I spend too much time criticizing myself and that keeps me from being my best self. I am sure I am not alone. Self-criticism is a plague that afflicts almost everyone. Quiet that voice of criticism. It is not your friend. Furthermore, it is a liar! You are not as bad as you tell yourself you are. You are exactly as you are supposed to be. You are the sum of all your genes and choices and experiences. There is no other version of you that could be in this moment. Think about that. You are exactly the person that you and your parents have created. That does not mean that who you will be in a week will be the same. You can make a lot of choices between now and then that will change who you are. You best decision is your next decision. Make it count.
People hold on to their self-criticism because they fear that without that voice telling them that they suck, they will not be motivated to improve themselves. They fear that they will lose their edge and drive to succeed. That in and of itself is a false belief. Self-criticism keeps us from challenging ourselves because it fills us with self doubt. That voice never lets us enjoy what we have already achieved. It never acknowledges that we are good and therefore we seek acknowledgement and approval from other people. That voice can push us down a road we no longer need to travel instead of pushing us down a new road that will lead to better things.
Self-criticism is about fighting the past. If you tell yourself that you suck now, it is because of something that happened before that has caused you to be this way. And the more you talk about it and think about it and worry about it, the more you get angry at the things that you can not change. Meanwhile, self-acceptance is about acknowledging that you are exactly what all the past actions and decisions have created and now you are left with this result. You can look at your past actions and how they lead to the current result and choose to make new decisions going forward that will get different results.
