April Fool’s Day Video Outtakes!
Be Kind To Yourself #2
Being kind to ourselves is something that many of us need help with at times. Every Friday, I’ll write about this from a different angle. It’s intended to be thought-provoking, fun and to give you tips.
And it’s interactive. So I’d love to hear your own ideas and experiences on the topic on social media.
As it’s April Fool’s Day, I thought it would be timely to release these 3-minute outtakes from our promotional video. See how Tony’s double-entendre set us both away with a fit of the giggles! It can be good to laugh at ourselves as I explain below.
Dealing with our mistakes with a positive attitude
We all make mistakes!
How we talk about ourselves – our ‘self-talk’ – says a lot about how we see ourselves. We can sometimes be our own harshest critics.
You may have seen people make a mistake and get cross with themselves? And then heard them call themselves “an idiot” under their breath? Someone did this to themselves in front of me recently.
I responded to them… “No! You’re not an idiot. You just made a mistake”. “Everyone makes mistakes. So you could give yourself a break and apologise to yourself!”
They hadn’t realised that I’d overheard them, and they laughed.
This sort of harsh behaviour and self-talk often gets learnt at a very young age. But with effort, we can unlearn it.
We can talk about others or to others in a critical way at times.
Modern ‘blame’ culture can often encourage us to criticise others for a quick feel-good superiority ‘fix’. But putting others down to feel superior isn’t healthy. And it can turn our communities into a ‘duck-shoot’, with everyone potentially in the firing-line of criticism!
In wanting to avoid being blamed ourselves, then we can get caught up in trying to portray ourselves as always being right. Which can’t be right! It’s understandable that in a culture of blame that we can learn to be defensive. But if you don’t ever make mistakes, how do you ever learn something new?
As a coach, I listen really carefully to the language clients use. How they describe themselves and the traps that they can fall into. They can say things like, “oh, I’m always like that”, or “I never get that right”.
Once I can get to know them, I can gently challenge them. I can ask them, “Is that really true? Or are you just labelling yourself – and then living up to your own expectations?” And then they can start to change their own perceptions of who they really are.
How do we treat ourselves?
Some years ago, I attended a training course. They did this nice little exercise in small groups. We had to write answers to these three questions on a flip-chart…
1. How do we want other people to think of us?
2. How do we want others to speak to us?
3. How do we want others to behave towards us?
All the answers from each group were positive and constructive - ‘with respect’, ‘with understanding’, and so on.
Once the groups had fed back all their positives, then the trainer made a nice switch to our focus. She challenged us all by asking...
1. How do you think about yourself?
2. How do you speak to yourself?
3. How do you behave towards yourself?
There was stunned silence in the room as the penny dropped. We all realised that none of us truly treated ourselves in the positive way that we expected others to treat us! The trainer then suggested to us, “Why will other people treat you with respect, if your message to the world is that you don’t respect yourself?”
There’s the old saying ‘treat others as you would want to be treated’. We learnt a powerful new saying that day, to ‘treat yourself with respect, in the way that you would like others to treat you‘.
Don’t take yourself too seriously!
Thinking that we have to always be right, and always get things right can put a terrible pressure on ourselves. No-one could possibly do that!
So the other side of treating ourselves with respect is also not taking ourselves too seriously. Sometimes we just need to have a good laugh at ourselves when we don’t get things right. This is why we find outtakes of films or TV shows so funny, particularly if it’s a serious scene with a serious actor. And like these outtakes from our promotional video!
Four Top Tips for dealing with mistakes
1. ‘Treat yourself with respect, in the way that you would like others to treat you’. Lead by example!
2. Mistakes don’t make you a bad person – they make you human. Own and understand your mistakes, and learn and improve from them.
3. Give others some leeway and don’t keep pointing out their mistakes.
4. Don’t take yourself too seriously. Have a good laugh at yourself.
Life Coaching can be the key to help you to do all this.
“Be empowered and released to find your own freedom.”
Could life coaching help you? Take these two simple self-assessments here
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Take advantage of this month’s 20% discount for coaching sessions here – don’t be an April Fool and miss out!