Violations

I've found the following excerpts very thought-provoking. They're from The Secret of the Shadow by Debbie Ford.

"Many of us get alarmed and inspired into action when we witness violations in the world. When someone is mugged, raped, or abused, we feel an immediate sense of injustice. It is more difficult to catch sight of the violations we perpetrate against ourselves, for we often violate ourselves in seemingly small and unnoticeable ways. We violate ourselves when we don't listen to ourselves or trust our instincts or claim what we want.........We violate ourselves when we look for what's wrong instead of what's right. We violate ourselves when we fail to do what brings us joy. We violate ourselves by keeping ourselves small."

Some of the ways we may betray ourselves:

"We violate our bodies by:

• overeating
• telling ourselves we are going to exercise and not following through
• not taking enough time for rest and recreation
• abusing ourselves with cigarettes, alcohol or drugs
• criticizing ourselves when we look in the mirror
• paying more attention to our flaws than to our beauty
• staying so busy that we cannot hear the signals our bodies send us
• listening to our self-loathing internal dialogues."

"We violate ourselves in relationships by:

• staying in relationships with physically or emotionally abusive people
• doing things for or with friends that we don't want to do
• having sex when we don't want to
• depriving ourselves of intimacy when we want it
• breaking agreements and commitments with others
• gossiping about others
• pretending to like people we con't
• not spending time with our loved ones
• withholding our feelings from others
• stepping over our personal boundaries or compromising our integrity
• making other people's needs more important than our own"

"We violate our financial security by:

• spending more than we earn
• running up credit card debt
• bouncing checks
• lying about our income
• not saving money
• being unconscious about our spending
• stealing
• ignoring our debts
• paying bills late"

"We can read thousands of self-help books, meditate every day, and sit at a guru's feet, but if we use the wisdom we've gained only to put ourselves down and diminish our worth, we have violated ourselves. Each time we look in the mirror and see only part of who we are--every time we spend more time listening to our unconscious internal dialogues, rather than acknowledging our greatness---we have committed a violation of self."

This is something that needs to stop.