Do you suffer from being 'too harsh on yourself' syndrome?

Striving to be your best? While not necessarily a bad thing, putting immense pressure on yourself to meet your own high expectations can take its toll on both your physical and mental/emotional health.

So how do you distinguish between aiming high and an possessing an unrealistic outlook in one’s life?

For some of us, it begins early in childhood from picking up expectations from our parents, siblings or peers and further develops throughout adolescence and into adulthood. At school, having a competitive nature in sports or academically, or in both. For others, a sense of not being quite good enough which can develop at any time, usually from an event or situation, or simply underlying feelings of feeling like a failure with no good cause or reason.

Welcome to your inner-critic. We all own one! And, yes, it can be a good thing! When in balance, your ‘inner voice’ can keep you motivated and steer you towards making healthy life decisions. However, this inner voice when not kept in check loves to put you down, compare oneself to others, looks for confirmation to remind you that you are a failure, sets you up for disappointment and generally just makes you miserable. It looks for opportunities to confirm that you aren’t enough. Ever.

How do you take the focus away from your shortcomings and mistakes? How do you turn it around so that your impossible standards can lay to rest giving way for your kinder personal standards to emerge? Allowing this to unfold can further personal opportunities, great decisions, balanced emotions and living life being gentle to yourself. Learn to recognise the tone of your own self-talk.

Do any of these resonate with you?

• When taking on a new opportunity or challenge – are you thinking of giving up for fear of not being successful? Do you tell yourself you weren’t smart enough anyway…?

• Do you muse on your perceived failures, errors and discussions long after they are over, playing things over in your mind and looking for alternative endings?

• Is your ‘self-talk’ harsh and critical – yet you wouldn’t treat your friends or family so critically?

• Do you blame yourself when situations don’t turn out as you had planned?

• Do you leave ideas or plans until the last minute for fear of ‘it not working out’ or overthinking all the details, in case you might not be able to complete it to a high enough standard?

• Do you compare yourself to others; what they look like, their lifestyle, what they own/have?

• Feel jealous or envious of others successes and put them down behind their back?

Pay attention to your behaviour!

Because we often think and behave automatically, we don’t realise that we allow our harsh inner critic and negative self-talk go unchallenged. Stop and recognise your thoughts. It is the first step to challenge this negativity in order to allow healthier thought patterns to emerge.

How to begin the process of being kinder to yourself:

• ‘Catch’ yourself being critical to yourself – then say stop and replace with a positive thought, sentence, vision or outcome

• Show yourself courtesy. Just as you would do for your friends, family or colleagues - do the same for yourself. Surely when they make a mistake you wouldn’t be berating them with how much of a loser they are, telling them that they are simply just a failure!

• Understand that there is a difference between failing and being a failure – no mistake can ever define your authentic self

• Your behaviour does not automatically reflect your character - “Be careful how you talk to yourself, because you are listening” – Lisa M. Hayes

• Learn to meditate which is extremely beneficial for pessimistic thought patterns

• Journal – scribble down all your thoughts, then ask yourself where they came from?

• Yoga – breath work balances our physical and emotional body extensively

• Talk therapy, especially cognitive behavioural therapy

In closing, your mind can be your greatest strength while you walk your journey in life. It can also become your worst enemy.

Allow yourself to become aware of your thoughts, to notice them and ask yourself how true they actually are. Catch the negative thoughts, release them and give them no recognition whatsoever – for after-all, they are just thoughts – so please, just let them go.

It's the truth.. Preparing for Birth is like training for a Marathon - If this is true - then why do we just 'hope for the best?'

There are 2 types of people. Those who want to know EVERYTHING about a procedure/event/choosing a degree/or contemplating a career change and those WHO don’t want to know ANYTHING and just hope for the best…… because well, you know, we all like to believe that it all works out in the end!

Which category do you fall in, and have you given thought as to how your birth may feature if placed in either of these categories? Do we really need to prepare?

I say YES. Absolutely. Look at it this way: you know you are on a journey called pregnancy, and you know the destination is your birth. You know where you are heading, but not really sure exactly how you are going to get there. There are so many options which often just leaves you feeling overwhelmed. If you were in your car however, you would set the GPS to your desired destination and rely on it to get you there.

With the GPS, we don’t really need to think too much, but we do need to concentrate and listen for the instructions - or, we will go off course and possibly add time to our journey. We may get lost and possibly feel anxious. Like giving birth, there are moments that require us to think, as well as concentrate, and at times we may need to listen to instructions. Confused?

Think of it like this: Birth and Marathons. Two completely different important life events, yet in so many ways they are alike. There is pain at times, there are the days you are on a high and then there are days when you feel low, you feel like you can’t carry on any longer and then somewhere, somehow, you find the strength. You keep on keeping on.

I haven’t run a marathon, but I do run for an hour a day, 5-6 days a week. Some days I could just keep on going and other days, I “think” I can barely make it past 30 minutes - but I do. Months ago I was only walking. The difference is in I ‘think’ I can’t do it - but deep down I know that I can. Some days I feel like I don’t have the energy, but I still go. There are two of me in my head - one saying “just stop and walk you are tired today” and the other voice saying “nonsense, you can do it, you are just not putting the effort in!”. I find the voice of stopping and walking stronger than the ‘keep going’ voice - YET, seem to listen to the weaker voice as this is the more intuitive one.

Pregnancy. It takes months. Months to grow and nurture your baby. Running a marathon takes months of preparation to gain strength and endurance. When suffering from morning sickness you need to experiment with what helps with your nausea. Training for a marathon means thinking about your food and fuel - experimenting with what works for you. Alike aren’t they?

Comparisons with similar thoughts: Running a marathon and being in labour:

• I’m tired - I haven’t slept properly

• I’m aching and sore

• This is too much, I can’t do this any longer

• Why did I decide to run a marathon? I’m never doing this again! Why did I put myself through this? (labour)/I’m never getting pregnant again!

• I’m thirsty, I feel sick, I feel breathless, I can’t focus

What can we do about these thoughts? How do we make it through labour or completing a marathon?

• Language - Your inner voice will determine your approach to something. What we say to ourselves at any given moment, determines how we feel. When your critical voice appears telling you that you can’t do it, it only highlights your anxiety. Direct your language towards how you want it to play out. Talk to yourself about confidence, enjoying the process, how grateful you feel to give birth/have trained towards your marathon.

• Visualise the best- Imagine yourself having the experience you desire. Don’t picture yourself at the end - picture yourself getting to the end. When we imagine or play out a movie in our mind, we fire up the same neurons in our brain as when we are actually experiencing it. Aren’t we clever?

• Visualise the not-so-good: Imagine yourself coping well in labour, all is going well as it should, BUT, do also allow yourself to imagine what it will be like dealing with unexpected happenings and put your focus on OVERCOMING these. Remove the fear, practice on your breathing and envision all will be well.

• Rename your emotions. Anxiety and excitement can trigger the same physiological response in our bodies. So call your anxiety excitement. Your body will believe your mind!

• It’s all about the process. It is also all about the outcome. Conquering/winning a marathon race involves deep thoughts around performance. Runners have a goal whether it be a time limit or winning the gold medal. The best way to achieve that goal is to focus on what you are doing in that moment. Focus on the process unfolding and not JUST the outcome. This is the only thing you have Control of RIGHT NOW. In any given moment. Whether it be while in labour or running a marathon, focus on your breath, your pace, move your body how it needs to move… ONE moment at a time.

• Find your own way of stomping out those negative thoughts. Anything to get yourself away from your negative internal dialogue playing over and over. Sing, hum, count, shake your hands,……. distract, distract!

• Smile! Look Around! Look Up! Don’t look down when you feel discomfort. We internalise when we focus our gaze downward. We talk to ourselves more. Look up, look around and notice. By looking up or around we tend to go in a light trance - the staring mood as some know it. When you are just staring at nothing for ages for no reason. When we do this, we aren’t so aware of our discomfort. When we are stressed, anxious or feeling pain we have a narrower focus and we instantly focus on those feelings.

I encourage all my mums-to-be to really think, feel and experience how they would like their birth experience to unfold but to keep an open mind to many possibilities. You never know how your birth experience will play out, but one thing is for sure and that is, you will become a mother.

With gratitude, here are the exact words from my friend who has 2 children and run plenty of Marathons when I asked her how the two were alike:

“Ok, so the key word I would choose connecting both childbirth and running a marathon would be 'endurance', I chose that word other than pain as it's a more positive word and when you are undergoing potentially traumatic events, it is endurance and positivity that gets you through. 

With running long distance it is a given that at some stage you are going to experience pain, it's a random guess as to where the pain may start and when (much like giving birth) but when it does, it will be predominantly legs, quads, calves or feet that will feel the pain first. The only way you can be sure to know where the pain will come from is if you have had a previous injury, even then it can still strike in other places, and this can be quite a surprise when it does hit. With childbirth, you also know its going to hurt, but again you are not sure how or even when, but you do know that it will be excruciating when it does, worst part still is that contractions get worse with time, and if that pain isn’t enough you can only imagine how much actually pushing the baby out is going to hurt!

There is a moment in a marathon where absolutely EVERYTHING hurts, not just the muscles, tendons and joints but the mind too. It is at this point (sometimes referred to as hitting the wall) where only endurance, previous training and mind games can get you through the exhaustion and the lactic build up.
Once this pain has hit (around the 30-37km mark) the rest of the race is a blur. Your mind is telling you that you have to finish but your body says no. It's at this point that I have the out of body experience where I can no longer feel the pain but keep going anyway (albeit hobbling at this stage).

It is knowing the end goal that keeps you going. The light at the end of the tunnel, that euphoric feeling that you know will be coming in just a few more kms. 
So you play mind tricks in your head, little games, count downs, anything to get you through. 
Then at the finish line it is a lot like giving birth!! The relief that it's all over, no more pain, (except the pain u already have endured) followed by the reward of the medal (baby).

Oddly enough, even though we know it will hurt again, not many people do just one marathon, they go in to do more to improve their personal best!! Its as if we forget the pain. The same with women, we still go on to have more babies, all because that end goal is priceless”.