Give Yourself Credit for Being Wonderful
by Corinne Pecile
How often do you give yourself credit? Not for something big like getting a new job, finishing a project or volunteering for a cause but for the every day things you do right each day. My guess is not often. This begins early in life. At first, parents praise each step and each bite of food a baby takes. Slowly, those things become a common occurrence and we decrease the amount of praise these activities receive. This happens with almost all newly learned positive behavior. The initial excitement followed by a span of encouragement and eventually, the behavior becomes an expectation. Conversely, when a negative behavior is exhibited, such as hitting, it is noticed and punished; not only when it first occurs, but repeatedly throughout our lives.
That is not to say we need to praise a 12-year-old for walking to the bathroom on their own, but it does show a pattern of positive reinforcement for a behavior decreasing over time and more consistent attention being paid to negative behavior over a longer period of time. In essence, we train ourselves to pay more attention to the negative than the positive. This creates a space where we put ourselves down more than we pat ourselves on the back.
When we get up for work on time, we go about our day as usual, but if we get up late, we begin berating ourselves and setting the scene for more things to go wrong. There are hundreds of positive things we do right every day, maybe thousands. Many times, we wait for someone else to give us the credit we are seeking, when the person it should mean most from has the ability to hand it out at any time. You. Taking a moment each day to give yourself credit and noticing the wonderful things you do can be such a rewarding habit. It refreshes your energy, focus, patience and provides you with a more positive outlook. Once you begin to notice the positive in yourself, you are more apt to notice the good in others.
This can help you improve relationships both professional and personal. It can increase your ability to problem solve because it amplifies your empathy for others and fine tunes your ability to see things from a different perspective.
Giving yourself credit is a hard habit to form, but one well worth the effort for your own well being and those around you. You can start just by trying to teach it to someone; by repeating this information, you increase the likelihood that you will remember to give yourself some recognition in the days ahead. If you can not see how wonderful you, are it makes it that much harder for others to see it, too.
Corinne Pecile, LCSW, is an adolescent child and family therapist and parent coach located in Dumont. For more information, call 201-602-7787 or visit PecileTherapy.com.
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