Whenever we make a mistake, many of us get down on ourselves, criticize ourselves, and figuratively (or literally) slap ourselves on the forehead.
But the unfortunate truth is that beating yourself up after every little mistake only makes thing worse—it’s a recipe for anxiety, insecurity, and inhibition.
In this article, I’ll share the strategies I’ve used over the years to gradually stop beating myself up after every little error. But these strategies aren’t surface-level ones—they go deep into the root of the issue so you can not only control your emotions, but also let go of them and stop them from running the show.
Here’s how:
Understand Where Self-Criticism Comes From
The very first step is to become aware of the source of beating yourself up.
After all, why would you really attack yourself for nothing? I mean, you don’t see animals slapping themselves on the head after a silly mistake. (But that would be kinda funny to see.) Clearly, it’s something we’re taught.
For me, I used to beat myself up after an error because that was how I learned to treat myself. For almost all of my life, whenever I made a tiny and honest mistake, my parents criticized me harshly. They would scream at me, belittle me, attack me, and hold a grudge—even if it was, again, a completely honest mistake, not one done out of malice or intent.
Hell, even when I did things correctly, my parents would still get down on me: “You could’ve done ____ better, why did you do _____, you’re still not doing ____, etc.”
So I made that my default pattern in life: Nothing was good enough, I was always wrong, and I needed to be punished, corrected, and made to feel guilty after any perceived wrongdoing. And even though I disliked how my parents acted, I ultimately learned to punish myself in the same way for any mistake.
This is the most important step. Now, when you feel like beating yourself up, you realize that it’s not you—it’s your programming. That way, you can gain distance from your reaction and all the unfair judgment and punishment that was put onto you for no reason. Rather than feeling like you’re wrestling your mind, you can control it.
Compare that, however, to how most people try to stop beating themselves up: They do something wrong, beat themselves up, and then they beat themselves up for beating themselves up. They mentally fight, wrestle, and block themselves from beating themselves up, yet they never realize they are the source of their own problem.
Who’s beating who up? Who’s fighting who? In reality, they’re being the arsonist and the firefighter at the same time and this mental civil war creates more problems, anxiety, angst, and unhappiness.
Stop Beating Others Up
Often, when we condemn, attack, or criticize others, we’re just projecting our own self-criticisms onto other people without realizing what we’re doing. (I’m guilty of that too.)
Yet as long as we stay unaware and unconscious of what we’re doing, we’re going to continue to beat ourselves up too.
“… very few of us love our “evil” tendencies. On the contrary, we despise and loathe them, they shame and embarass us, and we consequently seek not to integrate them but to alienate them… although we deny these tendencies consciousness, they remain ours nevertheless. We push them from consciousness so that they appear in the environment — it then seems that we lack them but the environment is swarming with them. Actually, when we survey other people and are horrified by all the evils we “see” in them, we are but gazing unerringly into the mirror of our own souls.” [emphasis added]
—Ken Wilber, Ph.D.
It’s very easy to learn about ourselves: Just listen to how we talk about other people. If we’re always pointing out the weaknesses, failings, and mistakes of other people, it’s a damn good sign we’re wired to do the same for ourselves.
The solution isn’t simply to “stop” criticizing other people (which is akin to saying, “Well, just stop beating yourself up”); the solution is to reverse the criticism and understand that you’re saying it about yourself. It’s not you attacking them; it’s you attacking you.
And when you realize that, you’re free to control those emotions and those criticisms will gradually start to melt away under the light of self-awareness.
Do Damage Control
Years ago, I started going to sleep several hours earlier. But in the process of changing my body clock, there would be nights I accidentally stayed up past my new bedtime.
Yet when I did, I would start beating myself up — I would get upset that I blew past my bedtime and then I would hurriedly try to go to bed.
Then I realized something: I already created one problem by staying up late, yet I was creating another problem by beating myself up for it. Now I had two problems. How about I just stick to one?
When you make an error, remind yourself not to compound the mistake by beating yourself up. Instead, pause your “self-punishment” and focus 100% on the best course of action to fix your mistake. To use a simple example, if you spill a glass of water on the table, that’s not the best time to get mad at yourself — that’s the best time to pick up the cup, grab some towels, and prevent the water from damaging more things.
That way, you shift the power and control back into your hands.
Let Go Your Mistakes
In the Inner Game of Tennis, W. Timothy Gallwey has a wonderful analogy about why it’s so important to let go of self-judgments.
Imagine a child learning how to walk: The parent doesn’t judge and criticize the child for stumbling and falling. They don’t try to control or overinstruct the child. Instead, they give a few loving words of encouragement and let the child figure it out on their own.
Well, that’s actually how we should treat ourselves too because this same learning process works for practically everything in life. Whether it’s how to speak Spanish, drive a car, or navigate life’s problems, there is an inherent learning process that we all have—and it’s a process we need to respect, appreciate, and revere.
But as an adult, the typical way we learn is to criticize and judge behavior. We say punitive and belittling things to ourselves in order to do things “right.” “Ugh, why do I keep messing up? I’m not doing anything like how I was taught! Everything was good before, now I’m screwing up. Son of a…!”
Yet Gallwey explains this self-condemnation doesn’t help us learn; it makes everything worse and strengthens our judgemental mind:
“When one has tried hard to perform an action ‘right,’ it is difficult not to become either frustrated at failure or anxious about success. Both emotions are distracting to one’s focus, and prevent full experiencing of what happens. Negative judgment of the results of one’s efforts tends to make one try even harder; positive evaluation tends to make one try to force oneself into the same pattern on the next shot. Both positive and negative thinking inhibit spontaneity.”
Instead, stop adding “good” or “bad” labels to everything you do. All the potential you’ll ever need lies within you so there’s no need to whip yourself like a racehorse to make yourself learn. Instead, like a child learning how to walk, let yourself learn.
At a certain point, I realized not every error I make is a “mistake.” I will never know everything—I can only act to the best of my abilities based on everything I’ve learned or experienced so far. That’s it. And if something happens beyond those limits, I won’t learn until I make that error, so why beat myself up for that?
It would be like beating myself up for failing a test that I wasn’t allowed to study for.
That’s why it’s so critical to do less judging and do more watching.
Stop looking for “good” or “bad” and just see what is.
Be in the moment, breathe, enjoy, and let whatever happens, happen.
You’ll find this process will actually help you learn faster, freer, and with much less stress or anxiety. As Gallwey explains:
The more you let yourself perform free of control…, the more confidence you tend to gain in the beautiful mechanism that is the human body. The more you trust it, the more capable it seems to become.
As you do this, you’ll probably discover that your self-criticisms become fewer and fewer.
And then, you’ll be free.
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