How Self-Criticism is Harming you
Reading books is the best way to expand your knowledge. Therefore I turn to books to get insight directly from the experts in respective fields. Once I was reading a book titled “Stop Procrastinating” written by Nilse Salzgeber, an excellent book to read if you are a serial procrastinator. In this book, one particular chapter impressed me a lot; it was “Why self-criticism won’t get you anywhere and what to do instead”. I was astonished to learn how harmful the act of criticism is to oneself. I had an incredible paradigm shift that day, changing my life forever. Let’s see the insights I got from that chapter.
Do you ever make yourself feel bad, do you beat yourself up mentally after procrastinating or failing to achieve your goals?
If No, very good. If yes, then don’t worry, you are like the majority of people. But that doesn’t mean it is OK to do that. Research shows that we become depressed, negative and mentally tiered because of the punishment we give to us through criticizing ourselves.
If that is true, then why do we do it so frequently?
During our childhood, our school teachers and parents might be tough on us whenever we performed poorly at tests. We cannot say for sure that our elders’ scolding’s worked or not, but one thing is sure that no one liked to get punished. But now, fast forward to the future, we all took on the role of our elders to punish ourselves for mistakes we have committed, hoping we might improve. Sometimes it might work, making us feel better. Still, the times it doesn’t work, we will be depressed, making it much worse, than we start an emotional journey along a downward spiral, thereby making it very difficult for us to overcome. So we give up and quit instead.
Research has found the symptoms self-criticism; they are procrastination, depression, negative emotion, self-sabotaging, self-handicapping, fear of failure, emotional fatigue, and decreased self-worth.
What happened
I have experienced most of these symptoms in the past, let me share a little story. I was an average student in my B Tech days. I used to submit my assignments late, won’t study for tests until the last moment. It became a habit, and I was okay with it. This attitude continued later into my 6th semester, but the first time when I procrastinated, it made me mentally stressed out. I was worried that there was no time to study, that disturbed my mind, instead of focusing I was thinking about the possibilities of what would happen if I started on time and how I should have avoided this mistake. It resulted in more waste of time. Then after examination on finding that I did marginally better. I would console myself that even though I had last minutes to prepare, I did well. This behaviour repeated multiple times and developed into a habit.
What was actually happening
Let me explain what was going on; my “procrastination” leads to self-criticism. Because of procrastination, I started evaluating my “self-worth” which only gets depreciated, which leads to fear of failure. My mind was “mentally fatigued”, which made me lose focus leading to “lower productivity”. Because of all this, I lowered my expectations and aimed to score just passing grades in the exam(“self-sabotaging”). Being satisfied seeing my results reach my expectations (just passing marks), I would say to myself, “even though I studied at the last moment, I succeeded”. This cycle repeated again and again, not letting me reach my true potential (“self-handicapping”).
Here you can see self-criticism is not reliable. Try to relate my story that is the best way to achieve clarity over this topic. By the way, did you know 90% of the suicide cases rooted in self-criticism? Even I was shocked to learn this fact. Knowing this now, when I catch myself about to self-criticize, I would stop and do what the author suggests to do instead. He suggests having self-compassion.
Self-compassion
Imagine your best friend is having the wrong time. What would you do, do you make him feel bad for how stupid he was? Do you criticize him? I hope not; those who are sane don’t criticize people who they care about, especially when they feel low. Instead, we try to comfort and motivate, make him feel better. That’s how kindly we treat our friends; we are compassionate towards them.
Compassion by definition means, “sympathetic pity and concern for the suffering or misfortunes of others”. We show compassion to our friends when they are low. Similarly, we have to do it for ourselves. Research proved that self-compassionate people tend to be positive, happy, productive, see failure as an opportunity for growth and more successful.
I was a little sceptical when I read this, how does showing concern and sympathy to ourselves will lead to productivity and success. It turns out that many share the same view, and also some may say that showing compassion is a way to run away from hard reality and self-criticism is to confront it. But in fact, it is another way round. I know it’s a little difficult to understand when the truth is opposite to what our instincts say.
Reading further into this topic, I could understand better. When you show self-compassion you start thinking that it’s OK that you failed, mistakes happen, and we have to learn from it and not repeat it. This way, one accepts the reality and looks forward towards the solution.
How I implemented self-compassion in my own life
In my case, now when I procrastinate to study until the last moment, I will say to myself, “it’s OK that I wasted time, it can happen to anyone, so from now on I will give my 200% to make up for my lack of time”. When I say that to myself, I release any tension I had and can concentrate thereby “convert my worry time into study time”. Since there is no criticizing going on, my mind is focused now. After my tests, I repeat these words to myself, “It’s ok that I have procrastinated, it can happen to anyone, and its normal, next time I will be more cautious and not allow myself to repeat the same mistake.” Trust me, it feels a lot better when you say these lines, and chances are you will not repeat your mistakes.
This way, I tried to incorporate compassion into my own life. Now, I ask you to remember your past episodes of self-criticisms and think about how would you incorporate self-compassion instead, if a similar situation had to arises again?
Self-compassion has changed my life. I believe that this concept is so powerful that it will have an impact on you too. The final takeaway from this is:-
- self-criticism is harmful; it leads to procrastination, negativity, depression, self-sabotaging and fear of failure.
- We should practice self-compassion instead because it leads to a happy, positive, productive and peaceful experience.
A lot of you guys have shown appreciation for my previous work. Thank you very much for your support. It means a lot to me. Please comment below what topics I should write on. Bye. 😊