Video

An unhelpful mental habit

One of the most unhelpful mental habits we can have is to tell ourselves that if one thing is wrong, everything is wrong. It’s called ‘All or nothing thinking’ in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. It’s something that we can do a lot of very easily without noticing.

Examples

Examples could include: ‘I meant to do six things today, but I only did five. So my day is a failure. Or worse, I’m a failure.’

‘She texts me every day, but not today. It’s over.’

‘He was helpful to me the day before yesterday and the day before that, but he wasn’t helpful to me yesterday, so he doesn’t really care.’

Silly but fast

It’s easy to see how all or nothing thinking can be damaging for relationships and for our own peace of mind. And it looks sound silly if you see it written down. But when it is a thought flashing through your mind at enormous speed, it’s actually hard to see the silliness of it.

Slow it down

So it’s helpful in a situation like that, especially when you’re condemning somebody who has disappointed you without even realising it, to just slow down, stop for a minute and ask yourself if there is also another side to that person or to that situation. It’s like trying to remember what’s good instead of wallowing exclusively in what’s bad.

You can also counteract all or nothing thinking if you’re going over a day, let’s say at the end of the day, or you’re mulling over an event – just consider what went right and not only what went wrong.

The rewards of cutting down on all or nothing thinking include equanimity, better relationships and less emotional distress.

Mindfulness can help you to spot all or nothing thinking and to step back from it. My 15 lesson online Easy Mindfulness course has been taken by more than 2,000 people, both beginners and people who have already mindfulness part of their lives. Payment is by donation. Learn more.

A point I make in my book on acceptance is that self-acceptance is hugely important – it’s not only about accepting other things or other people.

Others may accept you, but without compassion for yourself, that other acceptance feels of little value.

Very often, other people do accept us more than we accept ourselves.

How to practice?

So how do we practice that self compassion?

One way is to pledge to be a good friend to myself no matter what happens, whether I succeed or whether I fail.

Such an act of self compassion is, I think, very justifiable in the world we live in, which challenges us and can feel so random.

Flawed creatures

We are flawed creatures. I think we are all flawed, and we are living in a very unpredictable world. Self compassion is one of the healing attitudes that we can take to our lives in that difficult world.

And so we can think of self compassion as self acceptance and give ourselves that gift in life.

True Friend, my 15 lesson self compassion course, can help you to see yourself as good enough because you know that, win or lose, you will still be your own friend at the end of the day. Payment is by donation. Learn more.

Are you good enough?

Well, you’re already good enough to be here in this world. That’s the law. That’s what the Constitution says. That’s what most human societies in history have said, that by virtue of being here, you are good enough to be here.

I think that’s an important thing to remember from the point of view of self compassion and self care.

Doing well

When it comes to tasks or things that we need to do, we do want to do well. But ‘doing well’ is usually the same as ‘good enough.’

Psychologists often say that parents should aim to be ‘good enough’ parents and not perfect, because perfection is a pretty hard thing to for the child to live up to, apart from being impossible.

So I think that’s worth remembering from the point of view, as I said, of self compassion and of self care, that what we aim to do in tasks or projects we have to carry out is to be ‘good enough’ overall.

You don’t have to be perfect

But you don’t have to be perfect. You don’t have to win every time. And as a person, you are good enough to be here in this society, in this human society, without having to prove anything further.

As I like to say, Good enough is good enough.

True Friend, my 15 lesson self compassion course, can help you to see yourself as good enough because you know that, win or lose, you will still be your own friend at the end of the day. Payment is by donation. Learn more.

I’m a fan of James clear, the author of Atomic Habits, and one of his recent newsletters contained an idea which really struck me.

A great mistake

What he wrote was one of the great mistakes in life is suffering for years because you didn’t want to feel foolish for five minutes.

And I think that’s just so true because it can happen so easily. And then moments of delay build up into years when you haven’t done something that you want to do, but that you’re afraid you would feel foolish about, especially if a request were to be rejected.

Maybe you don’t ask for a date for years, maybe a you don’t ask for a promotion or a raise. Maybe you don’t ask somebody to stop doing something that they’re doing and you don’t like.

Easy to put off

It’s so easy to put off these things because you don’t want to feel foolish – and then time passes by. And a lot of time could pass by.

So I guess it’s worth asking yourself, what is it that I have been putting off asking for or doing because I don’t want to feel foolish for a few minutes?

And that, in fact, I could do – maybe today?

True Friend, my 15 lesson mindfulness course, can help you to take on challenges because you know that, win or lose, you will still be your own friend at the end of the day. Payment is by donation. Learn more.

I often think that if I could tweak the human mind in some way, the main thing that I would do is to remove the influence of the harsh critic that so many people have in their head.

And the reason I say that is that I’ve come across so many people who have sacrificed themselves for other people and who lead blameless lives, but who are tormented by the critic in the head, that endlessly goes on at them for not being good enough for for making this mistake or that mistake.

From socks to career

The critic, as you may have heard me say before,  will criticise you for everything from the colour socks you’re wearing, to the career you’ve chosen, to where you’re living – it’ll pick on anything.

But I think it’s important to remember this is one point that I want to emphasise here: The critic hasn’t actually, really, done anything. Everything that you’ve done in your life that’s good, was done by you.

Everything that got done

It wasn’t done by that critic. And every struggle that you’ve had to carry out as people do in their lives, has been carried out by you and not by the critic. By remembering this, you get to give far less importance to the critic, to de-throne the critic, so to speak.

So just remember that one thing. The critic hasn’t really done anything. Anything that got done was done by you.

True Friend, my 15 lesson mindfulness course, can help you to dethrone that critic. Payment is by donation. Learn more.

A pause can seem so simple and innocuous that we often don’t think of it as a really important resource in our life. Yet we also know what a difference a pause can make. Many a one has benefited from taking a pause before agreeing to a course of action and many a one has regretted not doing so.

A different choice

A pause can give us the time to decide to make a different choice to what’s routine. This might be a choice about how you respond in a relationship or at work, a choice about spending or about eating. When listening to someone’s story, a pause to pay attention can tell the other person that you are present and listening and that you care.

Pausing can also help you to come down from stress, instead of continuously building more and more during the day. Stress isn’t always a bad thing – sometimes it gets us up and going. But chronic stress, the endless building and building of pressure, is bad for us physically and emotionally.

Break the cycle

What we need is to break the stress cycle. A simple way is to pause, quieten the chatter in your mind for a little while and breathe slowly for a minute or two through your nose. You could add awareness of your tummy expanding and settling back. All this will help to switch on the calming part of your nervous system. If you like affirmations you could use one during the above exercise or even on its own. “Calm inside as well as outside” is one I like.

It’s all so simple but could make a big difference. You could do a longer version of this at certain times, maybe before your first tea or coffee in the morning, at lunchtime or before you sleep – or, indeed, if you wake up during the night. If you drive to work, you might like to try a breathing pause when you’re stuck in traffic.

If you bring these pauses into your day, they will build their effect over time, helping you to get through your experiences in better shape and to make better choices.

Easy Mindfulness, my 15 lesson mindfulness course, can help you to make the mindful pause part of your life. Payment is by donation. Learn more.