It is work of the utmost importance that each of us become aware of, and then find ways of working with, our self-loathing.
Does that seem too strong a way to say it?
This is not an easy subject to write about or speak about. You may find that the merest suggestion that you experience self-loathing stirs up strong feelings that would have you stop reading right away. Anger, ridicule, judgement at what’s being proposed here - all of these have been my stirred within me as I’ve studied this subject, and my own relationship to it, in the past.
But many of us do walk around with an almost perpetual background of quite intense self-dislike. You might be familiar with its more accessible surface manifestation, self-judgement, or the inner-critic which I’ve written about here previously. If you’re prepared to examine further you might well discover that behind the critic lurks a much bigger and deeper phenomenon, a continual assessment that you’re out of place in the world, not welcome, and that it’s all deserved.
In my case it occurs most readily as a continual gnawing sense that I’ve done something wrong already that I don’t know about, but which everyone else does. It can lead readily to shame (even in the most innocuous of situations) and holding myself back, or sometimes an angry, resentful self-righteousness. I’m absolutely sure I’m not alone in this. I’ll wager, moreover, that most people live under the shadow of this for much of their adult lives.
Babies, when newborn, don’t have any kind of self-loathing as far as I can tell, and nor do very young children. Just watch as they express themselves freely without inhibition, far removed from any sense that they may be judged by others or that it is proper and fitting to judge themselves. But if you watch children you know and love acquire language and then start to make their first halting attempts to fit into the social world with its niceties and manners and particular-way-things-are-done you might spot its beginnings.
By the time we’re young adults we’ve mostly fully taken on, and applied to ourselves, the widely shared narrative of our culture, not often spoken about, that people are essentially faulty and need some kind of constant correction. Even if we can’t see it in ourselves we can maybe see it in our interactions with others. It's present every time we find ourselves judging them for, in some essential way, falling short of our high expectations. We can be sure that the unreachable expectations we’re projecting on other people are really just a version of what some part of us is demanding of ourselves.
And while it may be unavoidable that we get some measure of self-loathing by growing up in the particular culture of these times, I think its continuation into adulthood is in a sense quite egotistical. We may not even know that we’re doing it, but our private insistence that we are in some way uniquely broken, uniquely in need of repair, uniquely suffering puts us in the centre of the world in a way that doesn’t at all match how things are. It has us feeling different, special, alone, separated from each other, in some kind of special privileged place of difficulty. And then it has us engage in all kinds of tactics to deal with how all of it feels - getting really busy, pushing ourselves and others very hard, trying to stay in control, becoming cynical, overextending ourselves to gain the love of other people, jumping from one project to another, martyring ourselves to causes (a corporation, tidiness, social recognition, a religion, fame) that we never chose for ourselves.
Our culture has been deeply influenced by the work of Sigmund Freud, who many have understood to say that at heart human beings really are broken, a roiling cauldron of barely repressible urges, and the most we can hope for is to find a way to get along with all that in play. This kind of interpretation of human beings would give self-loathing a home, telling us that we must first face it and then learn to live with it. Perhaps it’s the fear that this is all that’s available to us that has us deny its existence at all. We’d rather pretend we don’t feel this way than find out we’re stuck with it.
But I think there’s a different orientation available to us, one that’s hard to talk about without reverting to the imagery and symbolism of spiritual traditions. In Judaism, for example, there’s a strong commitment that human beings are made ‘in the image of the divine’, which is really the claim that at heart we’re not something broken at all but something sacred. In Tibetan Buddhism, there’s the notion of ‘basic goodness’ - the soft, tender centre of each of us that can respond with love and care to the suffering of others, and from which all right action flows.
Both traditions have a strong sense that it’s our responsibility is to find and cultivate our basic goodness, learn to trust it, and thereby bring something of value to the world. By abandoning such poetic and appreciative terms for human beings in our hyper-rational contemporary culture, we’ve made it very hard for ourselves to find ways to work with our self-loathing at all, which is why we’d rather pretend it’s not there, even while we’re suffering from its harshness and projecting it onto others.
But work on it we must, because it’s only when we’ve found a way of uprooting our constant comparisons and judgements of ourselves - and replacing them with love - that we have a chance of really addressing our own suffering. And a chance to make the full, true, and wholeheartedly generous contribution to life and other people that is so much needed from each of us.
A long-standing plan, cancelled at the very last minute. Nothing in my diary for today.And now I have to decide - how will I spend my time?I notice how many internal forces are pulling upon me.A long to-do list. Perhaps if I can just finish it, everything will be ok.The lure of busy-work. I could noodle at emails, browse the web, and numb myself while feeling that I'm at least doing something.A wish to do something that would be nurturing, self-caring, creative or expressive. And a nagging feeling of guilt and shame at choosing that over my obligations to others.An embarrassment of possibilities (and embarrassment is exactly how it feels). Many choices I could make, and really no good way of discerning which will be most of value. Even choosing the criteria by which to choose is disorienting. What will be most productive? well-rewarded? enjoyable? fulfilling? time-efficient? revitalising? beautiful? What will make the biggest contribution?I notice how charged my body feels. It's difficult to settle. This terribly small dilemma - how to spend a day - is caught up with so many narratives and expectations, many of which I'm not sure are even really mine. I could easily spend the whole day in this state, caught between conflicting inner stories and inner longings.I think this is 
Perhaps uniquely among living creatures, we have the capacity to sense beyond the particular details of the situation in which we're living. We can see its limits, and perhaps more importantly we can see our limits. We can understand that there's a ceiling to our power and capacity, that our time is finite, that the future is unknowable, that our understanding is small, and that much of what we depend upon is way more fragile than we'll ever admit.There's a special word for the feeling this evokes - angst.We mostly experience angst as a feeling of absence, because in coming up against the limits of our world, and the limits of our understanding, we quickly conclude that something is missing and that we must be responsible for it. We feel that we ought to change things, make them better, fix them up. We feel our inadequacy in doing so.And so we build cultures, organisations and lives in such a way as to shore us up against experiencing angst. We imagine that if we don't have to feel this way - perhaps if we don't feel too much at all - then we can assure ourselves that everything will be just fine.Of course, in the end this doesn't work out, because behind all our busy activity, our habitual routines, and our constant affirmations that we're doing ok, angst is still making itself felt. In a way our efforts make it more apparent, because living in such a way as to avoid angst means making our world small and tightly sealed. The feeling that we're deceiving ourselves and imprisoning ourselves and that there is some bigger way of living becomes even more present, even as we try to hide it.Running away from angst, it turns out, amplifies it and robs it of its biggest possibilities.The way through this?Firstly, giving up the idealised notion of an angst-free future. Angst is, it seems, built in to the human condition and comes as a consequence of our capacity to see beyond ourselves. And so there can be no world in which angst is fully absent.Secondly seeing angst not as a terrible something to be avoided, but as an invitation, a reminder of the truth of our situation, which is that the world is much bigger, more mysterious, and more possibility-filled than we can usually imagine. And that even though there's really nothing to stand on, there's much that we can trust.Angst is then not a signal to hide away, but a reminder of the uniqueness of our human situation. And a call to step more fully into life.
Tomorrow is grading day at my kickboxing dojo. I'm putting myself forward for orange belt. And so today is practice day. We go through the motions, each step and each combination practiced again and again and again until it's deeply memorised, in the body. With enough practice the moves just flow out, gracefully, without the interruption of conscious thought. How much practice is enough? Days and weeks for sure. Years, to really master something.And this is, in the end, how we learn any way of acting, whether boxing, dancing, relating, speaking or listening. Practice upon practice upon practice. Paying close attention to ourselves as we go. Each day discovering the further subtleties and discernment required. Each time finding out in our rigidity, or by falling over, what we haven't yet embodied. Failing, and picking ourselves up again. And not knowing quite how, or when, it's all going to come together.There are no short cuts.Except in our wider culture, particularly in the world of organisations, we've forgotten all of this. Or become wilfully blind to it.We confuse becoming skilful with learning facts (a relatively simple act compared to learning how to do something well). We demand learning that does not disrupt our schedule (mostly what we're not willing to disrupt is our 
If you really understood that it would all end... you, your life, and all your relationships... and the life of everyone around you... every company you ever worked for, every project you put your hand to... everything you leave behindIf you really understood this, would you lead or manage others the way you do? Work the way you do? Live the way you do?And if not, how would you lead, work and live - in the full knowledge of endings - instead?
Until you start to look for it, you may be unaware of your efforts to watch out, perhaps obsessively, in order to protect yourself from a certain something.Some people are hyper-vigilant for lapses in fairness, rising in reaction any time someone says or does anything that seems unjust.Others are hyper-vigilant for disorder, cleaning and clearing, sorting and organising the moment anything appears to be in disarray.Some are hyper-vigilant for any threat to their sense of control, reacting before they know it to assert themselves if they ever feel even slightly out of the centre of things.Others are hyper-vigilant for anger, shutting down and hiding away the moment it seems to be in the air.And other people are hyper-vigilant for criticism, lashing out at once in defence when anybody seems to have a judgement or unwelcome opinion.Your own hyper-vigilance might well be invisible to you, so habitual has it become. It may even seem that your particular version of it is not particular to you at all but a truth about the world. But if you observe for a while you might see how it arises in the form of a barely noticeable shift in feeling in your body. A tightening, a constriction, a sinking feeling taken as a signal to become alert, and then as signal to react, even when reacting might be the least helpful thing to do.It's a big deal for anyone who leads, or who has the reach to affect many people around them. Because your hyper-vigilance is most probably visible to everyone else even if it's not visible to you. It will have people tip-toeing around you, withholding themselves, determined to avoid provoking your defensive reaction. Or it may throw you again and again into a predictable kind of difficulty.The antidote to hyper-vigilance? Learning to become still enough, attentive enough, to catch the feeling before it turns into action. Slowing down instead of throwing yourself faster and harder into busy activity. Mindfulness practices can help a lot here.And gradually cultivating a different story about the world, in which your primary project is not defending yourself but opening to everything that comes your way.
How much of the time, do you think, are you leading or managing others in a way that really just says 'be like me'?And how much of the way you act in your closest, most intimate relationships, is a form of 'be like me' too?What about your relationships with your friends? Your children?How easily do you fall into living in a way that understands in theory that other people are different from you, but repeatedly asserts that your way of being and doing is, really, the best?And is this really the best way to be a leader, partner, parent or friend?
So many things to worry about, or at least to pursue, in the future...Projects, plans, budgets, launches, promotions, purchases, sales, changes, losses...Each, whether you long for it or dread it, could well never come to pass. And each will surely one day come to an end.Alongside all your effort why not, then, cultivate the practice and discipline of paying minute attention to what is? The sparkle in someone's eye, the sound of pen moving across paper, the click of a keyboard, the weight of warm dishes in soapy water, the light streaming between half-open blinds, the feel of being with companions, colleagues.You may find that there is pleasure, solace, and exquisite beauty in cultivating awareness of the everyday small things that, together, make up a life.
I am particularly attuned to the disorder and messiness of the human world today. Driving along a busy high-street, my eye is drawn towards litter, towards unevenly parked cars, towards the jumble of shop fronts - wildly different designs crowding in upon one another. I feel a little despairing. It's hard for me to see the coherence here, and all the effort and care that went into constructing this place.For a colleague, it's difficulty that's coming forward most strongly. She's pressed in upon by her trouble having projects turn out, by all the people who seem determined to confound her intentions, by her confusion about what to do next, by her worries about what might happen. She's afraid. It's hard for her to see the huge opportunities she's right on the edge of.Someone else I know has just become a father for the first time. He's suddenly attuned in a new way to the brightness and crispness of the world, the sheer beautiful aliveness of everything, the sense of possibility inherent in each moment and in each person. He's experiencing both love and life streaming towards him, and from him towards others. The despair of the world is, for a while, far away. The possibility of the world is in, very close.Each of these different aspects of the world is always present, of course, even when we're not attuned to them. The world is always in a state of disorder and flux, just as it is always filled with difficulty. It's also, in so many ways, always bright and crisp, filled with love and possibility if we'll dare to see it. Chaos and order, love and difficulty, confusion and clear seeing, light and dark, hope and despair, fear and opportunity. Which stand out most prominently for us most is less often a matter of how things are in some fixed sense than of our capacity for attunement, which itself is both a skill and a habit.And that begs some questions.Which aspects of the world is it your habit to pay attention to, and which do you ignore, dismiss, or simply not see? How invested are you in keeping this habit going? And what consequences do your habits of attunement or non-attunement to the world bring about: for you, for your work, and for everyone else who gets to be with you?And can you find out that the world isn't mostly a particular way, and consequently how many different ways there are of experiencing the self-same situation in which you find yourself?
Human beings are radically social.Which is another way of saying that we’re deeply affected by the people we’re around. Usually much more than we're willing to admit.Have ever stopped to observe this? Have you looked closely to find out how much your orientation to the world, your values, your openness, your sense of possibility, your moods even, are being shaped by the people you work with, socialise with, are in community with?And in the light of what you find, are you willing to take the responsibility for yourself, and towards all of us, to choose your companions wisely?