IAEDP Membershare Blog, November 2018
Gratitude.
It’s the focus of this month’s holiday and if social media and my subjective observations are correct, it’s trending right now. Kind of like pumpkin spice, shiplap walls, and the mustache, gratitude seems to be “in” right now. Maybe it’s because of people like Oprah, Brene Brown, and those amazing and inspiring Ted Talkers. I don’t know. I just know that gratitude seems to be everywhere which is great, and I hope it stays that way.
But not everyone likes gratitude. Gratitude is actually the kryptonite of a very specific individual, one that you might know very well. This individual I am talking about is your inner critic.
For many of you, this will need no explanation. Immediately you will know exactly who I am talking about. You know its snarky voice, critical tone and fear based prompting. You know the mean and scary things the critic says to you, how it knows your deepest fears and plays on them. Maybe you know the critic by another name – the “Gremlin,” “the Ego,” “The Critical Parent,” (any Transactional Analysis fans out there?) or just plain old FEAR. But one way or another, most of us know the little voice that calls to us telling us we aren’t enough, to watch for problems, and that we better get scared and worried or something bad will happen when we aren’t looking.
