Andy Lee
…”Love your neighbour as yourself.” Considered in the bible as the 2nd greatest commandment in the bible, it’s used as a principle and golden rule across society and cultures, even beyond Christianity.
But perhaps what isn’t talked about so much is how this could apply to ourselves, and the huge impact this has on our well-being and how much success we achieve in life.
I grew up being quite the perfectionist and I set very high standards for myself. I was my own worst critic. I rarely needed telling off for not doing well at school, and I didn’t need criticising for having a bad game in a football match. I did a good enough job by myself. I would verbally beat myself up in my own head. And sometimes out loud. “You idiot”, “Wow that was dumb”, “What a stupid mistake that was”, “You’re rubbish”, “You’re pathetic”, and often a lot worse language.
Do you think that this kind of self-treatment has any long-lasting impact? Absolutely it does! You see, our subconscious mind doesn’t know the difference between something we vividly imagine and something that is actually happening outside of us. So calling yourself a failure, or constantly bringing yourself down with critical language has the same effect as someone else saying it to you. Think about it, you’re slowly and inevitably convincing and proving to yourself that you are indeed useless and worthless. Ouch. In fact. Mega ouch!
But maybe what isn’t as clear is how this self-critical mistreatment of yourself influences your relationship with other people too. Because here’s the thing, the way you communicate, and in effect, have a relationship with yourself is a strong indicator of how others will treat you too.
If you can grasp this crucial truth and you begin to appreciate the relationship between these two concepts, then you’ll begin to realise how much control you actually have over how others treat you. That’s not to say that you will suddenly gain masterful powers of persuasion, bending and manipulating people to your will, but what you will start to get is an entirely new perspective on how that, by the measure with which you treat yourself, your relationships with others will rise and fall by the same measure.
Romantic relationships are a great example to use to illustrate this further, although this is a universal principle and applies to all types of relationships.
So, Jack hasn’t had much success with relationships. He has asked many girls out and has liked even more but he’s constantly getting rejected. At first glance we could surmise that Jack isn’t looking in the right places or it could be his technique and approach that’s letting him down. Both of those could be true, but let’s actually focus on Jack’s internal voice and the beliefs that he’s developing as a result.
As the number of rejections mount up, so does his lack of self-confidence. At first he might have been thinking “Oh well, I guess it wasn’t meant to be, I’ll keep looking”. Then later it becomes “What’s wrong with me?”, “Why can’t I find the one?”, and “Why is it so hard to be happy?”. Now as Jack starts asking these kind of questions to himself, his brain will start answering them and you could probably bet that the answers won’t be very positive. “Because you’re too short”, “You’re too tall”, “You’re too ugly”, “You’re too fat”, You’re too skinny”, “You don’t earn enough money”, “You’re too loud”, “You’re too quiet”…
And this is how Jack’s treatment of himself begins to change. For the worse. What follows next is the change in his behaviour as a result of his negative self-treatment. Negative self-treatment leads to negative and unhelpful behaviour. All of this reduces his chances of being in a relationship more than before.
Now he’s thinking about how unattractive he is, plus all the other things that are wrong with him, as he meets girls. And this comes across in his interactions. He starts clamming up in conversations, he can’t get his words out, he doesn’t engage fully because he’s more focused on how bad he is rather than focusing on the person in front of him. And how do you now think the others will respond to Jack, how do you think they’ll treat him if he’s not giving them full attention but instead is consumed by what he’s doing wrong? They’ll be put off, and probably wouldn’t want to see him again. Or they’ll friend-zone him!
Your beliefs about and treatment of yourself affect the kind of people you attract into your life. Relationships are like mirrors – they give us an opportunity to see the deepest parts of ourselves, both good and bad. The people who treat you the way you want to be treated are mirrors showing you how you treat yourself well. The ones who treat you poorly are mirrors showing you how you treat yourself poorly.
Take some time to think about how you want to be treated in your relationships, whether it be with your partner, your family, your colleagues or your friends. How do these people treat you now, and what do you want to see change in these behaviours? Use the answers you come up with to reflect on how you’re treating yourself, and what you can do differently to improve your self-treatment.