someone else, because you are just like them.  Put forth your best effort and be content with the result, build up your confidence and self-esteem and you will see that life starts getting a bit easier for you and your stress level will drop lower.  You will start to feel good about yourself and the negative that you have been holding will be released and as that happens it will be replaced with the positive.  Once the positive starts flowing in your life and mind the more will be attracted too it.  Have faith in your abilities and know that you have given your best. Let go of the small things and cling to what you have done and you will be so much happier in your life.

Stop beating yourself up, stop belittling yourself and give yourself the respect and praise that you deserve, and I promise you those around you will start to do the same, and if they don't let them go and move on, because you and only you have your best interest at heart.

As always my hopes and dreams are with you,

Uncle B

Have you ever lost yourself in a relationship? How about lost your focus on life?

If you are like me and have lost your sense of identity and self in a relationship you will know what I am talking about in this blog post.  Sometimes it is so easy to get wrapped up in a relationship that you isolate yourself. You loose touch with your friends and you begin to slowly lose your sense of individuality.  When you go into a relationship you begin to start thinking in terms of we and us and not me and I.  Believe me this is normal, but where is the separation?  Where does the us stop and the I begin? That is even harder to figure out.  Because in a relationship it is about building and doing together. It is about compromise and growing together as a team.  But what happens when one of the team wants to be control everything and you have no separation, you have found yourself suddenly alone in a relationship, your friends are not there because you have not been keeping in touch with them, you and your partner have been focussed on building and doing and not cultivating separate friendships, all the friends you now have are mutual.  Where do you turn, who do you talk to.  How do you regain your sense of purpose?
There maybe internal pressures that have helped to mold and shape you. You have become so dependant on the one you are with and if they aren't uplifting you and pushing you to excel they might be holding you back.  Are they putting you down? Are they actually damaging your self-esteem? Your self-worth? Did you wake up one morning and wonder who you were, who is the person you are with? Have no idea where you are going in your life and you seem stuck? I did and I will tell you once you have lost your self it is very hard to find that person you once were. It is hard to focus on the choices you have in front of you and do you feel that you are not worth anything, you have lost direction and focus and honestly don't know which way to turn.
I have been there, I am with you.  What it took for me to get past my past and focus on my future was my best friend looking at me one day and telling me that he didn't know who I was anymore, what happened to the person that he knew and the person who when he set his mind to a task forged ahead and accomplished it no matter what the cost.  The person who walked to his own beat and didn't care what others had thought.  I had to sit back and reflect because he was right that person was gone, what was there was a scared and broken person who couldn't see his own self worth, a shell of the person he once was.  A person who once had direction and purpose in his life was now absent from the picture. 
It took me almost two full years and a long journey of self discovery and reflection to rebuild and find myself again.  If you haven't been to the place I am talking about then count yourself among the lucky.  Many of us find love and relationships but it isn't with the right one. We settle, we get comfortable and we stop living and begin to merely exist.  We take the criticism of our partners to heart and we let our pride and individuality mesh into a common mold of what society believes a relationship should be.  Here is the thing, no relationship is perfect, no partner is perfect, we are not perfect.  A relationship is a growing evolving partnership between two individuals, to build and work together for a common goal or good.  The key is a partnership between individuals.  We must maintain our individuality within our relationships, we must keep our individual friends, we need to make mutual friends and have a common path that is conducive to both parties involved, but we must maintain a slight distance.  A relationship becomes unstable and co-dependent when one of the parties begins to loose themselves in it.  They surrender all power to the other individual, and become mired in the we and us dilemma and never reach the goal they had originally started for, they have lost their way.  When, that happens it is also very easy to lose your sense of worth, your sense of importance, and you begin to feel worthless and useless and are mired in despair.  If you go on like that not only will you be miserable, you will do miserable things and you will begin to resent your partner, you will look for ways to get back at them, you will try and out do them.  It then becomes a constant game of who can out do the other.  This is defeatist, it is destructive, and it is harmful to all parties that are involved.  You become entrenched in a rut and you cannot figure out a way to get out of it. 
I cannot tell you what the right way is to end this but I can tell you how it ended for me.  It took total separation and then soul-searching and a lot of encouragement from peers and friends to look past and beyond where I had been.  It took inner peace and asking for forgiveness, admitting I was to blame, that I allowed myself to get caught in the trap.  I also prayed, meditated and studied a lot about myself, I sought out patterns and discovered that all our lives are filled with patterns and that if we do not break and cut from the pattern we are on we are prone to repeat it over and over again.  I learned that the person with the power in a relationship is the one that cares the least.  Whenever we care what another person thinks, or we let another person influence our decisions, we are giving that person the power over us.  We surrender our individuality to them and we become followers instead of leaders.  No one should have the power to make you feel bad about your decision, what you are wearing, or what you look like.  Show the world who you are let them see your colors.  Express yourself in the way you dress, the way you style your hair, the jewelry you wear, the words you speak and write.  You are what God created an individual.  You need to make partnerships and relationships that work and benefit you.  If you truly love yourself you can do it. You don't have to wrap yourself within a relationship to have a purpose.  You don't have to be the person who sacrifices everything for another.  This is supposed to be a partnership, partnerships are formed for protection, benefit of both parties and for reaching a common goal.  A partnership is made up of individuals, that come together with a common background, purpose, or goal and they work together to build something new and extraordinary or to benefit each other or the community at large.  Look at Doctors, dentists, surgeons and other professionals that form a type of partnership, they have come together to offer a service, reach a goal or in some way enhance one another by their association.
Is this a hard journey? Yes it is.  Is it worth the effort?  Yes it is! Can you do it? Yes you can.  But you need to take back the power you have given to others around you, you need to reflect and recognize your own value and your own self worth.  You are a force of nature, something to be reckoned with, realize you don't have to be held down, there is a way out and you don't have to be a shell of yourself.  If your partner or mate cannot see this and recognize it. Then it is time to pack your bags and leave, you must do for yourself and you must love yourself.  Don't let your heart become filled with anger and hate.  Don't let bitterness take over your life, make a change, do something, and if you don't know what to do, do anything, it will be better for everyone involved and those around you who care.
After all of this, time will heal the heart and the pain that you have felt. The bitterness and anger will slowly dim, but you have once again found yourself you are not existing anymore you have returned to the land of the living. Too many of us are dead merely just existing, coasting along life's highway never asserting ourselves into or upon the world we are content to just be in the world.  I tell you this from my heart, it is better to be in the world and part of it, influencing and making change than just sitting back and taking what it throws at us.  Please follow your own drum.  Be an individual, be a doer, an achiever, you have it all with in you. You are beautiful, courageous, strong, intelligent and above all else you are unique and cannot be replaced by anyone else. 
Keep the faith, know that there are others out there that are struggling and going through similar circumstances, you are not alone and will never be alone.  Trust in yourself and in your heart.  Know that you are blessed and can survive and make the changes you need.  Know that I am here for you, I have been where you are at and I have made it through and the processes that I went through have made me a stronger self reliant person and I know what I want and I am going to get it.  So can you. I know you can and I have faith in you.
As always I value your thoughts and would love your feedback. Drop me a line or leave me a comment I want to hear from you. 
All my hopes,
Uncle B
bryanzepp@gmail.com