Stop Being So Kind To Yourself

When I invite people to my house, inevitably I find myself saying something like “excuse the mess.” And just as inevitably, the typical response from my guest is, “of course you have a mess, you have three children.”

And it is a very kind response. If I were to take that response to heart, and really believe it, I would be kind to myself. I would love myself, and forgive myself for the state of my house because it is completely understandable to everyone around me. Right?

Wrong.

Accepting this is being unkind to myself, because it is being untruthful. And when I begin to go down this path of acceptance, I get very comfortable with the Language of Excuse. What’s that? The Language of Excuse is this whole social jargon we use to not only excuse ourselves of doing less than our best, but enable others to excuse themselves. If we’re all setting the bar low together, we feel better together.

Now, I want to note here, I am not saying to beat yourself up or wallow in misery because legitimate challenges around you cause you to do less than you are trying for. I am saying that the kindest thing you can do for yourself is be completely honest. When you can be completely honest you can begin the process of true acceptance, serious growth, and radical life changes. This is true if we’re talking about where you are as an artist or musician, your health, your relationships, basically anything.

Back to my messy house. I can use the Language of Excuse to feel better about myself. It’s easy to spot. It usually has the word “because” or “if.” And in the above example, it’s clear my house is a mess because I have three children. But it isn’t the truth. The truth is, my house is much cleaner now than it was before I had children. The kids have forced me to clean more just to stave off complete chaos, and that’s helped train me to at least occasionally pick up after myself and everyone else. My house is a mess because I don’t like to clean my house, and when I’m thinking about something else, I rarely even notice the piles of dishes and laundry.

Once I can accept that, I can deal with it. What are my options? Keep working on doing better. Definitely. I’ve made a lot of progress over the last ten years, and I intend to make more. Come to terms with the fact that this is the truth of how I live, and if I want to let people into my life they have to understand that sometimes they are going to come over to visit and find chaos. Accept that sometimes other things are more important and even though I want my house to look like a magazine spread, I am never going to pick that as what’s really important.

I had to go through a similar process with  my art. I was frustrated at my lack of progress, and I had a whole, complex tangle of excuses as to why I was nearly 40 and not in any way fulfilling the creativity that I always thought I would put into the world. I had picked up drawing again and was frustrated at my lack of progress. So I needed excuses for why I wasn’t accomplishing as much as I hoped even though I was drawing all the time. But when I decided to be really honest, I tracked how much actually time I was spending, I had to acknowledge it was less than a couple hours a week. Sometimes not even an hour. And I could come up with more excuses as to why I wasn’t spending the time (I had a baby and a toddler!) I had to acknowledge I had time for other things like several hours a week to just watch tv. I wasn’t making it a priority.

And that truth changed everything.

Give it a try. Don’t berate yourself or get all depressed.

But love yourself enough to be really honest about something you are making excuses about so you can look for the truth of what you need to accept or change.