You’re being too hard on yourself
When you’re being too hard on yourself, nothing goes right.
by: E.B. Johnson
When we move through this world taking on the pressures of everyone and everything around us, it can lead to a serious breakdown in self which leaves us feeling lost and incomplete. To find true fulfillment in this life, we have to live it on our own terms, and come to find a little personal compassion and kindness along the way. Only when we learn to let go of our need to “do it all” can we truly unlock a life that is entirely ours. It’s a process that takes time, however, and a lot of radical self-acceptance.
Start letting go of all that extra stress by learning how to understand who you are and how you came to be where you’re at. There are a number of reasons we feel compelled to go the extra mile, or take on the heartaches of others. The way we’re brought up, and even our personalities go a long way to define who we will be and how we’ll get to where we’re going. We can break the patterns, however, and create the future we want by learning to stick up for ourselves and our needs.
There’s a lot of pressure in this world.
We live in a world that is pumped full of pressure, and this can often result in a personal pressure cooker of our own. When you’re hard on yourself, it becomes an art form and a way of life, permeating into your work, your relationships and even the private conversations you have with yourself day in and day out. Taking on the weight of the world isn’t only unhealthy, it’s dangerous to the future we are attempting to create.
It’s easy to see why we put so much pressure on ourselves. Whether it’s social media, your friends, or your family — you’re constantly being bombarded with messages that clash with the experiences of your past to make a cocktail of self-loathing and regret. When that happens, we can find ourselves in a habit of stepping up to the plate more than we need to, which further undermines our longterm mental and emotional health and happiness.
Why we’re so hard on ourselves.
We don’t just wake up one day and decide to go really rough on ourselves. It comes from a state of mind that’s results over the sum of our experiences. The way we’re raised, the type of personality we have, and even the societal pressure around us are some of the major reasons we bog ourselves down with more stress than we can handle. Getting past that, however, means getting to the root of it so we can make a plan of action.
Upbringing
The way in which we are raised plays a critical role in forming who we are as adults. Those who grow up with a lot of childhood trauma, or those who grow up with dismissive or critical parents, might find themselves becoming overly critical of their own attempts at life. You may struggle to prove yourself, or constantly feel as though you have to go the extra mile in order to show how worthy you are of love and affection. How we feel as children is who we become as adults, and therein lies (part of) the answer.
Personality
Some people have a personality that leads to being more self-critical. Though some facets of our personality are learned, other aspects are genetic, and somewhere in the middle we can find the neurosis that lead us to things like taking on the weight of the world. If your personality is ambitious, domineering, controlling or otherwise “strong” you might find yourself becoming a magnet for the troubles and hardships of others. You may also find yourself stepping up to the plate more than you should.
Societal pressure
Culture and society we exist in goes a long way to dictate the kind of personal pressures we put on ourselves. For women in western culture, there can be great pressure to hold a full-time job, retain a full-time relationship and also balance the pressures of a family, friends and “extracurriculars”. Likewise, you might also experience a great amount of external pressure in regards to your job, where you live, or even what you wear — resulting in a taking on of more internal pressure than you need or can process.
Low self-esteem
When we have low self-esteem, it can often lead to the false belief that you have to do more to prove yourself, or that you have to go the extra mile in order to prove yourself to those around you all the time. This, of course, isn’t true — as you’re just as worthy of love, affection, admiration and respect as anyone else. You don’t have to do more or make yourself feel worse to deserve that.
Subtle signs you’re being too hard on yourself.
There are a number of subtle and insidious ways in which we undermine our own happiness by piling on the excess stress and pressure that ties us down and leads us astray. If you truly want to be happy again, you have to understand how you’re chipping away at your sense of self, and work hard to correct it in all future plans of attack.
Beating yourself up over minimal consequences
When you’re someone who’s too hard on themselves, you’ll often find yourself being overly critical over situations that have few, if any consequences at all. The smallest of mistakes becomes a major upset, and even if no one thinks twice about what you did wrong — you end up beating yourself up for hours and hours after the fact. It’s not a healthy way to live, and it seriously undermines our sense of self-worth. It’s a toxic pattern to engage in and a tricky trap to escape.
Bumping your self-care
Self-care, whether we like to admit it or not, is an important part of life. We all need a little self-care, and that extends far beyond a spa day or the occasional new article of clothing. When you start bumping your self-care off the timetable, in exchange for either work or the needs of others — it can be a sign that you’re putting far more pressure on yourself than you need to.
Justification and internalization
Justification and internalization are two of the most common symptoms of a life lived with too much personal pressure, and they also happen to be two of the hardest to overcome. Justification occurs when we brush off the pressure we’re experiencing, and tell ourselves that it’s just or somehow deserved. Likewise, when we’re dealing with a lot of emotional baggage, we can find ourselves internalizing the pain and baggage of others; making it our own despite the devastating effects it has on our sense of self and happiness.
Feeling like a failure
Feeling like a failure all the time isn’t a normal way to exist, though many of us feel that way at points in our lives. Walking around, constantly feeling as though you should be ashamed, or as though you haven’t done well enough can be a sign that you’re too hard on yourself or expecting too much. No matter how together your life might be, when you’re putting too much pressure on yourself, nothing will ever seem good enough.
Consequences of taking on too much.
A number of cracks and coping mechanisms manifest when we push ourselves too hard or take on more than we can reasonably handle (be that emotionally, mentally or physically). Taking on more than we can deal with is toxic, and can lead to breakdown in self and a breakdown in the confidence you need to move through life with resilience.
Turning to substances
When we take on more than we can handle, the stress mounts and makes our lives even more complicated and hard to bear. Over time, this can really wear you down and cause you to turn to negative coping mechanisms that undermine your longterm health and happiness. Examples of this could be increased substance use, or even the abuse of alcohol or other numbing agents. Rather than relieving the stress, however, it just mutes it for a little while.
Low energy and fatigue
Being maxed out also leads to low energy and fatigue, which can trickle down into every other facet of your life. If you take on too much at work, it will cause you to become tired at home; inevitably leading to you bumping your self-care and going into autopilot when you should be engaging in yourself and filling your free time with passions. Low energy and fatigue are seriously harmful to our mental health as well, leading to increased feelings of hopelessness and emotional overwhelm.
Depression and anxiety
Taking on too much takes over our point of view. Pushing yourself too hard takes a serious toll on your mental health, and when that happens you can have increased feelings of hopelessness or even increased depression and anxiety. These feelings can intensify over time, and help deepen the cycle of self-blame and internalization that causes you to
Cardiac problems
Stress — the number one side-effect of putting too much pressure on yourself — releases a hormone called cortisol which really takes a toll on the heart. When cortisol builds up in the body, it can attack your blood vessels and make you more likely to experience stroke, coronary disease, cancer and even type 2 diabets. Cortisol is nothing to play around with, but it’s exactly what you get when you take on the weight of the world.
Aches and pains
When we push our bodies too hard, or put too much mental pressure on ourselves, we can find our physical bodies responding in a number of ways. Chief among these is aches and pains, which come to plague bodies that are pushed to the brink or robbed of the rest that they need. Headaches, muscle pain, headache and even plunging immune systems are common symptoms of a body pushed too far. It’s also a common result of going too long without giving yourself a physical and mental break.
How to stop being so hard on yourself.
You don’t have to wait for a miracle or look for one answer to stop being so mean to yourself. If you want to be kinder and more compassionate to your authentic self, all you have to do is put in a little hard work every day (no big deal, right?). When we quit beating ourselves up and taking on the world, however, we can unlock true happiness in our lives. It takes a brave and honest look, however, and accepting that we will never be perfect.
1. Start accepting mistakes
The first step in letting go of your inner mean girl is to start accepting the mistakes that you make. As humans, we have this delusional idea that we are somehow omnipotent — in control of every aspect of our environments, and masters of everything the light touches. That’s not how life works, however, and that’s not how nature works either. Bad things happen and we make poor choices. That’s life, and the first step in being kinder to ourselves is accepting that with reckless abandon.
taking a step back to look at your past failures. Think back to when you were a kid and you made a mistake that you thought would mean “forever”. Consider that mistake now. Do you even remember it clearly? Does it make you laugh? Now compare it against those emotions you felt in that moment as a child — that intensity. See how drastically things have changed and realize that everything will change again. Nothing in this life is permanent, including failure. It’s a stopover on a big journey, it’s not the final destination. Unless you make it one.
We screw up. We let people down. We let ourselves down. Bad things happen. We are never in possession of all the facts, so it’s impossible to get it right every single time. Though we see being a failure as something permanent, it simply isn’t. True and unconquerable failure is something reserved to rarity, occuring only to those who are truly evil (Weinstein) and those who are truly reckless (Enron). Rather than seeing failure as an all-encompassing state, we have to see it as the passing experience that it is 99.9% of the time. Everyone has failed at some point in their lives. The odds are in your favor. You get past it when you see it as an opportunity to reinvent, rather than the last stop on downward slope.
2. Drop the comparisons
We live in a highly toxic social media age in which social comparison is more hyper-focused than ever. Nothing will destroy your self-esteem faster than comparing yourself to the Joe Bob on Facebook with the perfect body and 400K followers, and nothing will lead you to put more senseless pressure on yourself. You have to drop the comparisons if you want to find your way back to drawing a line around what you need and what you’re willing to take on.
You have to stop comparing yourself to others and you have to stop doing it before you can build any kind of meaningful sense of self-worth. Become aware of how and when you compare yourself, and stop the thoughts before they start. Understnad that though your journey might be similar to someone else’s, it is never exactly the same. Life is full of variables and, whether we know it or not, they are constantly colliding with the future that we are attempting to build.
Whenever that negativity rears it’s ugly head, learn how to counter it with positive thoughts and the things in your life (or personality) for which you are grateful for. Accept your mistakes and accept that the journey is a long one that takes time and patience. Look for the little things around you that you can be grateful for, and celebrate your small wins. Though you can use the experiences of someone else as a guide, never use them as the law of your land. Drop the comparisons and let your experience be unique to you.
3. Realize there’s no “right” way
Life isn’t a one-size-fits-all experience and, as such, there’s no one-size-fits-all solution to making it work or making it the right life for you. There are a million and one ways you could go about solving every problem, and there are just as many ways to find true happiness and fulfillment in your life. When you can embrace the fact that there’s no “right” or “wrong” way to get where you need to go (short of not harming those around you) doors will open up on possibilities you didn’t even know existed. Such is the way of living.
If you truly want to stop being so hard on yourself, you have to accept and understand that there’s no right or wrong way to go about living this life. Though we should always move through our existence with love and compassion, there are few others rules when it comes to finding our way forward.
Pursue the things you want to pursue, and stop chasing the things that other people want for you. Don’t use the advice of others as an infallible, step-by-step map. Rather, use it as a guidebook to take yourself where you need to go, and score the wins you need to score. Though there is no experience truly “original” in this life, the way we experience is entirely new and original to us. Go after the things you want and enjoy the newness and the passion of the experience. Do things your way, and follow what feels right…not what feels wrong.
4. Develop a growth mindset
Moving through this life running into walls is often a sign that we’re setting our mindset up that way. Focusing on a developing a growth mindset is one of the greatest and most transformative skills we can gain in this life, but it’s one that takes a great deal of centering and radical self-acceptance. To have a growth mindset, you must embrace every single circumstance as an opportunity to grow, and you have to shift the way you look at life (and your place in it) dramatically.
Develop a growth mindset and use it to take yourself to the next level. Rather than looking at everything as an end-all, be-all disappointment, see it as an opportunity to learn and make it silver lining and lifeline to your growth. When we develop a growth mindset, there’s no such thing as “hitting a wall”. There’s only finding the key to another new door.
Get creative about looking at the negative experiences in your life that might otherwise undo you. Find the aspects of those experiences and situations that made you better; look for the things that made you push harder. Developing a growth mindset is like unlocking the secrets of the universe. Seeing everything as an opportunity allows you to stop seeing it as an obstacle and embrace things as they come. It’s a powerful state of being and one with some truly transformative powers when we learn how to see them for what they are.
5. Sweep your own porch
One of the greatest pitfalls the person who pushes themselves too hard often finds themselves in is that of taking on the woes of others. When you’re a strong person (or someone who believe they are weak) you often work overtime to prove yourself to those around you. This means taking on their troubles, their work or even their mental and emotional efforts in order to make things easier on them, or make them “love you”…fallacies and fairy tales that can completely ruin your life.
Stop taking on the mental and emotional responsibilities of others. Before running off to rescue someone who is perfectly capable of saving themselves, sweep your own porch, and make sure that your own needs are met, and you’re ready to deal with your own challenges. While helping others might be noble, doing it at your own expense is silly and reckless. It is impossible to help others or be a contributing member of any friend / family unit when you are unable to take care of yourself. Being unable to define your own value and self worth makes it impossible for you to communicate that value with the world.
Try as you might, if you’re broke-down and unhappy on the inside, you’ll have nothing to offer others on the outside. You have to take care of yourself before you can take care of others. Allow yourself to fall in love with you, just as deeply and unabashedly as you fall in love with others. When you love yourself, you can spread that love to others, but not before. Cultivate love for yourself by celebrating your strengths and developing a mindful journaling or exercising practice that helps you to feel confident and fulfilled. There’s no one cut-and-dry way to take care of yourself, just follow the things that give your mental and physical wellbeing the food they need to thrive.
6. Surround yourself with support
The support systems we maintain are important, but they become especially important in the wake of a major personal or life overhaul. Our friends and family keep us grounded, and help us to maintain a perspective that is a little more realistic than it might otherwise be. When we’re injured by ourselves or someone else, they are they first (and the best) people we can run to, and they can often provide insight that empowers us to heal our wounds.
Embrace the support lines you have around you. Really dig into them, and reach out to those close friends and family that you know you can trust. Open up to them, and let them know that you’re hurting and let them know that you need help. You don’t have to give them all the nitty-and-gritty details, but you should share enough to allow the to understand what’s going on.
Even though it might be painful or scary to open up to our support systems about how we’re feeling or what we think is going on, it’s an important step in healing. Don’t let that false guilt and shame hold you back from opening up. If you’ve come to a crossroads and know something has to change, express that. Be candid and be real. Don’t try to make things seem better than they are. Share what’s going on with someone you trust and watch your perspective shift dramatically.
Putting it all together…
Being too hard on yourself isn’t healthy, and there are a number of reasons why. Not only does it seriously eat away at our mental and emotional health, but it can also take a toll on our physical health — leading to aches and pains, lowered immune function, and even increased risk of cardiac episodes and heart disease. Being kinder to ourselves means increased self-care, but it also means putting a stop to our need to take on the weight of the world. That’s something that can be mastered with practice, but it takes time and dedicated commitment to get there.
Start accepting your mistakes, and understand that no one is capable of being perfect. Embrace the missteps as learning opportunities and use them to grow into the person you were meant to become. Let go of the comparisons, and know that — though we all might be united in shared experiences — we each have a journey that is uniquely our own. There’s no “right” way to go about getting where you need to go, so take your time and be patient with yourself. Embrace the growth mindset, and start to see all these new challenges as a change to become a stronger version of you want to be. Leave other people to their own responsibilities, and start to take care of your own needs before you see to the needs of others. We are all responsible for our own lives, and the decisions we make within those lives. Surround yourself with people who can support you emotionally and encourage you to let go of all those painful things that don’t belong in your heart anymore. You can have the free future you’ve always dreamed of, but you have to stop being so hard on yourself.
