Are You Your Worst Enemy?

 

Are You Your Worst Enemy?

Are you so self-critical that sometimes it’s like you’re your own worst enemy? If so, I have a great little life lesson for you, courtesy of my three-year-old.

Imagine that we’re in the kitchen and I asked him to mix some ingredients with a whisk. He gets on his little stool and he starts mixing away. After a little while, I saw him put it down, motion a thumbs up and say: Good job! I looked over and sure enough he hadn’t gotten the job done. I couldn’t help but think how cool is that, that his natural instinct was to congratulate himself on a job well done. He didn’t try to get acknowledgment or validation for me for what he had accomplished. Instead he gave it to himself. That’s the opposite of what your average adult is doing, I might even be talking about you right now. If you’re somebody who never acknowledges your own successes, but instead focuses on what you haven’t done right or haven’t accomplished yet and are too busy comparing yourself to other people. Doing all of those only leads you downhill onto the road of unhappiness. That needs to change.

Here are some tips to help you with that:

1) Focus on having a better relationship with yourself. Instead of being self-deprecating be supportive and uplifting and yes you can be honest with yourself when you need to without being brutal. You can have high standards and not beat yourself up all the time, because nothing good comes from that.

2) Instead of focusing on what others have achieved and have that lead you to your perception of thinking that you’re lacking or failing, shift gears! focus on your own journey and remember that everybody is on their own path. Your path is the only one that matters. Maybe your path isn’t as direct, maybe it leads you in a totally different direction, you never know.

Refuse to waste your time comparing yourself to anybody else, your life will ultimately be whatever you make it out to be. Yes, it’s good to succeed and have big goals, I’m all for that, but what if additionally right now you decided to gift yourself with a mindset that you are good enough as is, right now without having to do anything or be anybody, imperfections and all. I challenge you to take a stand for yourself, give yourself permission to accept yourself and no longer give so much energy to the critical inner voice that everybody experiences and nobody benefits from.

The more you learn to give it no energy the better you’ll overall feel about yourself.