So it’s been a minute since I last did a blog. Still trying to get a job in Berlin! Doing interviews sets off the anxiety as expected and to be honest my sleep of recent has been pretty terrible; I guess not having a routine really messes things up, you don’t have to get up at a reasonable time and go to work so you have another hour or 2 in bed and tell yourself “well it doesn’t really matter when I apply for those jobs as long as it’s today”, you get up at 9 or 10 and feel like you’ve wasted the morning a bit, you do some yoga or a workout or meditate and then maybe spend a few hours looking at jobs or applying, dinnertime comes, you eat and you watch Netflix for a few hours and convince yourself to go to bed at a good time so you don’t make the same mistake again and you’ll go to the gym or go for a run and clean the flat and go to the shops and apply for 3 jobs, all before lunchtime… only you’ve only been up for 12 hours so you get into bed and spend hours tossing and turning and thinking about things and overplaying hypothetical scenarios in your head and you look at the clock and its 2am and you question whether you’ll actually get to sleep because you’re wide awake…next thing you know the alarm clock on your phone goes off at 7.30 or 8 (a reasonable time to wake up) and you barely gather the energy to press the snooze button on your phone…BLAM! It’s now 11am and the whole thing starts again…so yeah I’ve been feeling a bit down and anxious about things, mainly because my quality of sleep has been rubbish. Think I’ll start by putting my phone in the living room again. Still exercising, still meditating (thanks Headspace), still practicing mindfulness in as much of my day as possible and yes, still on medication. We’ll see how it goes.
Anyway, a year or 2 ago, my older brother gave me a gift of 3 books by an author called Yong Kang Chan. They are all self-help books about using mindfulness to better understand your life and, if need be, make changes and change your perception of life. If you’re into self-help books, I highly recommend reading them. All very interesting, thought-provoking, inspiring and motivational.
“Parent Yourself Again: Love Yourself the Way You Have Always Wanted to Be Loved”
“Empty Your Cup: Why We Have Low Self-Esteem and How Mindfulness Can Help”
“The Disbelief Habit: How to Use Doubt to make Peace with Your Inner Critic"
The last one there, The Disbelief Habit, I found the most beneficial to me personally. I’ve always had a voice inside my head telling me I’m not good enough or that people don’t like me or think I’m stupid. I found this book very interesting and I’ve taken a lot of its teachings and put it into my life and practice using doubt to listen to my inner critic, appreciate what it’s saying but not take it as the gospel truth and question my thoughts. They are my thoughts, not someone else’s thoughts. I recommend this book to anyone who feels slightly controlled by their self-criticism. Anyway, as I made my way through the book, I wrote down some quotes that I thought were very interesting and resonated with me and my inner critic. Feel free to have a look and if there’s anything you read that makes you ponder you and your inner critic, then you should buy the book for sure.
“Self-criticism isn't the problem, but rather how we react to the criticism that is the problem.” "We can never win when we compare ourselves to others because the judging criteria are not the same in the first place."
"Most of us don't make the extra effort to question or check what the mind says. To us our thoughts are reality. We don't separate ourselves from our thoughts. In fact, we think we are our thoughts, we trust everything our mind tells us even though they might be unkind, hurtful and untrue and we end up building negative habits like Self-criticism." "You can't stop negative thoughts from popping into your head, but you can choose to stop letting them control you and your life." "Don't mind criticism. If it is untrue, disregard it; if it is fair, keep from irritation; if it is ignorant, smile; and if it is justified, it is not a criticism - learn from it." – probably my favourite quote from the book. "When you disbelieve, you are doubting your thoughts, not doubting yourself - you are just the perceiver." “If the minds role is to spot problems and exaggerate them, then OUR role is to uncover the exaggerations and not believe them.”
“You might not be able to stop your Self-criticism totally, but you can always create an environment and a process to facilitate constructive criticism.” “Self-criticism is a habit that can be changed by becoming aware of your reactions. Even though you have no control over all of your thoughts, you have the freedom of choice to believe them or not.”
One of the most thought provoking points in the book is where it talks about separating your thoughts from you. To put it in perspective, if you read something on a screen and you go right up to the screen, you can't read it because the words will lose focus. In the same way you have to move back from the screen to read something, you have to create and maintain a space between yourself and your thoughts so you can become aware of them. This is why seeing self-criticism can be so hard but seeing when someone else criticises or judges you can be quite easy. The damage is observable when the critic is not within you, but you can't see the difference when you're too close to your thoughts.
Hope something from this post stood out for you or has helped offer some form of perspective on something going on in your life, and if you like the sound of the book, then I would recommend purchasing it along with the other 2 books I mentioned.
Take care
Beef