When things went wrong and one of my kids would be upset I'd ask them: "What would you say if this happened to one of your friends." Invariably the answer was different from what they had been saying to themselves. "Then," I'd tell them, "be your own best friend and tell that to yourself."
Why are we so much harder on ourselves than we would be to others? I can't understand why, but we all do it? Why do we give ourselves such bad advice when we'd give so much better advice to our friends? I can't answer that either. But we do it. Me too.
It took me years of telling my kids "be your own best friend" before I realized that this was good advice for me, as well, and finally took it.
2 comments:
I think that the reason that it is hard to be your own best friend is because you doubt your objectivity in an emotional situation. Typically when you are giving your friend advice, you can do that with a very objective and clean heart.
That's a fair comment. And it's why the question always was: "What would you say if this happened to one of your friends." It's a way to try and distance you from the problem. Maybe even better would be: "What would you say if this happened to [name a friend]? What if it happened to [name a different friend]?
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