An Exercise to Counter Self-Criticism

[Manuel Tavares]

An Exercise to Counter Self-Criticism
By David R. Hamilton PhD.
+https://rayviolet.blogspot.com/2022/05/an-exercise-to-counter-self-...

Do you ever criticise yourself? Or let me put it differently. Do you ever give yourself a hard time for not feeling good, not being at your best, or for making mistakes or errors of judgment?

You’re not alone if you do.

Nearly everyone I know tends to be self-critical at times.

Granted, some have it down to a fine art and if there was an Olympic sport in it, we’d be right up there as medal contenders.

But regardless of whether you’re a little time self-critic or a big-time practitioner, here’s an exercise that should prove to be quite helpful. It helps to shift self-criticism towards self-compassion.

It relies on the fact that self-criticism is a learned habit. We’re not born as self-critics. Sometimes it’s learned from parents, siblings, friends, teachers at school, and sometimes just through feeling worn down by circumstances of life. But whatever the source, it’s a habit that we learn.

But if it can be learned, then it can also be unlearned. We’ve just learned a habit of listening to a critical portion of ourselves. Another part of us, deep down, knows that what we tell ourselves in critical moments simply isn’t true.

The key to the following technique is to learn to listen to this deeper portion of yourself. I call the technique the Inner Buddha technique, but you’ll find variations of it online under different names.

How to practice the Inner Buddha technique

Here’s how to practice the technique. Take three pens of different colours.+++https://rayviolet.blogspot.com/2022/05/an-exercise-to-counter-self-...