It’s Time For You To Stop Being So Hard On Yourself

99.9 percent of the time, the perception you have of yourself in comparison to how the world sees you is false, mainly because you are way too hard on yourself.

I want you to just keep that in mind as you read along and remember all of the times you have been brutally hard on yourself for no reason.

Like the time you looked at yourself in the mirror and instead of seeing all of the good, you picked apart all of the “perceived” flaws about yourself instead. Or the time, you labeled yourself as “weird” or “unlovable” just because you struggle emotionally from time to time.

But I guarantee you, the way you see yourself is probably not the way the rest of the world even sees you, because we are all just so goddamn hard on ourselves and for what reason, I don’t know.

We are either hard on ourselves when it comes to our looks, how we perform in our careers, our nurturing capabilities (such as being a good mother), where we are in our lives compared to other people, and even how much value it is that we bring to this world. 

It is simply an ongoing habit of being overly critical of ourselves and practically everything that has to do with our lives.

According to the New York Times, being hard on ourselves not only affects our self-esteem in terms of how we see ourselves, it goes a lot deeper. “Symptoms of depression, anxiety, substance abuse, and negative self-image,” all tie into being too hard on yourself.

It brings about the tendency to not feel good enough, worthless perhaps, or not accomplished enough, and this, in turn, leads to self-sabotaging behavior.

I know for me, I have perfectionist tendencies like a lot of us do. My hairdresser, who is like an auntie figure to me, would always say, “No matter what, you are just the type to see the glass half empty instead of half-full.”

And she’s right.

There are many times in my life where I have just been way too hard and critical of myself, maybe for past fuck ups or things I have experienced in the past and I have found that all beating myself up has done is make me not love myself and also not enjoy the good moments that I can experience in the present.

In life, nothing is perfect. You won’t always be on time for work or do the tasks just right. You won’t always have a life that is social media worthy and you may not always feel your best, but that doesn’t take away from your worth as a person.

So many of us waste our lives hating ourselves because we have this standard that we are trying to live up to and when we don’t meet it, we then feel like we are failures or less than we really are.

But in reality, your belief that you are not enough is just false. It is just a fabrication based on being too hard on yourself. 

Like I said, 99.9 percent of the time, you are actually a lot more awesome than you give yourself credit for.

You are.

But you missed that, because you were way too busy, being hard on yourself.

You are enough. Don’t forget it.