Praise Yourself

Transcript

Taking it easy on yourself, giving yourself a break and giving yourself a compliment. Being grateful to yourself and being thankful to yourself.

Sometimes I sit in meditation and after I finish sitting for 20 minutes I’ll sit just a bit longer and I’ll say to myself:

“Thanks for doing this, thanks for doing something lovely with yourself to enjoy the peace and quiet inside myself, yourself, ourselves to see whats going on in there and enjoy and sit with whatever strangeness is happening. Give myself this gift of silence and patience and listening. Thanks, thanks for doing that. You didn’t have to do that but you do. So I appreciate it.”

I say a little prayer.

Of course I’ve talked so many times about how we have this character trait, I call it auto exigence. Characteristic of being self demanding. Some call it the puritan work ethic, feeling like you need to do something to be worthy.

As it turns out, it’s not true. You don’t need to do anything and of course that presents a problem for some because they think “How will I get anything done if I’m not demanding of myself?”

It turns out there are other motivations we can find to enjoy things and get them done at the same time.

Of course, one key thing we can do when we have such high standards for ourselves is to compliment ourselves.

Sometimes things don’t work out the way we want them to and sometimes we might get involved in the situation with good intentions.

Sometimes even when we start with good intentions things still don’t work out, maybe we’ve been in the worst case we get someone hurt or ruin a friendship, pretty extreme. Or ruin a work relationship, lose a client can be pretty serious.

Even in that case if you entered with good intentions, alright. We’ve all heard the phrase good intentions pave the path to hell. Ok.

But still good intentions are good. They aren’t everything, you need more than that. If you do have good intentions that does count for something.

Congratulate yourself for having good intentions even if they don’t work out. Congratulate yourself even if you do the smallest thing]. I know many years ago when I was unemployed and lacked direction in my life, I’d have these goals.

I’d be like okay today I will write 4 lines of this song and do 20 push-ups. Or 20 minutes of exercise so even if I just do those things I can call the day a success because even then I am still moving forward. That is how low I had to set the bar to get myself moving.

And it’s good.

Of course a lot of people will have this idea that if you think well of yourself that somehow bragging or being immodest or trying to prop yourself up falsely. Something like that.

But if you do it affectionately, being affectionate with yourself not egotistical. Not trying to claim that you are more than you are, be proud about what you’ve done but noticing, congratulating yourself.

You don’t have to get a big head because you’re nice to yourself.

You don’t have to worry to much if you get a big head, doesn’t matter. Dial it back a bit.

Don’t let that stop you from praising yourself.

That’s my philosophy.

I think we can be so much kinder to ourselves and when we do that we open ourselves up for so much more. Stop being auto exigent demanding so much of ourselves and we can feel that yes, we are doing something good.

Set the bar low, praise ourselves, keep moving forward. Thank you for listening, thank you for being kind to yourself and praising yourself and doing nice things for yourself and congratulate yourself for any small thing you do. Sit for a few extra minutes in meditation, that’s good. Get exercise, that’s also good. Move forward looking for a job, you did well. You’re doing well.

Thank you for listening, have a beautiful day.