Inner Critic

Lucille Ball said it best when she said, "Love yourself first and everything falls into line."

Yes, the holidays do bring a magic and excitement to the month of December, but the stress, loneliness and blues pre-packaged with the festivities can be enough to drag one-fourth of us across the tenuous line from sanity to insanity.

I have found that one of the most self-binding and defeating habits that many of us have is the tendency to compare ourselves to others: comparing our physical appearance, material possessions, personal life, romantic relationships and career.

When you find yourself beating yourself up, how can you stop? Should you ignore your inner critic? Argue with it? Or is it best to become friends with it and love your inner critic?

Yoga helps us uncover how close or far we are from being with ourselves, and helps us to close the gap.

The only thing we need to change about ourselves is to stop holding ourselves to unreasonable standards and begin to risk ourselves by being honest with those we love.

Unrelenting self-criticism often goes hand in hand with depression and anxiety, and it may even predict depression. In a study of 107 patients in the latest issue of Comprehensive Psychiatry, David M. Dunkley at Jewish General Hospital in Montreal and colleagues found that those who were most self-critical were the most likely to be depressed and have difficulties in relationships four years later, even if they weren't depressed to begin with.

I used to be afraid to write. I forgot about how much progress I've made in this area until a friend dropped by the other day and I handed him a bound galley of my book.

"Whatever derogatory things you are saying to yourself: Stop it." This is a quote from Jane Roberts, the author of the Seth Material during the 1970s ...