I've been noticing something. I've been noticing what happens when I just love myself. And by 'love myself' I mean: meet myself with acceptance, with acknowledgement, with: "Oh, so that's what you're doing right now."
I've been noticing this most when I am acting in what I would consider a less-than-lovable way. My normal response to this behavior is to get disappointed in myself or try to figure out how to change myself- I basically deny this part of my existence as a part of me and work really hard to get rid of it.
But occasionally, when I am being especially present, I will see a part of me like this and look upon it with kindness, with love, with "Oh, look at you." And the weirdest thing happens. It's like I look up from this place in which I am cowered and hiding and hoping that no one will find me and I see someone smiling at me, encouraging me, and I think, "That's it? I'm okay? You mean you don't hate me?"
And in the past, I would have thought that if I were met with this- with acceptance and love- that it would encourage the "bad" behavior in me, that I would go right back to what I was doing that was so unlovable. But instead that face- of acceptance and kindness- draws me out of that cowering place, out of hiding, toward whoever that person is who is smiling.
And then two things seem to happen: first, that behavior, that I was convinced totally defined me as a person, that would only go away if I worked really hard on it, is gone. It's like it was just an event, instead of who I am, forever.
And then the second thing is that I actually want to act in a way that harmonizes with that person who is encouraging me. I don't actually want to be that person who I was being before. But instead of trying to will that "bad" person out of me, I have this feeling that I can walk away from it, leave it there, just drop it, instead of trying so hard to make it go away.
I'm a teacher- so this relationship of noticing behaviors and trying to change them, is a really big part of what I do... all day long. I have little ones who shout out things like "You don't know that?!" when someone says the wrong answer, who take granola bars that belong to others and then lie about it, and who run to the front of line even though they totally know that 'you can't cut!"
I want them to stop these behaviors because I want them to be accepted by their friends. I want others to see that this is not all that they are. I want their sweet selves to be what everyone else in class sees, not this somewhat self- centered mode of thinking that pisses everyone off.
So I work really hard to come up with ways to discourage these behaviors, to keep them from happening again. And, to be honest, the most common way that I do this is to punish the behavior- provide consequences for the behavior that are unpleasant so that when the child thinks about doing it again, they will avoid doing it to avoid these consequences.
But now I don't think that's really all that effective. Because when I think about myself, how I respond to getting mad at myself, to being disappointed in my behavior, to focusing only on changing myself to avoid that in the future- I see myself as this person, in this corner, focused only on how bad I am. I am stuck in that place of being a bad person and all I can seem to do is focus on how bad I am. I don't see anything good in myself and don't really have any place to go other than just "Bad you! Bad you!" So I just stay there, and hope it doesn't happen again. I might try to imagine future scenarios or come up with strategies to control myself next time but until that situation happens again, I can't really do anything about it.
And then I compare myself to when I was met with kindness- and it's a totally different ball game. The ickiness that I feel about myself for doing what I've done is still there, but when I look up, instead of being met with further rejection and confirmation that, in fact, I am a bad person, I am met with this look of "You're okay. We still love you. We get it- it was a bummer... and,,, we still love you."
And that changes everything. It's like it's over. It's like there's hope for other things. It's like I might be able to be someone else. And that encourages me to let go of who I was, helps me to see that I am that and I am other things too- that there is a world of possibilities of who I am and that when I try them, I will still be okay. And that makes me want to go forward, to come out of that place of "badness," to move on to being whoever it is that I am next.
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