When we encourage others but can't give ourselves a break

My daughter, who teaches music to small children, bless her, said something the other day that made me think very hard.  

How can we – especially educators and parents – express such faith in another person’s potential, forgive their mistakes so easily, yet give ourselves so much grief when we mess up?

It spawned a discussion about how this habit can, over time, become so automatic you may not know you’re doing it, and would not do it at all if you knew what it does to your inside person.

We all have them, inside people. They embody our purest wishes, hopes, strengths, power, intelligence, humanity and talent. I have come to believe that what you understand in your bones about someone else is your connection to your own inside person. Whether you’ve struggled with, or conquered, or still have to overcome, or make a decision about the same issue, connection to your own inside person through another can change your life. 

I used to feel stressed and anxious so often I stopped considering it unusual. It was with me all the time – restlessness and uncertainty that I would have urged anyone else to resolve as quickly as possible. The more I listened to others, the more my bones felt it, and after a while, my inside person raised her hand and said, "Um, over here."

  

It took a long time to realize that in writing especially, I was choosing the thought stream that created the feelings, which created the behavior in response: I don't want to expose my true feelings about this. The period of procrastination before I became a more authentic writer was long.

However, where there is choice, there is the freedom to change. 

When you understand that you're doing this, you can focus on identifying and disabling such self-rebukes. I compare it to catching an arrow in the air before it can get in my head. Somewhere on this misty, wonderous path, I became good at arrow catching, being my own anxiety guard, asking the arrows to please show me their I.D. and tell me the nature of their business.  

I don’t know how often your inside people clash with what life tells you to do, but for many people, it is problematic from the beginning.  It not only can leave you conflicted between wish-I-could, and but-I-can't, it and can set up an inner clash between you and the idea that life is always bigger and smarter than you are. 

It’s the quiet kid who is told (or forced) to be more social. It’s the exuberant kid who is always told to chill. It’s the nervous kid who is told not to worry and just be who they are, which is exactly what the nervous kid is afraid of being at the moment.  It’s the conflicted kid who needs to know, but isn’t always taught, that at ages 12 thru 16, all feelings can be scary and weird and okay at the same time.

Life, with its rules and shoulds, and people who know better, and passive shaming responses to our organic ideas and plans, will, in the beginning, overwhelm the inside person. But later, maybe much later, after the inside person has shared its notes with you about why you're perfectly fine and has shown you the proof - look at your sweet friends, look at your capacity for love, look at your extraordinary kindness – well, life will start being more agreeable.

Inside people may not be ferocious, but they’re tenacious and patient. They wait. They don't leave. 

And it might take some of us longer than others, but  when you do get close enough to see how much that inside person looks, and actually is, exactly like you, be sure to notice the pile of arrows at their feet that were once too fast for you to catch.