How critical are you of others? Can you say the same of yourself? Are you gentle with yourself? Do you understand why that it is important?
Today’s card is one of my mandala/tangles. I learned how to draw a mandala only recently. It is full of beautiful possibilities. But sometimes, when I look at it very closely, I wonder how I ever thought I could pretend to make art.
And then I remember this quote by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.:
We expect more of ourselves than we have any right to.
It was in my Daily Wisdom newsletter today from Lissa Coffey. And it made me remember that I’ve promised not to be so critical of the people I love–including myself.
How critical are you of others? Can you say the same of yourself? Are you gentle with yourself? Do you understand why that it is important?
Consider verbal abuse. Too many of us have had first hand experience with this. I was very lucky to have a mother who was NOT verbally abusive. Oh, she was critical in some ways but never in a way that caused me damage. My verbal (and physical) abuser was one of my first lovers. She was extremely cruel.
I left that relationship with a lot of baggage. And I had learned to think of myself in horrible ways. It wasn’t anything for me to think of myself as fat or stupid or lazy. Yep, she did a number on me that took a lot of work to move away from.
Sometimes I drift back there in times of extreme stress. But, smile, not so much these days. I’ve learned that I must be as forgiving with myself as I am with others. I must proffer the same kindness to me as I do to others.
Do you expect more of yourself than you have any right to? Do you understand that you must speak to yourself as you would have others speak to you? Yep, the Golden Rule reversed. You must do unto yourself as you would do unto others.
You wouldn’t tell a friend that their love left them because they were fat or stupid would you? Why do that to yourself?
You wouldn’t tell a child they failed a test because they were lazy would you? Why do that to yourself?
Practice being nice to you. It will make you better at being nice to others.
Now about my mandala? I think it’s fabulous. And I would have never even DREAMED of trying it before getting involved in two online circles. The Gaian Circle and the Goddess Circle.
Sample a bit of the positivity of the Goddess Circle by . It’s changing a lot of lives right now.
“She had so deep a kinship with the trees, so intuitive a sympathy with leaf and flower, that it seemed as if the blood in her veins was not slow-moving human blood, but volatile sap.”
