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Walking around with a fist in your face
By Douglas Cartwright
Sometimes in court a judge will grant lenience to someone who has killed another person through negligence or manslaughter because "they have suffered enough". This usually means that the person's conscience has so tormented them for what they have done, or the community has reacted to this person in such a way that the judge decides it would be pointless to inflict more punishment on the person.
Some of us don't need a judge.
When I was at school a favorite trick of some of the bigger bullies was to grab a child's wrist and get him to punch himself in the face whilst shouting: "Stop hitting yourself! Stop hitting yourself!"
Some of us don't need a bully.
We do it to ourselves for free.
I used to go around believing that other people were out to hurt me.
Yes, there were historical reasons for this but the main point was that I deeply
believed that other people -
This translated into timidity and missed opportunities going into my thirties. It's not that I didn't public speak, lead, teach etc but when it came down to it, I hid from potentially risky situations.
It was through the use of a series of questions called the Meta-
I would ask questions like:
How do I know specifically that people are out to hurt me?
What exactly do I see hear or feel that leads me to believe they can hurt me?
This helped but it still felt like people could get me just through expressing hostile intent.
Then I asked the clincher question:
Isn't there a possibility that their intent doesn't hurt you and you just hurt yourself when you perceive their intent is hostile?
That was it.
I had come to believe that other people could psychologically hurt me when in fact I was hurting myself and believing it was them.
Does this touch any nerves with you?
The truth is, I had been walking around ready to punch myself in the face any time I imagined someone was out to get me.
I had been my own worst enemy. And the moment I realized this I got the power to stop. As the great Gestalt psychologist Fritz Perls said "Awareness per se is curative". Ain't that the truth.
As a coach I have a few lines I would use at this point.
"Who gave you permission to speak to yourself like that!"
"That's my friend you're talking to!"
The freedom that came along with realizing that I been dismissing, discounting and disparaging myself without even realizing it was wonderful.
So now over to you.
• How is your self talk?
• How kind are you to yourself?
If you get tempted to say "X hates me" try asking instead "How am I hating myself?"
Stick with the question and keep asking it. Persistence wins the day.
You can also make changes with The Ultimate Self-
Douglas Cartwright is a meta-