While the outer world can be an unpleasant place for many, the inner world can sometimes be even more hostile. What if you return from your busy work at home, and then, at night, your own inner company turns out to be a nightmare? What are you to do when, during the day, your grumpy boss throws his frustrations at you and, in your free time, your nagging, critical self takes the job over?
DISRESPECT HURTS
Well, first you must understand something. Whenever you criticize yourself or allow others to bully you, you disrespect yourself. This damages the relationship with yourself. You feel hurt, angry, and, ultimately, you don’t dare to trust yourself anymore. The connection with yourself (and with others) suffers and becomes challenging. But what’s in the world outside only reflects what lives inside us. In reality, there’s no difference between criticizing yourself and being criticized by others. You feel bad in both cases.
WHAT YOU’RE ACTUALLY SAYING
Whether you assign blame to yourself or to someone else, you’re actually saying: ‘if only you’d behave differently, I could be happy and at peace. Since you don’t, you cause my misery and discomfort. You have to change your behaviour or you’re a bad person making others feel miserable. You owe it to me to help me feel good’.
MAKING OTHERS HAPPY ISN’T an OBLIGATION; IT’S a GIFT
But are you right? Why should someone owe it to you to make you happy? And why should YOU? Making someone happy isn’t an obligation, it’s a gift. However, making yourself happy is your job. It’s a choice, too, that only you can take.
STOP FOOLING YOURSELF
If you give the power over your happiness to the bully part in you, you automatically sacrifice it. You give up the ability to make your own decisions, and become a victim of yourself. You stop to be in charge of your own positive thoughts, feelings, and (re)actions, and start to try controlling those of others. You then compensate your lack of power by trying to overpower others following the slogan ‘if you can’t beat them, join them. If you can’t join them, blame them’.
Judging yourself may give a short kick of feeling in control, but beneath the judgment, there’s doubt of competence, shame, fear of consequences, and a lack of capacity to control your own life.
WHY OTHERS MAY BULLY YOU
By giving your autonomy (the freedom to determine your own (re)actions) away, your power and clarity disunite, and so do you. Your larger perspective and understanding fall apart, and little by little, you become an embodiment of some smaller, narrow minded person that, in addition, comes into opposition with oneself. You start to argue with yourself, bully yourself, and others will mirror that by bullying you. Remember, the world outside only mirrors back what lives inside us.
So, do yourself a favor. Stop being grumpy about yourself. You’ll love yourself for that!
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