What if we ‘remove the wrongness’?

Ok, so this is not some big philosophical ethics discussion (although some of my students will know that I love those).  But it is a more nuanced consideration of how we might think about ourselves and our actions on a daily basis.  We often hear the idea that we should detach ourselves from judgement,  but this can sometimes feel somewhat removed from our daily experience, which is why I like this very simple and powerful idea of ‘removing the wrongness’. 

I have facilitated many workshops and taught many students over my career and anyone who has worked with me will know that I always emphasise and insist that in my workshop spaces there is no right and wrong when it comes to expressing ourselves and our opinions;  I urge participants and students to ‘not try to get the right answer’ or worry about being wrong. I can get on a soap box often about the binary nature of education across much of the globe being about getting it right, which so often places learners in a climate of fear about ‘getting it wrong’.

So given that most of us have grown up through an education system that punishes getting it wrong, damns failure whilst conversely attributing great reward to ‘getting it right’, it is hardly a surprise that we often judge ourselves as getting things wrong.  Bear with me here as I am not necessarily talking about big life choices, but I am thinking about small judgements we make about ourselves on a daily basis.  This could be not getting up early for that run or HIIT training, or eating the cake when you said that you were only going to eat healthy snacks that day; it could be snapping at a loved one, or procrastinating when you know that you need to do something.  More often than not we judge ourselves quite harshly for doing something ‘wrong’. 

Recently I have set time aside to work on a book that I am co-authoring.  I was working on a chapter that I did not feel was my area of specialism and I really struggled with procrastination.  These repeated hours of doing every other job other that writing became a big stick to beat myself with.  My inner dialogue was condescending and harsh, I felt like I was getting it wrong, that I wasn’t good enough.

I was heaping judgements on myself that led to a sense of paralysis and further procrastination.  I was getting this whole thing wrong, I was not a writer, I didn’t know anything, I couldn’t do what I said I was going to do and so on. 

When we judge our actions as ‘wrong’ we get caught in a perpetual cycle of committing micro-aggressions towards ourselves.  For me these more explicit micro-aggressions come mostly in the form of negative, internal self-talk, but could equally show up as self-soothing through emotional eating or drinking, punishing exercise regimes, mindless scrolling; these are behaviours that I relate too, but I am sure you can think of how you might indulge in self-punishment in your own life.

 What if we ‘remove the wrongness’?

 What if we just notice our behaviour and acknowledge it, but refrain from the impinging judgement that usually follows? 

 What would happen? 

Well, it would just be a fact, a plain and simple statement of fact: ‘I didn’t write anything for the last two hours’; ‘I ate the cake’.  And as Byron Katie says – you cannot argue with reality.

What can we do with this information if we are not going to assign a judgement to it?

Well, I believe that as human beings we are all infinitely resourceful and it is our nature to do the very best we can with what we have in any given moment.  So, if this assertion is true then by judging our behaviour as wrong in any moment we are diminishing ourselves, we are inferring that ‘I was not good enough in that moment then’.  Negative self-talk and soothing behaviours aside, this continual underlying assumption that ‘I am not good enough’ is highly aggressive in itself.  How many times a day are we committing these implicit acts of aggression, quietly, implicitly, chipping away at ourselves, our humanness?

 So, if we are going to remove the wrongness what can we replace it with? 

What if... instead of this detrimental judgement we could just investigate the situation? 

 1. Become an impartial detective, remain neutral whilst you look for the clues.

What if we looked for clues that may help us understand our behaviours in those moments?  For example… ‘so I didn’t write anything what was going on for me at that moment? What was going on around me? How was I feeling?  Had I looked after myself properly that day?’ 

When we start to investigate the problem we can start to understand why we behave in certain ways. Rather than simply assuming that it is because it was bad or wrong or we failed, do not allow yourself to place a judgement but simply ask why? Practice getting curious!

The next question you can ask yourself is:

2.What did I need in that moment to achieve what I wanted to?  

How often do we ask ourselves what we actually need in a moment in order to be operating on all cylinders? This might seem simple, but let’s be honest, we don’t always see the simple answers.  You would not take your car on a 300 mile trip if you hadn’t filled it with petrol, checked the tyres and had an up to date MOT.  So why do we think we can achieve the marathons we attempt every day without making sure we have everything we need to support us?

But more than the practicalities, this act of investigation engenders a sense of curiosity about ourselves, it allows for understanding rather than judgement and compassion over aggression.  We could call it compassionate curiosity.

What if, in all those moments that we commit micro acts of aggression to ourselves we were to commit micro acts of compassion? 

How might that impact us on a daily basis?  How might we feel about ourselves? And more powerfully - what might that enable us to achieve? 

Where in your life can you ‘remove the wrongness’? 

Where can you investigate rather than judge? 

Where can you apply some compassionate curiosity?

 Next time you find yourself judging your behaviour as wrong, stop, notice what you are doing, smile and think what if… I remove the wrongness here?

And see what opens up for you.