Challenge 1: Shut Up Self

I was on a walk with a friend around Town Lake in Austin, which is rare since for the most part I take my sojourns around the lake solo and in running shoes and rarely even pause to wave to my acquaintances for fear of ruining my stride.  

My friend, Leslie, had recently taken up running and as we crossed the bridge she interjected that this bridge was where she always took a pause from her run to congratulate herself on what a good job she had done.  This idea of stopping, in full sight of others, on the bridge floored me and I asked her, "But don't you mock yourself for stopping?  I mean, you aren't done with your run yet?"  The idea of stopping confused me, I hadn't even begun to address her self congratulation.

Leslie asked me, equally confused by my confusion as I was by what she was explaining, "Well, what do you do when you take a break while exercising?"

The truth is, if I stop mid-exercise, mid work day, mid-project, mid-anything I bring down a brutal beating on myself.  "Why aren't you running?  How do you ever expect to improve?  You haven't even gone 3 miles."  

No one is a harsher critic than I, and truth be told I am a favorite victim of the voice inside my head.  I enjoy being pushed to improvement and the bitch in my head is more than happy to oblige.  

Following my walk with Leslie, I started to chronicle my self "critiques" and I was floored by what I noticed.  I always assume I'm doing a terrible job at work, that I'm not being an attentive enough friend, that I'm pudgy, that I'm single because I'm difficult/too picky, in a nutshell-that I am not, or are not doing, enough.

Realizing that I talked to myself in a way I wouldn't talk to a mortal enemy was eye-opening…especially since I'm successful at my job, ran a god-damn marathon so I'm pretty fit, have lots of friends, and from the outside seem to have my shit together and a damn good life.  Why couldn't I enjoy it?  Why did I have such a hard time appreciating my own achievements?

I mulled that question over for several days.  I consulted books, blushed when my sister mocked the introduction of Deepak Chopra to my bookshelf, took to pinning motivational quotes on Pinterest, and concluded that my self criticism and trouble with moderation were all intertwined.  That silencing my critic was going to be crucial to getting comfortable with moderation.  

Of course, it's all a bit chicken or the egg isn't it?  But in any event one of my hurdles to getting comfortable with moderation is going to be understanding my critic-and hopefully shutting her up-or just maybe, changing her tune.