I find this sort of commentary (this time via Yahoo Sports) offensive and I felt angry that some outside "professional" was telling me to judge Tiger on his performance ability, his acting ability, his ability not to appear rehearsed. That even before I'd had time to take in what Tiger had said, someone else was telling me what to think. And as if that wasn't enough, then I was being told what others thought via Twitter. As I took another look I realized that this is the way we live our internal lives, it's just being out-pictured for us to see more clearly. We criticize ourselves non-stop. We listen to others criticism. And we keep raising the bar and then try desperately to measure up.
Talking with a client later in the day, brought this home to me more fully. My client was feeling as if nothing was ever good enough and as we spoke I mentioned the news conference and what I saw. This client immediately got it. She was holding up this "ideal", this standard and then measuring everything by it. Critiquing every little thing, every little nook, cranny and nuance had become a way of life and one that had benefits. As long as my client was feeling bad from self-judgment and lack of self-acceptance, she would continue to under-perform and as she continued to under-perform she could continue to spiral downwards. The way this served or benefited her is that it acted as a boundary that kept others from asking more from her. Without the knowledge of the boundary benefit this pattern would have kept re-generating itself. Just releasing the negative vibration would have allowed it to regenerate. Doing work that allowed stronger and more healthy boundaries to be present in her beingness took away the necessity for the bad feelings to come back.
So how does this critiquing way of life affect us? Well, for starters we usually come out on the sort end of the critique and it makes us feel bad, less than, inadequate. When we feel bad we attract more bad -- that's just the way energy works. That's the way the Law of Attraction works. We attract what we are feeling. And then we wonder why our 10 minutes of visioning and feeling what we want doesn't work. We spend hours every day in this almost unconscious critique, a low murmur below the surface of some version of coulda, woulda, shoulda. Those hours are producing the results we are seeing in our lives.
STOP THAT NOW! HOW! Reference Point Therapy is one answer. We find the source of the negative patterns, that first little vibration of the negative in the biology, in the cells, and allow it to release from there.
Cut the coulda, woulda, shoulda out of your life on a daily basis. Register for my new teleclass and learn how to release the 7 habits that keep us from living the life we desire. Also we'll be learning the 5 daily practices that quiet the inner critic and keep those great feelings flowing. Visit the Living in Abundance page to learn more.
Oh, for those of you who live in Los Angeles, I'm doing an in-person one-day class on March 13. Find out more here.
