Have you ever experienced the feeling that you may feel better if someone were to pep you up or give you more importance? You may be surprised that you yourself have the capability to do this for yourself.
Each one of us has two ways of motivating oneself: you can either motivate yourself in a negative manner using your critical voice or you can motivate yourself in a positive manner by using your champion voice.
Your critical voice constantly brings you down by attacking and humiliating you while your champion voice motivates you through love, care and encouragement. The critical voice is a step further from negative thinking because it makes sure you feel unworthy and humiliated. On the other hand, the champion voice helps you focus on your own achievements. Along with love and care, it will help you not only to accept but also to elevate you beyond your perceived ceiling. This voice is different from positive thinking – in that, positive thinking can sometimes be unrealistic. If the critical voice tends to overide your champion voice, then applying these 5 aspects in your daily life, will be helpful for you!
1) Prioritise Yourself: You are important! Whether you are a teenager, a stay at home parent, or a working person, your needs and desires are important! If you do not prioritise yourself then why would someone else? Prioritising yourself is different from being selfish; instead, it is about self care. As they say in flights, put on your oxygen mask before helping others. Prioritising and respecting yourself does not mean that you do not respect others. The logic is that you can’t help anyone unless you first help yourself.
You need to understand that it is okay if everyone does not like you or you don’t like everyone. Just to please someone, you should never agree to do or say something you are not comfortable with, and then end up displeasing yourself. So, in an assertive manner, learn to say ‘yes’ to yourself and ‘no’ to others. Initially, you may feel bad or guilty yourself or people around you may think that you are focused only on yourself. However, gradually they will come to respect you for who you are.
2) Identify Your Internal Voices: We all have an internal dialogue with ourselves. More often than not, people who are self-bullies have either been bullied in their childhood physically or emotionally by kids, adolescents, relatives, and at times, even parents. While the active bullying may have stopped years back, the voice of this bullying is carried forward by us. In due time, this voice becomes prominent and strong, to the extent that it overrides your own voice.
Become aware of the difference of your own current voice and that of your old bullying one. At every occasion when required to choose between the voices because of the ensuing internal dialogue, learning to consciously reject the old bullying voice and choosing the current voice is another step towards building yourself up.
3) Identify And Surround Yourself With Your Champions: Look around and ask yourself – of all the people in my life, who are the people who will be genuinely happy for me and who are the people who will be resentful, jealous, judgemental or competitive about my achievement or success? Who are the people who will actually support me in my hard time and I feel I can reciprocate that for them; and who are the people who are having fun at my expense?
Though critics are important because they help present the reality of life to you from their own perspective, the purpose is not to eliminate the critics in your life but to identify and distance (in your mind) yourself from them and consciously surround yourself with your champions. This is a small contribution you can make for yourself for your peace of mind and happiness.
4) Build Personal Boundaries: Think of boundaries such as a door or a gate in your house. Their prime purpose is to safeguard your house. These are physical boundaries with inanimate objects in your life.
Similarly in your life, there are physical and emotional boundaries that you can define for people in your life in order to protect yourself. For example, you may decide that you will only do a certain amount for X person so that you will not cause stress to yourself. These boundaries (in your mind) are necessary to define because there are people in your life (family members or friends) who think that they can ask anything they need from you because they think their needs are more important than yours. The more you align yourself with your boundaries, the more you will be able to communicate with people around you with clarity.
5) Stop Self-depreciating Talk: Some of the ways people depreciate themselves include talking down to themselves by either belittling or criticizing themselves, focusing on their weaknesses, or pulling their strengths down. All these lead to low self-esteem and a lack of self-worth and confidence.
You may be doing these in your mind or in front of others to ensure others do not put you down first. But, it is time to stop. Tell yourself you are ‘good enough’ or, in fact, better than anyone. Learn to appreciate yourself.
In life, it is very important to be your biggest champion! So ask yourself? Do you want to continue listening to your critical voice or do you want to be your own champion? If you find yourself struggling, then therapy can help you identify and develop the "Big 5" to help you be your own biggest champion!
