You Do Not Have To Be Good

Several people have written asking for the webinar link for Eating Peace. So I’m sending out an all-ears-and-eyes broadcast so you’re covered in case you wanted to watch it.

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People can be so self-critical, have you noticed?

The chatter about this “you” who you think you are is constant.

If you engage in behavior you don’t wind up liking (every kind of addictive behavior falls into this category usually) you can really get down on yourself.

I need this, I need that, I like this, I hate that, I did it wrong, I made a mistake, I’m not good enough, I’m guilty, I’m stupid, I should have done better, I shouldn’t have done that, I forgot, I was wrong, I was an idiot, I can’t do this, I give up, I’m hopeless, I’m a total failure.

I was once in a 12 step meeting going on about how horrible I was. I was struggling with food and eating. I don’t remember what I said, this was 30 years ago.

But I felt so horrendous, vile, disgusted with myself. I remember that I cried (and I always tried not to cry in front of other people, yet another mistake).

Someone passed me a note.

I never knew who.

It was written in blue ball point pen on a small rectangular piece of blank paper without lines, like the kind you would tear off a pad, something used for grocery lists.

It was folded in half when it arrived from a person to my left, passed along the row of chairs and hands.

Inside, I read…

…”You are a being of love. It is a form of negative grandiosity to reject yourself so thoroughly, to condemn yourself and criticize who you are.”

I still think about those words “negative grandiosity”.

Holy moly. That was TRUE.

I was the queen of rippin’ myself to shreds.

I’ll do it first, before YOU do it. I’ll rage and spit against who I am, and inflict self-punishment and anger, emotionally berate myself, hold myself back, and be ultra vicious.

It was like a way to let out all my intense anger and disappointment at the world, at life, at my experiences…

…in a twisted imploding introverted sort of acceptable way.

But who would I have been back then, without the belief that I deserved to be punished? That I did something incorrectly? That I made a mistake, was wrong, screwed up, and was a failure?

Without believing my anger was bad, my feelings were messed up?

I would have had a smidgeon of a sense of humor.

I might have wondered at the brilliance of a mind that invents a story called Horrible Me. The mind that thinks I’m supposed to be perfect all the time.

And here’s what’s funny…

I actually WAS someone without that thought.

Just like YOU are without YOUR thoughts, in this moment.

No matter what your history, your problems, your errors….the messiness and chaos you’ve experienced….you have had these dreadful, stressful thoughts….

….but you are also without these thoughts.

You can’t help it! You’re alive!

Thinking is not the only thing you’re doing all day long.

Right?

 

Much love, Grace