Is your mind a bully?

I don’t know what’s going on where you live, but here in the UK it’s the end of the first half term of the new school year.

A [insert adjective of your choice] week awaits us, fellow parents!

😉

Anyway, my daughter started secondary school this time round and went from being a big fish in a small pond, to a little fish in a big one.

So now there are blazers and homework and lunchtime budgets and new friends and mobile phones and after school clubs and proper subjects and heavy bags…

…and bullies.

Not that she’s experienced anything beyond the odd mindless comment from random kids on the way home, but it’s the environment where it can happen.

And I know what I want to show her (I might even do so, this weekend.) It’s this:

You may have seen it before. If you haven’t, you’re in for a treat. It’s amazing how he can take such a serious, heavy topic and make it so lighthearted and fun, while conveying a deep, life-changing insight at the same time, just by making it visible how something really works.

(A man after my own heart 😂🤣)

He’s not from the 3Ps community, and I was on tenterhooks when he started talking about ‘self’ … but really, when he does he’s just reflecting that thing you’ll hear me always saying: Get your own evidence.

Kids have to do the same.

So why not sit down and watch it with yours?

It will start a discussion at the very least. One that—you never know—might just end up at the simple realisation that:

Now, this wouldn’t be a Daily Reminder if I didn’t draw some parallel to the way our minds, and life work, now would it?

😁

Because we all have a bully living very close by. It taunts us and teases us and says hurtful things about us and the rules are exactly the same as in the game this guy plays in the video above:

• Engage with it on its level, taking what it says seriously 👉🏻 ☠️
• Don’t take it seriously; joke around with its nonsense 👉🏻 😎

And when we see it for what it is (which is what you’re here for), the second option becomes a much more natural response.

If it helps, take this quote from a book I’m reading at the moment:

“Most bullies are the way they are, because of how they’ve been treated. They just don’t know any different. They don’t know how to deal with their emotions, so they lash out.”

The Reader Ego Construct 📦—your mind—has been through a lot. It might lash out at times, because it just doesn’t know any different.

Why not show it some of that fabled ‘love and understanding’.

You can think of it as ‘self’ compassion.

💟

Giles

p.s. she’s absolutely loving her new school BTW – practically skips in, each morning, for which we are eternally grateful!