The 1999 movie The 10 Things I Hate About You, starring Julia Stiles and the late Heath Ledger, was loosely based on Shakespeare’s The Taming Of The Shrew. By 1999 I had successfully tamed the shrew that resided in my head – the shrew that had, for years told me I wasn’t good enough and spat at me “Who do you think you are?”
Taming, however, doesn’t mean the shrew disappears. She still makes attempts to be the alpha voice in my head but now that I’m onto her game, I can rein her in quickly.
Before I learned how to tame my inner shrew these are the things I/she hated about me:
1. I hate that you think you need to apologize when you didn’t do anything wrong.
2. I hate that you mentally beat yourself up for making a mistake when you’re only human and everyone makes mistakes.
3. I hate that you compare the weakest part of yourself to the strongest part of someone else, come up short, and then think you’re not good enough.
4. I hate that you think you have to say yes when people ask you to do something because you believe that in order to be “nice” you have to always say yes.
5. I hate that you think people won’t like you if you take care of yourself and say no to something they’d like you to do.
6. I hate that you think you can predict the future and in that future you fail or aren’t good enough.
7. I hate that you think you can read other people’s mind and then interpret their actions to be about you. Like those instances when someone’s quieter than usual and you know it’s because he or she is mad at you.
8. I hate that you personalize many things – that someone forgetting or overlooking putting you on their email or invitation list is because they don’t like you.
9. I hate that you don’t like your body because it doesn’t match a photoshopped celebrity’s body or some idealized image that you’ve mistakenly set as a standard for yourself.
10. I hate that you can’t accept and internalize the way others see you – bright, funny, warm, caring, and lovely just the way you are.
And most of all I hate that you don’t see your vulnerability as an endearing quality that makes your friends and others around you feel safe to be themselves.
Perhaps some of my top 10 list resonates with you. I know that the shrew has a BIG family – sisters, brothers, cousins, second cousins, nieces and nephews and they’re all squatters who like to live in other people’s heads. But they can be contained, trained and tamed. It takes some effort, as well as friends and mentors to support you. If I did it you can too. Really.
The ROI is huge:
- Increased energy. Decreased anxiety.
- Increased confidence. Decreased doubts.
- Increased risk-taking. Decreased standing-in-place.
- Increased acceptance. Decreased negative judgments.
- Increased happiness. Decreased sorrow.
Join me and sign up for my free 5 week program where I share my story and some of the tools I used to tame my shrew. I’d like to help and support you in getting on the path to being kinder to yourself. It’s one of my ways of paying-it-forward. Namaste.
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So glad I followed you here…love this post. You are like an inner-shrew seeking missile, hitting all the right targets! I have SIGNED UP for your program and look forward to discovering great stuff! ~Dawn
I’m glad you followed me too. An inner-shrew seeking missile – I’m liking that image a lot. Hugs to you, Cherry
Wow….did you crawl into my head and pull those thoughts out? I think our shrews were separated at birth, which proves that nurture beats nature! Best follow off of Twitter all day.
Lisa,
Separated at birth, of course, that explains the marks along my left hip. Nice to meet you sis’, hope you visit again. Cherry
[...] The 10 Things I Hate About You or The Taming of My Own Shrew [...]
I don’t know which is harder. All my life I have never succumbed to that thinking but there is a price to pay for it. being called names, being told you are too something, aggressive, arrogant, self absorbed…because you don’t apologize, because you dare to think you have value. It is a double edged sword.
Yes Kelley a strong, powerful, outspoken woman can result in being called names and that’s not easy to take. But to me, and getting older helps, it’s more important to feel good about being true to myself. Once I became clear, for myself, what was my stuff and what was the name callers, I could dismiss the name-calling. When I could blow off their words, like bullies, they usually left me alone.
All that being said, I do appreciate that it is difficult and I certainly had some hard times. Cherry
I have been working on this with my coach actually and one of the things we’ve been discussing is the difference between being a jerk (too strong, too aggressive, too blunt) with knowing and conveying self confidence. Sometimes I don’t need to apologize for my opinion, but the delivery could use an apology. I can be short on patience and am not usually lacking in confidence (although I have my moments), but just because I may be right or it may be the thing that needs to be said doesn’t make how I say it ok.
I’m actually working on the opposite side of this with trying to convey more vulnerability rather than more strength. It’s tough!