7 Things You Should Never Beat Yourself Up About
Many people are in the habit of beating themselves up about their lives. They view themselves as weak-willed, lazy or lacking in skill compared to other people. And it hurts their ego. They want to be the best at everything, but it just won’t happen for them.
Does this sound like you? If so, you’re not alone. What Freud called the “superego” can be a hard master.
In this post, we take a look at some of the things you shouldn’t beat yourself up about. Check them out below.
Your Past
Getting hung up on your past is a common affliction. Many of us find it hard to stop focusing on all the bad things we did in a different life. It can consume our energy.
But the truth is that nearly everyone has done things they’re not proud of. We’ve all made mistakes. It’s a part of life. People who don’t make any mistakes probably aren’t doing anything at all.
If you want to be happy, you’ll need to forgive yourself for the things you got wrong in the past. Sure, you hurt people or damage your body, but that’s not who you are now. You learned from those mistakes and moved on with your life. Now it’s time for your mind to do the same.
You Keep Complaining About The Same Problems
Complaining about something for a week or even a month is okay. But going on and on about something for years on end isn’t helpful. What’s more, it can often reveal your deepest motivations and psychological needs.
Suppose you’ve been complaining about where you live, your friends, or your weight for a decade but haven’t actually done anything about these problems. Usually, that means that you’re not actually all that interested in solving them. Instead, complaining about them is actually a way for you to meet your psychological needs for something else, perhaps sympathy.
If you have a problem that’s been going on for a long time, don’t beat yourself up for not solving it. Instead, ask the more productive question of why you haven’t solved it. You should learn something in the process.
You Keep Quitting
Many people beat themselves up for quitting things that they start. Here’s a list of common projects that get the better of people:
- Finishing a book
- Starting a new fitness routine
- Eating a good diet
- Making new friends at a local club
- Therapy
If you keep quitting, it’s probably a brain pattern that you’ve had since you were young. It’s probably been going on for many years.
Go into your past and ask, when was the first time you quit something? And how did you feel afterwards?
Usually, you felt bad, and beat yourself up, but continued to do it anyway. You never realised as you grew up that quitting was your way of coping when things got difficult, either at school or in your personal life. Now, whenever there is a trigger, you quit again, just like before. You label yourself as lazy, but all that’s really happening is that you’re trying to cope with your life.
The trick here is to have a little self-compassion. Be more understanding of yourself and why you might be behaving this way. Once you know why you are quitting, you can adopt strategies to help you deal with it, and not do it again in the future.
You Keep Letting People Down
Letting people down by failing to do the things that you are supposed to do is a great way not to win friends and influence people. In fact, it’s one of the quickest ways to turn people against you in our society. You must stand by your word.
If you keep promising to do things but fail to do them, then it usually relates back to something to do with you, probably self-sabotage. You beat yourself up because other people have labelled you a failure but that doesn’t deal with the issue. You just keep repeating the old pattern over and over.
The key here is to take a look at what happened to you in the past and why you don’t seem to be able to do the things others expect of you. Perhaps, for instance, you were in an abusive relationship. Maybe you’ve done something to yourself, or you don’t carve any time out for yourself. Perhaps you have a deep-seated belief that you’re not worthy of love or happiness.
The trick here isn’t to ruminate about what happened in your mind. Instead, you change your actions. You get into doing the things you say you’re going to do, even if that means committing.
You Can’t Quit Your Bad Habits
People who can’t quit their bad habits often label themselves as weak, decadent or even immoral. But habits are difficult to control. Avoiding many feels like trying not to blink.
The reason for this is how they become hard-wired. Habit-prone people experience a trigger, usually sensory, and then get caught up in the “habit loop.” What happens after the trigger often feels completely automatic, even if it is destructive.
That’s why so many people go on a treatment program. This way, they can break the cycle of their bad habits and get rid of them in a controlled environment. It can take months, but it works.
It’s also worth pointing out to yourself that breaking bad habits isn’t just a matter of willpower. In many cases, substances can cause physical dependence. If you don’t get them, the body goes into panic mode, changing your chemistry to a point that feels uncomfortable.
You need to have a little self-compassion in these circumstances. Habits often take on a life of their own. After a certain point, they cease being something under your conscious control. No amount of willpower will save you.
You Don’t Know What Your Passion Is
In the modern world, we’re all supposed to know what our passions are and then pursue them. If we don’t, we’re missing out on life. There’s something wrong.
As such, if you’re not in your dream career, you start beating yourself up. There are people out there getting paid millions just to play but you’re stuck in the accounting department.
The trick here is to abandon the need for passion. The ego loves its passions. And it believes that one needs to be passionate about something to really move forward in life.
But that’s not true. You can actually live passion-free and have an excellent life.
If you still believe in having passions, then the other approach is to be patient. You never quite know when a passion will pop up.
You might, for instance, try woodworking on a whim and suddenly discover that you love it. That could then lead to a life full of passion and joy that you want.
You Procrastinate
Lastly, you’ll want to stop beating yourself up for procrastinating. Critically, procrastination has almost nothing to do with laziness, an inability to be productive, or a slovenly work ethic. It’s more to do with the level of stress you feel. If stress is overwhelming, procrastination becomes significantly more likely.
The trick here is to look at why you procrastinate. If something is stressing you out, like an exam or a deadline, that could explain why you don’t want to face the situation. Avoiding it is much more pleasurable in the short term than actually addressing the issues you face. Watching cat videos is a far more pleasant experience than directly addressing the issue that you need to revise for an exam or complete a piece of work that dozens of people will judge.
