Self Talk and the Battling Twins

 Self talk is the most powerful form of communication because it either empowers you or defeats you.

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Do you ever notice the battle going inside you between shaming self talk and redeeming self talk? I call it the battle of the ego twins: Shamer ego and Redeemer Ego. Shamer is hell bent on making you feel small and deserving of punishment, Redeemer is determined to puff you up and make you bigger than most.  Both are components of ego. 

Oh the ego twins are  still around and they are constantly squabbling in me.  I see them when I witness my human imperfection .  Redeemer Ego wants "me" to appear a certain way to the world.  It has a set of expectations and rules for "me" that it wants me to adhere to.  It wants redemption. It wants to put "Shamer" ego in its place.  So...when I goof up, fail to keep up with appearances and expectations...Shamer ego steps in pretty quickly to put Redeemer in its place. Back and forth the two bicker and compete.  It is quite sad and  quite funny  to watch lol.

I just viewed a couple of videos from many years ago. I started doing videos in 2017...I am not even sure why.  Just had this great compulsion to do so when I knew I would soon be leaving my professional job as  college educator. As an educator, Redeemer Ego was fed, seemingly lifting me up and away from shame. I was meeting a lot of ego's expectations in that role. Shamer was quieted. The prospect and then the reality of  stepping back from that role, however, swatted redemption away and  fed Shamer ego. I felt ashamed of my inability to maintain this role and identity. So Redeemer wanted to fight back with some semblance of, "Well you can teach here! You can do this! You can still identify as an educator.You can still feed "me" and this Self you seem to want to pull up from the background at the same time! "  So I started doing videos about what I was studying and learning...mostly so I could swat away Shamer and feed Redeemer.

I mean, I love to teach and I love to speak.  It is usually very natural and spontaneous for me.  It brings me joy. Doing it "perfectly" was never something I strived to do.  I made mistakes, screwing up words, mispronouncing, doing other silly things. I would quickly point my own mistakes out ( if I caught them. If I didn't the students were sure to point them out :) ) and we would often laugh over them. Still...I was a very effective educator.  It felt so natural to me. It wasn't so natural and easy  in the beginning of making these videos though. I couldn't see the students sitting before me. I didn't have that feedback so I often didn't catch my little goof ups until I reviewed the videos afterwards.  And I am perfectly okay with little goof ups...it makes me and the process more real...but the ego twins weren't okay with it.  lol. Now, I am much more comfortable speaking in these videos, mostly becasue my desire to "impress" and my need to keep up with appearances is greatly diminished. 

It surprised me, then, considering how much I have grown since those years the videos were made, that Shamer still had something to say about my imperfections in them.  It surprised me that I was still reacting to that negative self talk.  As I was watching, I heard the reprimands from Shamer; I felt my belly cringing, my face blushing; and I wanted nothing more than to go to You tube to private those videos and to take them off my site here. Shamer was still attached to the memory, maybe ?? Anyway, I could also feel and hear Redeemer wanting to come back in to save the day. I felt very reactive!! I took a deep breath and just watched what was going on in my mind, the twins in action. Instead of being between them, I took a step back out of the ring. I created distance.  

In that moment of clarity, I made a decision to leave the videos where they were...with all my apparent "imperfections" as a speaker so evident...(one can even hear my old dog snoring loudly in the background). I said to myself...this is perfect in its imperfection!!! Both Shamer and Redeemer were quieted when I became the Observer , rather than the referee. :) 

I am going to encourage you, as well,  to become aware of the presence of battling twins inside you and instead of putting on the black and white shirt and jumping in the ring between them...just stand back and watch.  They will stop fighting on their own when we refuse to feed either of them.  Also...don't be afraid to witness your own imperfections as a human being when it comes to 'creating appearances'. Appearances mean nothing! What we see as imperfect is simply just the failure of the twins getting their way. 

All is well.