We are all really hard on ourselves, and today I was telling the group that I was feeling a little blue this morning and being hard on myself. A little part of myself was expecting that I should always be in a good mood. Needless to say, this is a ridiculous expectation and everyone in the group could understand and laugh at this. We wondered if we can still accept ourselves as imperfect, normal human beings?
I presented a New York Times article called “How to Be Happy.” I like a lot of the author’s ideas, but I didn’t like the fact that they recommended, “conquering” negative thinking. I think we have to be a lot easier on ourselves than thinking about conquest and fighting. Much better to accept the way things are in the present moment and then see what might help us to relax our negative feelings about ourselves.
Here’s the Times article: