Timing is everything.
How a team uses the last few seconds on the clock can make or break their victory. Your BullySelf understands this and uses it to great advantage when it recognizes a new effort, a stretch of your skills or some change in your career being pursued. When will your BullySelf show up?
When we set new resolutions, decide to lose weight, get in shape, go back to school, get married, try out for the team, finally begin to write that novel or even learn to dance, we feel the first small sense of accomplishment. Even in the simple act of the decision, we feel a sense of value and purpose. Let’s face it, it feels good, it feels natural to learn and grow, make determined effort and set a new direction for a life full of excitement and opportunity.
There is friction between our desires and our parking brake
We are ALL, after all, extremely talented, highly creative, fun loving creatures. We look forward with great anticipation to growth and achievement. We get enjoyment out of overcoming obstacles and rising to new challenges. But if these new adventures and experiences challenge our preconceived view of ourselves and what we think we are capable of (or limited to), the feelings of doubt start to creep in.
These feelings are the beginnings of self-assessment we talked about in the last post, the weighing of our options against the tools, attitudes and skills we might need to pull it off. Also, as discussed, this can be a healthy exercise that points us in the right direction and considers the inventory as we plan and begin to map out the complexities and contingencies, if there are any.
But sometimes we go too far. Sometimes, while we are working on the details, the negative, hurtful comments soon appear, reminding us of past failures and hurt feelings which had caused us grief on similar undertakings. Thoughts that speak to us from the past, that make us feel inferior, or are demeaning and painful, are delivered by the BullySelf. These thoughts and feelings will escalate, if left unchecked, to the point of leaving us incapacitated and “stuck”.
We’re hard on ourselves for having made mistakes in the past
It all seems very discouraging when the plans we’ve dreamed up, to propel us forward, are shot full of holes before we ever get out the door. The jabs that continually overpower our drive and determination seem to be coming from the very same mind that gave us the desire and permission in the first place. The juxtaposition makes you want to ask, “What’s going on with my brain?” But there it is, both sides (if you will) on one side is our desire and on the other our parking brake. There seems to be a fine line between self-assessment and self-criticism or self-bullying.
We tend to be harder on ourselves when we perceive and believe that our coming actions will cause others to regard us in a negative way. “They might see me as weak, stupid, nerdy, racist, intolerant, needy, incompetent…” the list could just keep growing. So when we start to mull over ideas about taking action on our desires, we automatically include dialog intended to keep up the appearance that we think we have so carefully crafted for the outside world to see. We think this image is what we want people to believe about us yet, we are usually way off in our perceptions of their opinions. In fact, most of the time, people are more worried about themselves and how they appear so they don’t have the capacity to give us more than a cursory glance.
Uncover secrets that the BullySelf would rather keep quiet
We’re also hard on ourselves for having made mistakes in the past. If we cannot allow past blunders to dissipate and fade, it is entirely possible that we will keep punishing ourselves for decades over even the most minor of infractions. This is ripe territory for the BullySelf. In fact, the BullySelf is most comfortable when it can dredge up the old feelings of inferiority, in the early stages of our taking action, without too much resistance from us.
Next post, we’re going to examine where the BullySelf originates, where it draws its strength and where it gets its ammunition. You may find where it hibernates when you pose no threat to your status quo. It’s been said in the business world that the top three things to consider when opening a business are, “Location, location, location” and we’re going to find that the BullySelf occupies some of the prime real estate in your mind.
An opponent is easier to defeat when you know about his location and movements. Come along with us as we continue to uncover secrets that the BullySelf would rather keep quiet; secrets that will help us mount effective defenses against the greatest hindrance to personal progress of all time! Secrets that will harness the power and intensity of bullying ourselves into the motivation and commitment to accomplishing great things!
