How Mean to Yourself Are You?

Those who know me know how much Non Violent Communication means to me. I have been saturating myself in Marshall Rosenberg's work for some time now. But tonight I'm struck by the violence in which I use when speaking to myself. You know, "You idiot, how could you leave that glove in the cab!?" "You shouldn't have been talking on the phone and trying to use your cc all at the same time! You deserve losing your favorite glove!" You know THAT kind of self-talk. I realized tonight that I sometimes beat the hell out of myself without a second thought sometime even multiple times a day. And I wonder why some days are harder than others?! It's no wonder. What would it be like for me to have mercy and empathy for myself? What if in response to losing this beautiful dark green suede glove I said to myself, "Wow, you never lose anything! You poor thing - you must be so upset losing that beautiful left handed glove that matched your pocket book just so! But since you are so on top of things this almost never happens to you! In fact you can't even recall the last time you even lost something because you are always so careful!"
Can you imagine if the kind of compassion and empathy a dear friend would give us was what we could give ourselves? How much less wine would we need to drink? How much less cake would we need to eat? How much more love could we show the world if we just showed a little bit more to ourselves?