Countless times in my life I’ve found myself struggling with nagging thoughts such as “you are not good enough” or “you are not smart enough” or “you can’t do this job” or “you are the worst, you can’t do anything right”. Sounds familiar?

If not, then maybe you hear other voices in your head saying things like what if I fail, what if I can’t handle this, I knew they wouldn’t like me, I’ll never find my soul mate, I’m just not cut for this, I always make a fool out of myself and the list goes on.

Whatever you are saying to yourself that’s making you feel bad is a way of criticism and that usually leads to feelings of inferiority, worthlessness, fear, unhappiness, stress and inadequacy.

Self-criticism also leads to criticizing other people, because we are best at giving to others what we have within us. More than often we also tend to attract people into our lives who are also self-criticizing and who will be criticizing you as well, because they don’t know how to praise anyone.

Living this way can become very exhausting and can even lead to feeling depressed and usually it can be changed with a few conscious shifts of your mindset.

When I was working as an ice cream truck driver (I know, cool right?) I was very confident I would learn how to perform my tasks effortlessly. I was supposed to sell ice cream to children or to people who WANTED to buy, how hard could it be?

Well, after my 3 days of guided driving sessions and learning how to read a map, it was my turn to drive the truck, by myself. I still remember it vividly, I was sitting in the truck on a beautiful summer day in Stockholm and the weather was the last thing on my mind. All my colleagues were driving out to their separate destinations and all I could think about was how scared I was.

I was panicking, trying to ask one of my colleagues through the car window what I’m supposed to do now and he answered just read the map you know what to do. Thanks for the great help and comfort I thought to myself, sarcastically. I kept thinking that I will never be able to do this, this is impossible, I don’t know how to read this map, I’m not ready, this will never work, oh my god what should I do, what if I get lost, what if I crash the truck somewhere, how did I get myself into this mess, what am I doing here, what was I thinking I will never be able to accomplish this and so on.

When the day was finally over and my boss evaluated my sense of direction and skills of reading the map correctly I was very embarrassed from seeing how many wrong turns I had taken during my ride.

And the next day I decided to tell my boss that I wanted to quit. I’ll just admit to him that I suck at this and I will never be able to do this right, I accept my failure and that’s that.

I’ve had countless jobs before this one and was used to bosses never asking many questions whenever I said I want to quit (yes I had done it before) but this time it was different.

My boss said something to me that changed my life forever, he said “Selma, if you quit every time something gets a bit difficult, life will become very difficult for you”. I took that as a challenge at first and wanted to show him that I could succeed, I wanted to prove it to him. And so I did.

I changed the way I talked to myself, I went home and thought about new ways of thinking, I wrote down the worst that could happen and accepted that to myself. Then I wrote down what I can start thinking about myself and this job that will empower me instead of making me feel like a failure.

Next thing I knew after a few weeks on the job I was as happy as could be, riding the beautiful streets of Stockholm, selling ice cream to kids and grownups. Enjoying every second of my wonderful and amazing job, feeling so confident about myself and I was doing a great job. I was driving, selling ice cream, experiencing great delight in being outdoors, which was all I wanted to get out of this job.

The way I made this shift wasn’t by becoming a better driver or reading the map more efficiently. All of that occurred because of a shift in me, in my mindset and by stopping to criticize myself.

Do this every time you find yourself criticizing yourself, especially to the point where you feel paralyzed in life or a certain area of your life.

1. What exactly are you criticizing yourself for? Write this all down even if this isn’t the most positive part of this exercise. For example: “I’m not smart enough to do ____” (fill in the blank) or I always mess things up.
2. Question your criticism. Look at your list of things you say to yourself that’s criticizing and ask; who says I’m not smart enough? How do you know you are not smart enough? Always mess up WHAT exactly? Do I really ALWAYS mess things up or is it’s just a made up thing in my head?
3. What is it you are trying to achieve? For me it was becoming a better driver and reading the map more efficiently.
4. See things differently. Maybe it’s not a question of being “smart enough”, maybe it’s just a question of practice. Anyone can become great at something by practicing. Maybe it’s not that you always mess things up, maybe you are just afraid to fail so you don’t even want to try. Most likely you tried only once or a few times before you decided that you always mess things up. Don’t be so hard on yourself, being afraid is normal but when you keep trying you feel more confident in yourself each time you try. That feeling of messing things up will go away when you face your fear and keep trying UNTIL you succeed.
5. Separate yourself from the voices of others and your own. When you hear the criticism starting to come up, have you ever thought to ask where these negative thoughts stemmed from? For me, a lot of it came from the people I grew up with. Many times I made the mistake of identifying myself with other peoples thinking, words and way of looking at me. Whose words of criticism are you identifying with? Understand that whoever criticized you must again as mentioned before, be filled with self criticism and it doesn’t mean what they are saying about you is who you are
6. Decide to praise yourself for every little and big thing that you have done and are doing every single day. Identify yourself with greatness, ask yourself what you are good at and the things that you ALWAYS seem to do right. Praising yourself will be a way for you to feel better about yourself and it will act as a foundation for you to build your self confidence and self worth on.
7. Show compassion to yourself. If you had a friend who you knew was criticism him/herself would you tell them they are right to criticize themselves or would you tell them “hey, I understand that you are feeling angry or upset and it must be awful. But I know you and I think you are being too hard on yourself, I know you can do it, maybe if you do this and that it can really help you solve that problem. And besides, remember that time you accomplished this thing even though you didn’t think you could?”If you can show this kind of compassion towards a friend, why not show the same compassion and kindness to you? Become your own best friend and show yourself the same compassion you would show your friend. Talk in a positive and empowering way to yourself, say I can do it, I know I can, I will become better at this with time I just need to practice, I will figure out a way to solve this issue, I’m intelligent, I’m much more capable than I can ever imagine, I can do anything I put my mind into. Now that is a way to beat self criticism to the core.
8. Learn how to tackle your inner voices. Everybody has these voices every once in a while, some more than others, the key isn’t to get rid of it, it’s to learn how to tackle it in an empowering way. The most successful people in the world suffer from self criticism but they know how to be their own best friend and talk themselves out of it before it even gets time to “feel at home”.

Thank you for reading! I really hope you found this post helpful. If you like this post, please share it with your friends and family. And make sure you subscribe to our newsletters to get updates on new content.

Choose to be happy,

Selma

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