19 : Being Kind to Yourself
I’d like to start with a recent client testimonial.
“When I started coaching I was a pretty anxious person - always worried, weighed down by self-imposed feelings of obligation and stress, and feeling like I wasn't experiencing the joy in life. I came to coaching with the intention of focusing on my career but it's also been about so much more than that. Through the sessions I've come to understand myself better and recognise the importance of being kind to myself. I've stopped being so self-critical and perfectionist, and feel much more optimistic and energised about life in general. I feel more in control, have taken positive steps so that my focus is now on work that I enjoy, have learnt how to set goals and also how to maintain boundaries on my time."
This client believed that she had to be more motivated and to push herself even harder in order to achieve her goals – and she is not alone in believing that the way to move forward, to achieve more, is to beat ourselves up harder. The Gremlin (introduced in Article 2) has a field day telling you that whatever you do it's never enough, however hard you work you should be working harder and so on and so forth. Using the Gremlin to ‘motivate’ you doesn’t work – or at least, not in the long run.
Here is one definition of motivation :
“Factors that push or pull us as individuals to behave in a particular manner”
When you are relying on the Gremlin to motivate you, you are hoping that those Gremlin messages will ‘push’ you. However, you may have noticed that, often, the more you push the more resistance is created. The harder you ‘try to’, the less you seem to ‘want to’. So instead of creating your new marketing plan, designing your herb garden, starting your novel or contacting prospective clients you find yourself slumped in front of the television watching some mind-numbingly awful programme. Or playing patience on the computer. Or perhaps you are doing something you enjoy but feeling guilty about it because you ‘should’ be doing something else and are annoyed with yourself for not ‘being motivated’.
The key is the word ‘should’. “I should do some marketing” tends to mean “I should do some marketing but I don’t really want to”. Otherwise why not say “I want to do some marketing” which has a very different feel to it.
If you aren’t motivated to do something its probably because you don’t really want to do it. And no matter how hard you push its never going to feel easy, never going to flow. Pushing yourself to do something you don’t want to do is not being kind to yourself.
Now at this point all sorts of thoughts may be running through your mind, for example :
- “That’s all very well but I have to pay the mortgage”
- “No gain without pain”
- “Life isn’t about just doing what you want”
But I’m not suggesting that ‘being kind to yourself’ means becoming irresponsible or suddenly stopping doing everything you are doing that you don’t want to do or don’t enjoy doing.
When coaching there is a very useful guideline that coaches use – “Follow the aliveness”. The most productive and exciting things for clients to explore and think about are the things that bring them alive, that release their energy.
So what I am suggesting is that you focus on identifying what pulls you rather than what is pushing you; that instead of asking yourself “How can I ‘make’ myself more motivated to do ….?” you ask yourself some different questions.
For example :
What does motivate me? What do I have energy for? How could I change my life so that I can do more of this and less of the ‘shoulds’?
If, at the moment, I feel I ‘have to’ carry on doing things that I’m not motivated to do, is there any way that I can make some changes so that there is more ‘want’ and less ‘should’ involved?
Being kind to yourself is really about trusting yourself and believing in yourself. About believing that you can make a living and enjoy doing so.
About trusting that if you give yourself permission to follow your heart, follow your dreams, you won’t end up living in a cardboard box.
About believing that if you have a goal, but are not motivated to take the actions you believe necessary to achieve that goal, that there are other ways to achieve it – and exploring and experimenting to find those new ways.
Whatever experience you have there is always something to be learned from it. Not being motivated does not have to be a ‘problem’. It’s a source of very useful information. You’re attempting to take action in the wrong direction.
You might like to refer back to previous Articles which have addressed ways of identifying the ‘right’ direction (7 : Following Your Bliss; 15 : “You Gotta Have a Dream”)
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