It’s time to stop beating yourself up
You can keep stewing over the same mistakes, or you can move on and become the person you were always supposed to be.
by: E.B. Johnson
Do you still beat yourself up over mistakes you made years ago? Are you punishing yourself or engaging in self-sabotage that makes it hard for you to stay on course? Until we stop destroying our own lives, we’ll never find happiness. Taking charge of our future requires that we step back and revalue ourselves and our needs. You are worthy of happiness, but you won’t get it until you stop beating yourself up.
You are your own worst critic.
Are you your own worst critic? What happens when you make a mistake? What happens when things don’t turn out the way you planned for them too? Do you get upset? Do you lash out at the world, or do you lash out at yourself? When we’re dealing with low self-esteem and upset, we can become our own worst enemy. We turn our anger and our upset inward and become victims of our own rage and heartbreak.
No one will tear you apart as viciously as you tear yourself apart.
If your goal is to have a life that is stable, filled with love, and happy — then you have to stop beating yourself up. The past is the past. There is nothing you can take from it but the lesson. We have to reshape the way we saw what happened. We have to reshape how we see ourselves and how we process failure and mistakes. You deserve to be happy, no matter how little you think of yourself.
Signs you’re beating yourself up.
Are you beating yourself up, or ripping your life apart? Self-sabotage comes in all forms, but it all stems from low self-esteem and a desire to punish ourselves for perceived wrongs or “mistakes”. As we carry on beating ourselves up, we destroy the quality of our lives and our hopes for a happy future.
Constant criticism
Constant self-criticism is a trademark symptom of the brutalized life (Elliot, 1999). Are you someone who dwells in negativity? Do you rip yourself apart before anyone else has the chance to? What is your self-talk like? Do you make fun of yourself? Call yourself mean names? All this criticism continues the world’s job of tearing you down; it can even quicken it. The more you engage in this practice, the more likely you are to detonate your own life.
Never going far enough
What happened the last time a great opportunity came up? Did you allow yourself to dream big and go for it? What about your dreams? Have you ever taken actionable steps to make them come true (ie taking an online class, or job shadowing someone)? When you hate yourself, you often don’t allow yourself to take advantage of opportunities — as a means of self-sabotage. You get stuck in a rut and plant yourself there, never venturing out to experience your happiness.
Low-value relationships
Our relationships are a direct reflection of what we think of ourselves. When we build our lives on a base of self-confidence, self-knowledge, we attract relationships with people who respect us and respect themselves. When we walk around with low self-esteem, we attract low-value relationships. These bonds are usually short-lived and highly turbulent. Allowing low-value people to come into your life will destroy you and your peace of mind.
Zero backbone
Would you describe yourself as someone who easily sticks up for what they believe in? Believe it or not, lacking in assertiveness can be a means of self-sabotage. When you don’t stick up for yourself, the world (and the people in it) learn to take advantage of you. This is a result of low self-esteem. You don’t think you’re worthy of happiness or success; you bury yourself deep, deep away and cower in fear of everything around you. You lock away your backbone in order to punish yourself.
Engaging in self-sabotage
Have you ever been told that you’re your own worst enemy? Have you ever heard the phrase shoot yourself in the foot? This means to engage in self-sabotage, or the act of destroying your own life. You invest in relationships that you know don’t make sense. You pursue jobs you know you don’t want. You basically keep yourself trapped in miserable cycles in order to punish yourself for perceived wrongs or personal shortcomings.
Always expecting the worst
Do you always expect yourself to fail? Do you regularly say things like, “I hate myself…I’m so dumb…I’ll never do that…” These are all phrases related to self-hatred. They demonstrate a lack of faith in self, and a central tone of self-loathing. You don’t get to happiness by hating yourself. You get there by loving yourself. When you love yourself, you’re willing to put in more work. When you love yourself, you can create a vision you believe in.
How to put the self-flagellation to an end.
You’ve got to stop punishing yourself and sabotaging your own life. You are the creator of your happiness, but that happiness will never come if you spend all your time tearing yourself down. Now is the time to build yourself up and reconnect with who you are. Do you want to be happier? Drop the blame games, extend some kindness, and reshape the way you see mistakes.
1. Drop the comparison games
If you are someone who actively sabotages their lives, then there is a very good chance that you are someone who often compares themselves to others. This comparison is toxic and leaves us with the belief that we will never be enough or have enough. You can’t compare yourself to other people and then hope to create a unique life of your own. Copying the path to happiness for someone else will only create a path of unhappiness for you.
You’ll never get anywhere (happily) if you keep comparing your life to the life of others. No matter what you do, you will never have their relationship. You will never have their life, or their career. You don’t need it. What you need is a belief in self and a respect for the journey that you’re on.
Silence that inner voice when it pulls up the comparisons that make you feel bad or not good enough. These comparisons will only pile on the pressure and make you work more frantically for things that don’t necessarily matter for you. You don’t owe anyone else your happiness, your efforts, or your energy. This life is yours and you have the right to take it at any pace that feels right to you. Drop the comparison games and leave others for the future they want.
2. Extend a little patience
Many of us were sold a very unreal picture of the world. We were told that if we simply played by the rules and completed the steps in order, we would be given our reward — but that’s not how life works. It’s filled with ups and downs and all kinds of unexpected choices and mistakes. We have to be patient with ourselves if we want to manage it and find our happiness at the end of the path.
No one gets everything right. No one ends up exactly where they think they will, or with the life they thought they had planned out. Life is filled with unexpected twists and turns that make it impossible to predict what’s going to come next or how we’ll do.
Be patient with yourself. Stop expecting perfection and start expecting humanity. None of us have all the answers. We’re simply doing the best we can to make it through life with the smallest amount of stress that we can. Stop rushing yourself and pushing yourself to meet erroneous dates or milestones of achievement. You can slow things down. You can stop them altogether. No one has a secret recipe for the life that makes sense to you.
3. Cultivate self-kindness
Would you describe yourself as a kind person when it comes to your friends and family? Are you kind to strangers that you meet on a bus or in the store? Now what about yourself? When you make the smallest of mistakes — are you kind to yourself, or irrevocably cruel? A lot of us have a funny way of showing greater kindness and compassion to strangers than we are able to extend to ourselves. Why?
Instead of only extending your kindness and your compassion to others, practice extending it to yourself first and foremost. You deserve the nice side of yourself as much as anyone else does. When you get it wrong, don’t rip yourself apart. Lift yourself up and look for the silver-lining and the bigger lesson in it all.
Be your own best friend. Love yourself as deeply and as fiercely as you love those who are close to you. This self-love is a powerful way to focus your kindness on yourself, especially when times are tough or you feel like you’re getting things wrong. We value ourselves when we love ourselves. We’re willing to stand up for what we want, and we’re willing to fight for a higher quality of life and the things that matter most to us.
4. Listen to the positive voice
We all have two voices in our head, one positive and one negative. Those who beat themselves up are generally those who invest more time and energy into their negative voice. Rather than listening to that kindly conscience that tells them they can do better next time, they lean into that voice which tells them how trash they are. Happiness can’t be found when you give this voice the keys to the kingdom. If we want to find joy, we have to see the good.
Kick that negative inner voice to the backseat. It doesn’t have a right to take power over your life. It doesn’t have a right to tell you what to think about yourself, or what to expect of your future. It’s nonsense. A defense mechanism meant to keep you small and out of the way of danger.
Shove that voice away and insist on making your positive voice a priority instead. Listen to the good things you think about yourself. Dwell more on the positive potential in your opportunities than the negative ones. When you insist on living in doom-filled thoughts, you’ll find more doom in your life. Insist on believing the best in yourself and expecting the best from your future and the decisions that you make within it.
5. Make mistakes opportunities
Like it or not, you’re going to get things wrong in this life. You’re going to choose the wrong people to date. You’re going to pick a career you can’t stand. We all get it wrong from time-to-time because it’s impossible to see the future, or even to know all the answers. This world is a big place, and it’s filled with a lot of variables. Rather than panicking, we have to find a new way to see our pitfalls.
Stop catastrophizing your mistakes. Getting things wrong isn’t the end of the world. Ending up with someone unexpected isn’t a disaster. Before you react and go over the edge, calm yourself and take a look around.
Mistakes are unpleasant, but they are also opportunities. We learn when we our plans don’t turn out the way we wanted. These mistakes allow us to refocus and realize what works and doesn’t work in relation to our lives, our relationships, and even our skills and personal needs. Instead of throwing out your mistakes as a “waste of time” look for the lesson in them. What did you learn about yourself? What did you learn about others?
Putting it all together…
No one seems to brutalize us quite like we brutalize ourselves. When you’re a highly critical person, you become more prone to rip yourself apart when you make mistakes or get it wrong. This kind of self-flagellation only serves to undermine the quality of our lives, though. Beating ourselves up over events that happened in the past is useless. Rather than dwelling on that negativity, we have to be kind to ourselves, take the lesson, and move on.
Drop the endless comparisons and know that your journey is entirely different from that of everyone around you. You have a unique perspective — use it. Be patient with yourself when you mess up and know that it is all a part of the learning process. Be kind to yourself and extend the same kind of compassion to self as you would extend to your closest friend or loved one. Stop taking the lies of your negative inner voice as truth. Listen to the positive voice that encourages you from within. The less critical you are of self, the easier it will become to be kind when you get things wrong. Instead of seeing the setbacks as calamity, embrace them as another piece of the learning puzzle. Everything you get wrong simply teaches you how to get things right, after all.
- Elliot, PhD, K. (1999). The “Inner Critic” as key element in working with adults who have experienced childhood sexual abuse — ProQuest. ProQuest. Retrieved 8 March 2021, from https://search.proquest.com/openview/a8f435227fa395eb6274bc646f78e212/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=40729.
