JUDGING OURSELVES
Welcome to The Small Jar, a podcast where we explore how to intentionally design the life that you want in the space between motherhood and the empty nest. I'm your host, Jennifer Collins. Episode number 13.
Hello, friends. I've been doing a lot of self-reflection this week. I'm engaged in a few different projects that involve looking inward and taking a look at yourself with a new perspective.
It's a fascinating exercise because we're kind of used to defining ourselves and our lives a certain way. And when you begin to really ask yourself what you think about yourself, you can be surprised by your own answers. It's kind of a luxury to take a step back and look at yourself.
We're so much used to being in our lives, in the midst of our lives. And when we reflect on ourselves, when we're in the thick of our everyday activities, we often offer ourselves a knee-jerk and negative narrative of who and what we are. Let's be honest.
How often do you say to yourself, honey, you are beautiful, amazing, intelligent, powerful, confident, worthy, valuable. Do you ever use any of these adjectives to describe yourself? Beautiful, amazing, intelligent, powerful, confident, worthy, valuable. If not these, what are the positive adjectives you use to describe yourself on a regular basis? Sometimes we'll say, I'm kind, loyal, a good mom, I'm organized.
All positive attributes for sure, but nothing anyone could argue with. Nothing that would require us to go out on a limb and be bold. Isn't it funny that even in our own minds, we don't want to brag about ourselves.
We prefer to be modest or worse, we don't even consider that audacious adjectives like powerful, beautiful, or worthy are available to us. But why not? If you get to think whatever you want to think about yourself, why wouldn't you choose words like valuable, worthy, amazing? Unfortunately, more often than not, we describe ourselves this way, a mess, not able to succeed at X, Y, or Z, overweight, unmotivated, lazy, sad, just a mom. Can you relate to any of these? If you were to count how often you thought positive versus negative thoughts about yourself, what would be the split? 50-50, 75-25 bad versus good, or 80-20? A number of scientific studies suggest that 80% of the thoughts we have each day are negative.
Could you imagine talking to anyone else in your life as negatively as you talk to yourself about yourself? Could you imagine talking to your children this way? You're a mess, not successful, overweight, unmotivated, lazy, sad, just a kid. Now we're used to being told we should combat this negative self-talk with mindfulness, positive self-talk, gratitude, and the most common advice, just love yourself. I remember saying something along these lines to one of my boys when they were younger.
He was maybe around 11 or 12 and insecurity started creeping into his life as he navigated relationships in middle school. I remember saying something like, you have to love yourself first. And he looked at me like I was crazy.
And he said, how am I supposed to do that? Honestly, it is easier said than done. Ask yourself, how do you love yourself? Do you love yourself unconditionally in the way you love your children? Do you love yourself with a fierce, protective, I would do anything for you type of love? Really think about it. We love our children exactly as they are.
It would never occur to us to hold back any part of our love for them because of some physical attribute or character trait. We love them for who they are. Do you love yourself that way? Or do you find yourself thinking I love myself but, or even though, and then here come the conditions.
I love myself, even though I can't lose weight. I love myself, even though I can't find someone else to love me. In other words, I love myself, even though there must be something wrong with me.
I love myself, but I'm not perfect. I love myself, but I wish I was smarter or more of a people person. We place so many conditions on the love we have for ourselves.
Would you say these same things to your child? Honey, I love you, even though your grades are awful. Sweetie, I love you, even though you don't have any friends. I love you, but you're far from perfect.
I love you, but I wish you were smarter. Yikes, can you even imagine? And look, over the years, I've said some things to my children that I regret. But would I say these awful words to my children every day, day in and day out, as if it was just the truth? If we couldn't imagine doing this to someone we love, then why would we do it to ourselves? But we do, all the time.
I'm so fat. I'm a mess. I'm not motivated.
I'll never be able to do that. Such simple statements that we say to ourselves as if they were the truth. But we can't just change our minds about the things we believe about ourselves.
If it were that easy, we would all be running around with this super positive self-image. We can't even blame being modest, because more often than not, we're saying these things to ourselves without speaking at all, or under our breath when no one else is listening. Yet we still choose to believe the worst about ourselves.
We don't even characterize what we're saying about ourselves as believing the worst. The tragedy is that we believe it all to be true. And we've been practicing so many of these negative self-beliefs for so long that we don't even question them anymore.
They're automatic, as simple as habit. So how do we stop all this self-judgment if we can't just turn off the thoughts? I want to offer that the way we think about ourselves, both for better or worse, serves a purpose in our lives. First, from an evolutionary perspective, our brain's ability to look for danger is exactly why we continue to exist as a species.
More than any other life form, humans are able to imagine and anticipate danger. And so more than even being alert for the danger of being eaten by some other animal, humans can observe their environment. And when something terrible happens, they can adapt and learn so that that terrible thing can be avoided in the future.
This skill set is remarkable. It helped our species evolve from the cave as man developed ever more complicated ways to protect their families, more secure homes, more formidable weapons. Our brains also learn to anticipate the risks of being outcast from the tribe.
If a person was cast out for being different in the Stone Age, they would very likely die. So our primitive brains quite literally view being cast out as a life or death situation. We probably observe this in our young teens' experience if they ever had a fight with their friends or were bullied and teased.
It feels terrible. Our brains want to make it mean that it's the end of the world. And let's face it, when this happens for us as adults, it feels terrible.
So our brains on default mode look for danger in the way we relate to the world around us. And because we're no longer at risk of being killed by saber-toothed tigers, our primitive brain's focus is on risks related to being cast out, not accepted, or alone. Sometimes this means that we're judging other people, but much more often this means we judge ourselves.
We create identities that shape our understanding of how and why we relate to the world in the way that we do. In terms of our physical bodies, we judge ourselves in relation to the people in our lives and potentially also the people we see on TV or in the magazines. But how amazing is it that our concept of what the ideal body looks like has evolved drastically over centuries? Years ago, the ideal female figure was curvaceous, but today we put on a pedestal women who are a size zero or two, thin, and wavelike.
The body positivity movement is slowly encouraging us to accept bodies regardless of size and shape as beautiful. But because our concepts of what is beautiful have been shaped unconsciously by what we have observed in the media for our entire lives, these shifts take time. But this illustrates perfectly how the judgment we have about our own bodies is an illusion created by our minds as we compare ourselves by society standards.
We don't want to stand out from the crowd, so we crave conformity. If the ideal weight for a woman who is 5'7 is 122 to 149 pounds, according to a Google search, we beat ourselves up to achieve it. We don't even question why we want it.
What do these numbers even mean? So when it comes to our bodies, we judge ourselves based on some imaginary ideal figure we think we should emulate. And we don't even realize that this is in large part driven by an instinctual desire to fit in, to be accepted. Because our lives are so interconnected, we see other people who look like they fit the physical image of society standards better than we do, and we imagine that their lives must be better somehow.
We subconsciously, or maybe even consciously, believe that our own lives will be better, happier, if we could just come closer to the physical image of the ideal. We do this in so many other areas of our lives. We judge ourselves based on some imaginary ideal image of what we should look or be like.
Let's take motherhood, for example. How many times have you said to yourself, I'm trying to be a better mother, or I should be a better mother? As if there's some perfect ideal form of motherhood to which we should all be aspiring. For sure, the perfect mother wouldn't yell at her kids, or get frustrated, or try to control her kids.
The perfect mother never complains, is always happy to pick up her kids from anywhere at any time of the day or night. The perfect mother is always patient and available to listen to her kids. Oh, and let's take it further.
The perfect mother doesn't just act perfectly. She actually has perfect children. Because she acts in a certain way, her children always open up to her and tell her the truth.
They never defy her. They're polite, and they try hard in school. They don't date the wrong people.
They don't try drugs or alcohol. They want to go to college, but not too far away because, of course, they don't want to be far from their mother. I hope this all sounds ridiculous to you, but I want to ask you to be honest.
How many times have you told yourself you must have done something wrong as a mother because you acted in a certain way, or because your children acted in a certain way? How many times have you judged yourself as a mother because you haven't lived up to some imaginary expectations of what you should be doing or not doing, and what your children are doing or not doing? I'm willing to bet that all of us as mothers have done this. Every single one of us. And let's take a closer look at our expectations of ourselves based on what our children do or say.
As mothers, we're constantly looking for signs of danger with our children. As they grow more independent, the risks we perceive seem to grow exponentially. We don't want them to abuse drugs or alcohol.
The risk is quite literally death. We don't want them to spend too much time on their phones, or too much time gaming, or scrolling through social media. For sure, if they do, they'll be less engaged in school, more subject to bullying, and confronted with inappropriate videos, images, and language.
We want them to have friends that seem safe and nice. We want them to have the right number of friends who do the right things on the weekends. We want our kids to achieve certain things in school, be involved in certain things.
All of us have an image of what we want for our children. And while on the one hand it would seem that we are judging our children and what they are doing, when it comes down to it, why do our children's behavior and accomplishments matter to us? Really think about it. On the one hand, we tell ourselves that if they don't act the right way and approach life in a way that will bring them success and happiness, there's a risk they won't have a happy, successful life.
We love our children, and so of course we want them to grow up to be happy, successful adults. But the problem for us is that we can envision what it would mean for us if our children can't achieve happiness and success. Look, we've likely already experienced it.
Our children aren't always happy, and they're also not always successful. Sometimes it's easier to know that they need to fail sometimes in order to achieve success, especially if the fails are small. But other times, failure or worse, big mistakes and errors in judgment seem like they have far-reaching implications and not just immediate consequences.
So what does it mean for us as mothers if our kids aren't successful? Really ask this of yourself. What does it mean for you as a mother if your kids fail, if they go off the beaten path? Some of us may think, whether we really want to or not, that we have failed in some way if this happens, that our children's failures are our failures. The underlying assumption is that we should have done something differently to prevent our children's failure, to prevent them from being harmed or unhappy or unsuccessful.
For some of us, this failure or lack of success or unhappiness hasn't even happened yet, but we imagine what could happen in a worst-case scenario and we do everything in our power to stop it. Wrong boyfriend? We've got to put a stop to this relationship. Not good with money? We need to make sure they have a job so that they can learn the value of a dollar.
Not going out on the weekends? What if this means she'll be lonely and never develop a close group of friends? Wrong social crowd? I'm not letting him out on the weekends because I don't want him to start drinking or doing drugs. For all of us, what we want for our children and who we want our children to be may be very different, but you might identify with some of these. I want my child to be respectful.
I want him to apply himself in school. I want her to have a positive attitude. She should be honest with me.
I want my kids to tell me everything. I need to know where he is at all times. This way I know he's safe.
In the effort to be good mothers, we try to control our kids and we do this from a place of love because we want the best for our children. We want them to be safe, happy, and successful, but the even bigger question we have to ask ourselves is what would it mean for us if they aren't safe, happy, or successful? We can certainly feel sad when our children are hurting, but do we also blame ourselves? If our child is in pain, do you also judge what you should have done to prevent whatever pain he or is experiencing? The most difficult part about all of this is that no matter how hard we try, we have absolutely no control over our children once they reach a certain age. As our children approach adulthood, we have less and less control over what they do and the choices they make.
Sometimes it feels like the harder we try to help them be happy and successful, the more it backfires. But what would it look like if you stopped expecting your child to be someone in particular so that you could know that you did everything you could to love and support them? What would it look like to stop judging yourself against an imaginary expectation about how your child's life is supposed to turn out? I would imagine you would tell me that you would love your child no matter what he or she does in their life. You would love them unconditionally.
You might not approve of all their choices, but you would love them 100% no matter what. So why can't you give that same love and grace to yourself? Can you love yourself and the mother who you are no matter what path your child takes? Yes, you've signed up to love and support them, but loving them and supporting them unconditionally eventually looks like letting them go. Can you know that you are a good mother and let your child go? I've been talking about the ways we judge our bodies and the way we judge ourselves as mothers.
Think about the amount of brain space, just these types of self judgments take up in your own mind. And this is just the beginning. What other ways do you judge yourself without even realizing you're doing it? How often do you discount yourself because you don't get enough done? Because the house isn't always clean? How often do you tell yourself you're not patient or loving enough with your partner? Or maybe tell yourself that it's too late for you to find someone new? How many times a day do you use the words I should or I shouldn't? I should be more present, more grateful.
I shouldn't swear or drink or watch so much TV. We spend so much time and energy dedicated to trying to be a better version of ourselves. But one thing I've been discovering about myself is that sometimes the downside of constantly striving to be better is that we're focused on what's wrong rather than what's right.
On the face of it, there's absolutely nothing wrong with striving to improve. But so often we miss all of the ways we're perfect right now without having to do anything differently. And I'm not talking about settling for mediocrity or giving up on your goals.
I'm talking about really grasping how your lens about your qualities is skewed to see more negative than positive. And that it is possible that your innermost self is perfect and enough right now. In his work Spiritual Teacher, Eckhart Tolle makes a distinction between something he calls ego and your true self.
According to Eckhart, the ego consists of the thoughts and emotions through which we see the world. It's how we identify ourselves. Ego is any image you have of yourself that gives you a sense of identity.
You develop this sense of identity from the things you tell yourself, the things you observe in the world, the things other people say about you, all that you've decided to accept as truth. And as we've discussed, while there may well be parts of this identity you have that are positive, meaning there are parts of you that you do like, we unconsciously have many thoughts and beliefs about ourselves that are judgmental and negative. Eckhart argues that the ego, this identity we have created for ourselves with our minds, is an illusion.
These thoughts and feelings we have decided to accept as true in our lives protect us because they give us something to hold on to as ourselves. But in fact, this identity clouds our ability to see and appreciate our true selves. Eckhart says our true self or essence is your innermost I am.
It is that part of you that never changes. If you were to look inward, you might think of it as your spirit. It's timeless, formless, and entirely impossible to explain in words.
It's beautiful to think of our true selves this way, but difficult to grasp. If who we are isn't really the list of adjectives and sentences that we've always believed to be true about ourselves, then who are we? The element of Eckhart's work that I've found most helpful is the concept that this identity we each have is a function of our minds. We have created this identity.
It's the sum of the words and feelings about ourselves that we take for granted as true because we've been believing the same things about ourselves for so long. But if you take a step back and observe that this identity is simply something your brain has manufactured about yourself, you can begin to grasp the idea that if my mind is creating this concept of who I am, I might be able to decide on purpose what I want that identity to be. Going back to the example of how we identify as mothers, you've created an image of who you want to be as a mother and your ego is constantly judging you against this ideal.
Your identity forms around concepts of how you were winning as a mother and how you were falling short. This is a tricky one because it's hard to let go of the ideal image of who we're supposed to be as mothers, but I think the first place to start is to notice how often your mind makes this comparison. Notice and begin to distance yourself.
Who you are as a mother is deeper than the sum of your actions and words. Who you are, your innermost self, loves unconditionally, wants to protect her children. Your judgments about how you don't measure up are a fiction.
What if you are perfect exactly as you are? Our minds automatically want to argue, if I don't strive to be better then I'll be an awful lazy person or an impatient and unloving mother. But is that really true? What if all of it is perfect? How would you show up for yourself if you could simply recognize that your judgments about yourself are not true? That maybe you could question them, shake them loose a little bit. What would change for you if you could let go of who you think you should be and could love and appreciate exactly who you are right now? Maybe you would start looking for all of the evidence that supports that belief rather than holding on to all of the evidence that you're not enough.
You are beautiful, amazing, intelligent, powerful, confident, worthy, valuable. You are enough. Until next time, friends.
Thanks for listening to The Small Jar Podcast. Please visit us at www.thesmalljar.com, follow us on Facebook and Instagram at smalljarcoach, and subscribe to this podcast. Remember, you are the author of your story.
