As I watch my dog lying on the floor, happily snoozing in the sunshine I wonder if he is chastising himself for for his latest misdemeanor or failure? When he chews up the post or chases the cat does he reprimand himself? Does he lie awake at night punishing himself because he didn't tidy his bed, chew his bone or practise his barking? He certaily doesn't look like he is feeling down or uncertain about himself to me!
We, on the other hand do exactly that! We are all masters of putting ourselves down and telling ourselves off! Our minds work all the time, and a lot of what we think about ourselves is not helpful or encouraging. We treat almost everybody else with a greater respect and kindness than we do ourselves. I suspect we may be the only species that has this characteristic!
We cannot turn our thoughts off but if we could learn a little from the behaviour of our four-legged friends.
By becoming more aware of our inner monologue and registering how many negative things we say to ourselves every day is a good place to start. Then, we can turn our negative self-talk positive. A little trick a friend of mine told me is to think the positive thoughts in the first person, for instance 'I've worked really hard today, cooked dinner, put the rubbish out etc' and the negative thoughts in the third person. For instance 'Karen didn't put the rubbish out today; Karen bought a take away'. Doing this takes some of the judgement and emotion out of those thoughts and can help us to be kinder to ourselves. We are not berating ourselves for those actions, merely noting that they happened.
We may not be able to turn off our thoughts, and nor would we want to, but we can learn a lot from the attitudes of our four-legged friends and perhaps feel better about ourselves in the process!
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