Have you had days where you just can’t think anything good about yourself? Or days where everything you do doesn’t come up to your own expectations so you start demeaning yourself? Human beings are bound to mess up one time or another. But one of the most harmful things you can do to yourself is to hurt yourself by being over critical of everything you do.
It is always good to set some expectations for yourself and to have that inner voice that helps you reach your potential. But when your inner voice becomes toxic and self-hurting, it can become a barrier to your success and can demotivate you. What you think about yourself and how you perceive yourself is eventually how you see yourself.
Here are some of the habits you can adopt that can help overcome that inner critical voice of yours.
Make a List
Whenever you face thoughts of failure at something or you are not good enough to achieve something, just remember to be a little logical.
Write down a list of all the reasons why you think you will fail and all the reasons why you won’t fail–similar to a pro and con list.
By having a list, you will be able to see that whatever is making you feel like you’ll fail is actually something you can achieve and be good at.
Focus on improvement
Whenever you start being critical of yourself, always remember that there is no shame in failure. But failure can manifest both ways; negative as well as positive. You can either let your failure overcome your potential by thinking that you can never be good enough or you can accept your failure and believe that with every failure, you become one step closer to success.
Will Smith said, “Fail early. Fail often. Fail forward. It’s always a bit frustrating to me when people have a negative relationship with failure. Failure is a massive part of being able to be successful. You have to get comfortable with failure. You have to actually seek failure.
Failure is where all of the lessons are. When you go to the gym and you work out, you’re actually seeking failure. You want to take your muscles to the point where you get to failure because that’s where the adaptation is. That’s where growth is.
Successful people fail a lot. They fail a whole lot more than they succeed. But they extract the lessons from that failure and they use that energy and wisdom to come around to the next phase of success.
You gotta take a shot. You have to live at the edge of your capabilities. You gotta live where you’re almost certain you’re gonna fail. There’s a reason for practice. Practice is controlled failure. You’re getting to your limit. You can’t lift that. You can’t do that. Until you get to the point that all of a sudden your body makes the adjustment and then you can do it.
Failure actually helps you to recognize the areas where you need to evolve. So fail early, fail often, fail forward.”
Accept that it’s okay to fail but it’s not okay to be toxic to your own journey. Believe that your failure teaches you important lessons every time and helps you with your next try.
Think Like a friend
Sometimes, you have to give yourself the same advice you would give a friend in the same situation. You can be highly toxic to yourself but when your friend asks you some advice or when your friend fails at something, you are there to support and motivate them.
You help them make sense of their failure and you make sure to point out habits and things in them that are great. In order to let go of your inner toxic critic, you have to think about yourself the same way you think about your friend. Humanize yourself in your own thoughts and motivate yourself that you will succeed.
Stop the Negativity
Sometimes you don’t even realize you are slipping down that path of self-criticism. But you have to catch yourself and stop that thought as soon as it enters your mind. By doing this, you don’t allow yourself to be toxic towards yourself.
Whenever you feel bad or think about yourself in a toxic way, remember to stop that thought pattern and replace it with something good that you have done or you are about to do.
Replace thoughts of failure with memories of achievements. Replace fears of failures with constant motivation and belief in yourself.
As human beings, we are prone to set up high expectations from ourselves and sometimes, we are not able to come up to our own expectations.
During times like these, it is important to remember the good in ourselves, our good nature, our quirky habits that make us uniquely us and most importantly, it is important to not let that toxic critic get a hold of our thoughts.
What is one self-toxic habit you want to get rid of? Let’s share and support each other in the comments.
