“We beat
ourselves up when we falter.
We are ruthless in our judgment.
We are
quick to entertain self-condemnation.”
This
highly appropriate and extremely relevant observation was recorded in one of
her recent essays on life and living, by my grand niece Angelina Naime Lee, a young and very successful practicing Attorney-at-Law
and a mother of 3 young children. For as long as I have known her, she has had
that rare and exquisite ability to express her thinking and her feelings in a
clear and elegant style, and to consistently arrive at conclusions that are the
envy of many other people, with far greater experience of life. Her amazing and
uncanny grasp of the philosophy of life and of living is well beyond her tender
age, and her ability to give expression to her thoughts has the potential to
place her among a privileged group of authors. Some of her current work can be
reviewed in her recently published blog:
“Exploringplanbe.com.”
The true impact of her comment is clear and unequivocal. We
spend a great deal of our time being critical of ourselves and our actions. We
tend to dwell on and review all the moments we believed we have failed
ourselves and our expectations without ever finding resolution. We invest so
much of our time and energy in unhelpful rumination that we end up giving it
much more significance than it deserves, and in so doing, further punishing
ourselves; all of which to no avail!
We find ourselves becoming restless, unhappy and irritable of other people and
of ourselves, and soon begin to wonder about our weaknesses and our
inadequacies. All of this leading to a potentially debilitating and painful
emotional state of anger, immobilization and self-depreciation.
In
psychological terms, there is no dispute that that a person’s true individual self
is a reflection of how he judges himself and others. The mechanism of
expression however, is quite complex, and made up of a variety of internal
personality factors that include inherent traits, developmental exposure, past
experiences and current interpretations. As a person faces recurring situations
and new challenges in his life, the way he will respond will depend almost
entirely on the insights he has acquired and on his self-concept at that time. Because
of this, his behavior will always be strictly subjective, and directly based on
how he perceives the situation at that time. Only very rarely does anyone
consider the consequences of his actions until the deed is done. Without
question, our behavior is based much more according to how others think we
should be seeing ourselves, and not on how we should be seeing ourselves.
Therein
lays the dilemma which causes most of the pain and disappointment that so many
of us suffer in silence and regret. We unhesitatingly punish ourselves for not
meeting the standards we believe we should be meeting, and we never take the
time to understand why we do so. Above all, we continue to measure ourselves
with other people’s yardsticks, and forget that, however we tried, our own
yardstick is as unique and as different from anyone else as the color of our
eyes or our fingerprints. Contrary to popular opinion, this rejection is not an
inborn inherited instinct of the human mind, but rather it is a conditioned
response to an environment that rewards accomplishment and encourages
self-criticism. Society thrives on the principle of competition and criticism,
and frowns on any attempt to encourage self-awareness or self-perception. It
should not be a surprise therefore, that most of us are wired in such a way
that we insist on comparing ourselves with others while remaining critical of
ourselves.
There
is a vast and irreconcilable difference between self-awareness; looking for, seeing and finding out whom you really
are, and self-judgment; who you think
you ought to be. The former requires that you learn to know and accept who you
are, your strengths and your weaknesses, without any blame or regret. It
demands that instead of punishing yourself for not doing right, you forgive
yourself and understand why you do so. Self-awareness engenders inner
satisfaction, self-respect and contentment, while self-judging effectively
moves these away and replaces them with anger and regret. Judging oneself gets
in the way of loving oneself, and in the absence of love, there can be no
acceptance. For without being able to love and respect who you are, it would be
impossible to accept what you are. This is what I believe, the Dalai Lama, the highly respected Tibetan
Buddhist spiritual leader meant to convey, when he noted:
“Love is the absence of Judgment.”
Once
we give in to the urge of self-judgment, we quickly fall under its spell and
within a short time, it takes hold of our whole life. The effect on our psyche
is no different from that of any addiction, which distorts the thinking and
suppresses any desire for change. Like the addict who, even when he knows that
his behavior is negative and will lead to further stress and suffering, remains
locked in his behavior. They are victims of their distorted thinking and weighed
down by the recurrent fear of failures and regrets. They convince themselves
that they cannot succeed and this becomes entrenched as a core belief. Soon
they begin to focus only on things that provide evidence of their distorted
thinking, and look for excuses to cast blame for their actions on others or on circumstances.
They even do things to persuade themselves that they can do no better, and may
even set about to prove to the world that they are indeed failures.
There is no way of escaping this unhealthy cycle of choice-consequences-judgment without
first acquiring a true insight into who and what you are. William Shakespeare, in his masterpiece, Hamlet, stated it clearly and precisely when he advised:
“Above all, to thine own self, be
true!”
Without being fully aware
of who you are, you cannot begin to know or understand yourself, your needs,
and the truth. And in the absence of this insight, it is impossible for you to
truly fulfill your destiny. The tragedy for all of us is that we all suffer
under the yolk of conformity laid down by society. We measure ourselves and our
success, not by our spirit or our feelings, but by artificial standards laid
down by others. It is just not good enough to do the right thing as we see it,
but rather we are encouraged to follow the ‘convenient’ choice. It is not
surprising therefore that in many of us, with time, the small seed planted
early in our development will grow
into self-doubt and uncertainty and then blossom subsequently into self-judgment.
“My
journey has turned inward and now my measure of success is no longer what I do
in this life, but rather, who I am becoming. I seek to delve deeper into the
art of being; fully, unapologetically, and honestly being.”
She has taken her first step on a journey
that I sincerely hope will eventually carry her to a better understanding of
her true self, free of the artificial shackles established by custom and by
society. My hope is that she will grow in insight and in understanding and that
in time, her own tree will blossom into fruits that will nourish many who
follow her.
Her journey has
only just begun, even as my own journey is nearing its end. Although I am as
yet not fully satisfied that I have totally accomplished all that I had hoped and
dreamed I will, there is no doubt in my mind, that all those moments of joy and
satisfaction I experienced throughout my life came at times when I was not encumbered
by any self-doubt and self-judgment and overflowed with good insight and
intentions.
Perhaps this is what the late Roy E.
Disney, the nephew of Walt Disney,
the founder of the Disney Empire, who succeeded his uncle and led the company
for more than 2 decades, was alluding to when he observed:
“It’s
not hard to make the right decisions, once you know what your values are.”
-It will do us all a great good to remember that we
can only get out of life what we are willing to put into life. If we allow
ourselves to be shackled by life, we will surely pay a price!
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