Feeding the good dog

We are our own harshest critics.

How many times have you done something bonehead and beat yourself up about it in your mind for days or weeks after?  Why do we feel like we have t mentally punish ourselves for the slightest mistakes?  Why can’t we just move on?

I’m sure you remember watching cartoons as a kid where the protagonist is struggling to make a moral or immoral choice.  The character will suddenly have a devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other.  This comically represents the human condition where we get to exercise our choice between doing something goo and something bad.

In our real lives the angel and the devil don’t go away in a puff of cartoon smoke when the choice is made.  They hang around.  More importantly and much more sinisterly the devil character seems to be the one we carry around with us all the time.  The metaphorical devil sits on our back like a vulture reminding us of all the things we have done wrong, all the ways we come up short and all the reasons we are going to fail.

What can we do about it?  We can change.  We can choose to stop listening and encouraging the critical voice.  We can choose to create our own version of the voice.  We can create a positive, reassuring guide to ride with us that is more kind and counseling, (maybe like Gandalf the Gray).

We can choose to create that voice by feeding the good dog.  The well know joke is that a man asks for advice saying he feels like there are two dogs inside his head, a good dog and a bad dog and they are in constant battle – what should he do?  The simple counsel given is that he should ‘feed the good dog’.

This means reinforcing the positive aspects of your life more than the negative.  Proactively creating the positive self talk, not in a Pollyanna way, but in a nuanced way that causes you to ask better questions.

What can I learn from this?  What am I doing well?  How can I help?  How can I use this to add value?

The other powerful weapon that you provide to your good dog is the simple fact that you can’t change what happened last year or last week or yesterday or this morning.  You can only change what you are going to do right now, today, tomorrow and for the rest of your life.

Kick the devil off your shoulder.  Feed the good dog.  Make today your masterpiece.

Cheers,

Chris,