Spam Filter for Your Brain Episode 15
We are a little way into the new year now, and I was wondering how those New Year's goals were going?
Have you created any New Year's resolutions that you were hoping to make a start on that you hadn't gotten around to yet? Or life took over or got in the way? Or maybe you feel like New Year's is such a pressure time or you didn't want to set any goals, and you told yourself that you do it later on in the year, but you haven't got to that yet this year.
It could be now. That's what this podcast is here to gently slip in under your door. There are some goals you could set now. And if you have no impetus to set a goal, no specific drive anything that comes to the top of your mind for what you would like to strive for.
I have a little invitation for you this week. When you're listening to this and thinking about what the rest of the year holds, I invite you as a little challenge to think of something unkind that you say to yourself, what is your fall back favourite critique of yourself. The thing that you say when you think no one else can hear or the thing that you only say inside, but you say it often, and it's very familiar to you. I want you to have a little gamble, a little play with the idea that you could decide that today is the last day you've ever said that to yourself.
Quite often with these thoughts, they're almost habitual, they just come up for us. We don't do it on purpose. We feel like it's not a choice. But everything we do is a choice. Even those things we've learned feel like habits sometimes, and because we've learned these voices and ways to speak to ourselves, we can unlearn them.
And so it might not be as easy as just deciding, although, for some of you, it could be; also, for some of you, it might be a case of you catch yourself calling yourself stupid or saying something critical about your appearance or saying that you're just the kind of person who always does that thing or calling yourself lazy, I think it comes up for a lot of people.
Next time you find yourself accusing yourself of one of these things, add a little suffix: "We don't do that anymore". Just remind yourself that that isn't something you would say to someone if you were kindly speaking to them. And goodness knows we need more kindness in the world.
You could commit yourself that one of the ways that you're going to bring more kindness into this year is to find a phrase you're not enjoying the results of you saying to yourself, frequently or infrequently. And today could be when you decide that you don't do that anymore.
I leave you with this short invitation. I hope it's helpful.
And please do go out there and enjoy your week. Remember to make some time for some self-care.
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