My friend has a cat called Ghost. Or perhaps it would be fair to say that Ghost has my friend. They say that dogs have owners but cats have staff. This is certainly true of Ghost and her brother Esso. They live at the “High Peaks Embassy” in Derbyshire and have two servants known only as First Employee and Second Employee. They have a strategic plan in place to raise the standards at the Embassy with Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) set to monitor the work of their employees.

Sadly, the performance of Second Employee is less than satisfactory. She has terrible taste in home furnishings, clothes and hobbies, and exasperates Ghost with her habit of crocheting large multicoloured throws and bringing back from Spain entirely unsuitable ceramics. It is fair to say that, in the judgment of Ghost, Second Employee is a failure.

The judgement of cats, however, is as nothing to the judgement we inflict on ourselves. If I ask you to list a few things about yourself that you don’t like or which you perceive as faults, I think you would find it hard to stop at say, three or even five. Go on, list them now and see how many points of failure or dissatisfaction you can come up with. There, I told you!

Now think of your best friend. List the qualities you value in them. I should imagine there are quite a few. Now their faults – how many can you think of? Of course, there will be one or two, because nobody is perfect, but I’ll bet your friend’s list is a lot shorter than your own.

Now back to you. What do you like about yourself? Go on, don’t be shy. What’s good about being you? Is this list longer or shorter than the list for your friend?

We seem to have two modes of judgement: one for others and one for ourselves. We judge ourselves far more harshly than we do the world. The rest of the world is allowed to have flaws, but we have to be perfect. The rest of the world is allowed to fail, but if we fail then it’s a disaster.

Thinking of your friend again: what do you think he or she likes about you? Perhaps it might be appropriate to ask. If you have an honest friend, you may even be able to ask about the faults they perceive in you. The list of your virtues will probably be longer and the list of your failings shorter when it is your friend doing the judging.

Perhaps we need to show ourselves more mercy and allow ourselves a few tiny faults. If we judge ourselves too harshly then it’s easy to fall into depression when we think about what failures we are as human beings.

Our pets may set us KPIs – I’m sure those a dog sets are a lot easier - but the standards we set for ourselves are often impossible to achieve. Let’s set our targets for ourselves at the same level as we do for the world. Let’s relax those judgements and be gentler on ourselves.

If you would like to know more about Ghost and Esso and their hilarious efforts to bring Gracious Living and Proper Order to the High Peak, then their book - The Cats of the High Peak Embassy: Volume One: The Battle For Beige, by Susie Halksworth, is available on Kindle for £1.77. 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0FBY4BMKR?ref_=dbs_m_mng_rwt_calw_tkin_0&storeType=ebooks 

Mary

A Moodscope member