JUST ONE LOOK

Le weekend est fini.

My friend Erika was in town from Boston. She told an anecdote about being told she was too judgmental. My brother David thinks that not only am I too judgmental and critical, but way too willing to broadcast my opinions. And I as sat down to write, and thought about le weekend and the day today, parsing it into successes and failures to add up my experience, it occurred to me that maybe I am too judgmental.

As a producer and as a sometime editor, being critical and judging ARE my job. Assessing, examining, eyeing, weighing, projecting outcomes ... all of those skills have become habits that I realize I bring to bear on myself a little too harshly. (I am not as good at projecting outcomes for myself.)

Rick Hanson has a newsletter titled Just One Thing. Yesterday's post was about being for yourself.

Are you on your own side?   The Practice   Be for yourself.

Why? To tell others what you really need, or to take any steps toward your own well-being - like the practices in the Just One Thing newsletter - you have got to be on your own side. Not against others, but for yourself. For many people, that's harder than it sounds. Maybe you were raised to think you didn't matter as much as other people. Maybe when you've tried to stick up for yourself, you've been blocked or knocked down. Maybe deep down you feel you don't deserve to be happy. Whatever the reason, many people are not strong advocates for themselves. As a result, they are harshly self-critical, even mean toward themselves. Or indifferent to their own pain, lax about protecting themselves from mistreatment, or lazy about doing those things - both inside their head and outside, in the outer world - to make their life better. So it's a good idea to make sure you are on your own side. Then you can figure out whatever would be good to do. And now it will have real oomph behind it!

I find some truth in this. Harshly self-critical. Yep.

So, I will not list a litany of my transgressions against myself this weekend. Mistakes were made. But so was a great rosemary-garlic roast chicken. And so was progress in my on-going house-organization.

This reminded me of Doris Troy's Just One Look.