Have you ever found yourself sharing your joy with someone and then adding caveats?
For example, “I love hiking, but I’m not that good at it.”
First, ask yourself why you’re adding the caveat— do you feel shame, internal unmet expectations of yourself, fear of rejection?
Sharing our joy can be vulnerable because we can fear someone will critique us or share their disdain for what we love. We are projecting onto them what we feel about ourselves. Also, when we are already feeling emotionally low their critique or disdain can feel like a big blow, and sometimes they way we self-deprecate has become habitual.
While you’re committing to the deeper work of understanding and healing the root cause, I recommend practicing “the three c’s” to begin to break the habit and create new neural pathways. The thee c’s derive from the Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) model.
1st C: Catch Practice catching yourself in the moment as you’re about to add the caveat
2nd C: Check Check in with yourself about the helpfulness, usefulness and accuracy of your thought and/or statement
3rd C: Change Modify your thought/statement to include content that’s more helpful, useful and accurate
Let’s practice…
You find yourself in a room at a party getting to know someone you’ve never met before. They ask you about your hobbies. You think to yourself that you like hiking and notice your immediate next thought is that you’re not good at it. You recognize (catch) that this is a self deprecating thought, and that it’s not helpful or useful, and that you are an amateur hiker. So, you modify your thought, and then say, “I love hiking, and am working towards building endurance for longer hikes.”
Can you understand and feel the difference in those two statements?
“I love hiking, but I’m not good at it.”
“I love hiking, and I’m working towards building endurance for longer hikes.”
It’s important that you believe what you think and say, so the accuracy is important. If you’re an amateur hiker, you’re an amateur hiker. There is truth in those words that hopefully still resonates AND it also honors that you are human and have room to grow without being self-deprecating.
So, why is this important when it comes to sharing our joys?
Because it’s important that you begin to transform the habit of negative self-talk for your own wellbeing. Thoughts about ourselves are like water for plants— nourishment. And you wouldn’t want to water a plant with bacteria infested water, right?
You’re ultimately sharing your joys with yourself first, and learning to hold these joys with self-compassion will support you in holding yourself in compassion around others as well.
This in turn, helps us attract people into our lives that are drawn to our growth mindset, compassionate honesty, and our ability to love ourselves instead of only being attracted to our wounding. It’s okay to let people in once they’ve earned our stories— AKA our deeper thoughts and feelings, but when we share those quickly people can be attracted to us for unhealthy reasons.
Finding friends that can hold us in compassionate uplifting connection often begins with how compassionate and uplifting we can be with ourselves.