Toni is a long-time online friend who also has ME/CFS, but more importantly, she is the author of How to Be Sick: A Buddhist-Inspired Guide for the Chronically Ill and Their Caregivers and How To Wake Up: A Buddhist-Inspired Guide to Navigating Joy and Sorrow, as well as the author of a monthly column on living with chronic illness in Psychology Today. I highly recommend How To Be Sick - it's an inspirational and thought-provoking book that has helped me a lot. I still need to read and review How To Wake Up. I think I could use it about now.
In this month's column in Psychology Today, Toni writes about How to Talk to Yourself. As with all of her writing, it is an insightful essay that I found very helpful. In it, she discusses how positive self-talk can help you to feel better and have compassion for yourself. This is something I really needed to hear today, both because of on-going struggles with a bad crash and also ongoing struggles in an important relationship in my life. I want to write out some of the quotes that she includes in this essay in large letters and post them all over my house!
Two of my favorites:
"The greatest griefs are those we cause ourselves" - Sophocles
"Holding on is believing that there's only a past; letting go is knowing that there is a future." - author Daphne Rose Kingma
I hope you find Toni's words as inspirational as I did today. You can link to some of her other insightful posts at the bottom of the page. And I highly recommend her book, How To Be Sick.
7 comments:
Thank you for stopping by my blog. I am checking you out too. I read your story and I can relate somewhat as my youngest daughter was born with spina bifida and so our family knows all about the good and bad days with her disability. I liked those quotes in your post and glad you commented on my blog because then I wouldn't have found you otherwise. Stop by again!
Hi Sue. Thanks so much for posting my article. I'm so glad you liked it enough to share. I miss our being connected more often! Love to you, Toni
Thanks for stopping by! I enjoyed your blog, too.
Sue
Yes, me too, Toni! My fault, I'm sure - just have trouble keeping up with everything these days :)
Sue
Interesting read, thanks for sharing :) I agree it's very important how we talk to ourselves.
Alex
We are often our own worst critic. I'm going to have to check out How to be Sick. Sometimes I'm an awfully stubborn patient too. Thanks for sharing with Small Victories Sunday Linkup. Pinning to our linkup board and hope you join us again this weekend.
Replacing negative self-talk with positive was (and continues to be) the first big step in getting out of some deep ruts. I love it! Thanks for sharing Toni's work. Visiting from the Small Victories Sunday Linkup.
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