Beating Yourself Up

A common mistake for personal growth newbies is to wrap one’s self-esteem into short-term results. This often leads to self-blame and excess worry when results are below expectations. If we use the lenses of truth, love, and power (our fundamental growth principles), we can see why beating yourself up for mistakes and failure is an ineffective approach that doesn’t actually help you grow. The Truth Lens When viewed through the truth lens, we can readily see why beating ourselves up for mistakes will only make things worse. Since all input serves as a form of programming for our brains, it’s predictable that negative self-talk, especially when it becomes habitual, will serve to lower our future performance. We’re essentially programming ourselves to perform poorly when we use negative self-talk. We behave like a computer that installs a virus to slow itself down. When you make mistakes, blaming yourself as an individual isn’t a very useful way to address problems. Problems could have been caused by circumstances outside of your control. Even if you made a mistake due to ignorance or poor performance, it’s more intelligent to view such a mistake as a software problem. Something in your thinking or behavior caused the problem, and therefore your best bet is to work on improving your thoughts and behaviors (i.e. your mental software), so you can avoid similar problems in the future. As a human being with a human brain, you’re a learning m...
Source: Steve Pavlina's Personal Development Blog - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: Emotions Source Type: blogs