The best remedy for shame

Today I’m noticing that shame is visiting again. It gets particularly hard to sleep, function, think or have any reality-based perspective about myself or life in general when that happens.

Some petty feelings of jealousy, competitiveness and scarcity are coming up and on top of that all, there’s the shame for even having those feelings. 

As I struggle to fall asleep I hear: “Remember! You are not your thoughts, you are not your feelings, you are not your struggles, you are much bigger than that”. 

“Wow. I sooo needed to hear that”.

And then, even more perspective: “How about that very very cool thing that you did yesterday that included moving towards people which totally went against those petty feelings you’re experiencing right now”?

“Oh yeah. That’s right. That was quite big of me to do”.

Then that gave me an idea: how about I set an intention for today to just sit down and make a list of all the things I appreciate about myself, or things I’m proud of doing…

I do that from time to time and I forget how powerful this tool is as an antidote for shame. 

The trick is to firmly reject any reservation that may surface, because believe me they will! 

We often think that if we appreciate ourselves too much we may appear conceited to ourselves or to others but this is not about boasting or being arrogant.

This is about reflecting back to ourselves our true nature as opposed to experiencing the pseudo-reality created by our struggles. 

Our culture is steeped in shame and we inhale that from the time we get here.

We need as many reminders as possible to show us who we really are and we can’t solely rely on others to do that because they are probably steeped in their own shame.

And guess what, we are best equipped to do that because we are the ones living our lives knowing the little things we do or the little ways we are that are worth appreciating. 

So what is one thing that you can appreciate about yourself today?