Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

Re: Taking myself less seriously

Author:Dave Winer
Posted:9/11/2000; 2:49:33 PM
Topic:fork
Msg #:21194 (In response to 21193)
Prev/Next:21193 / 21195

I tend to be hard on myself too. A few years ago I tuned into how it works, maybe this algorithm will work for you too.

Whenever I'd tip over a glass or drop something a voice inside me would say "You stupid idiot!" Maybe not always exactly those words. There was nothing I could do to stop it, it's an instinctive thing. But one day it happened and I tried an experiment. I responded to the voice. I said "David is not stupid, he's very smart and I love him very much and I want you to stop saying those things to him."

It felt really good instead of really bad. (It seems my inner child believed the angry voice and felt threatened by it.)

Then I tried other responses like "It just was just a glass of water, not the end of the world."

Over time the angry voice has quieted down. It's basically a coward, picking on a little child (my ego) and when challenged it tends to crawl away into a corner and hide.

There's a therapy designed around this, btw, called voice dialog, some people call it hypnotherapy and it's related to massage. The premise is that there is no single entity that's a human being, that every human is actually a community of personalities always chattering at and arguing with and berating itself.

The role of meditation is to go underneath the noise, not to make it go away (impossible) but to focus the consciousness at what's deeper, below the emotional level. It works.

(BTW, have you heard from your new programming partner yet?)

There are responses to this message:

This page was archived on 6/13/2001; 4:56:38 PM.

© Copyright 1998-2001 UserLand Software, Inc.