Being Hard on Yourself

Marlene

It’s often easier to tell others to be gentle with themselves than to enact that same grace in our own lives. As human beings, we have a tendency to set high personal standards, and when we don’t meet them, we criticize ourselves for falling short or perhaps even for dreaming too big. The frustration we feel when something goes wrong is often self-directed, but this feeling of self-blame is a common one — and there are many ways to remedy the situation.

A big part of getting out of a rut is recognizing there will always be things that are out of our control. Furthermore, there will always be situations in our lives that turn out less than ideal, such as coming up short in a job interview or dropping the ball on a correspondence with a friend. The trick is to shift our focus away from self-criticism and toward progress and possibility.

Failure, or anything that feels like it, is a learning tool that helps us better understand ourselves, our bandwidth, and our drive. In other words, it’s an opportunity to turn a negative into a positive. So the next time we’re feeling down, let’s try to remember we’re all doing the best we can. Here, we’ve rounded up 10 quotes that may be just what you need to hear on those days when you’re being too hard on yourself.