It’s March 2021.

 

Speaking of March, do you remember what was going on around this time last year?

 

I do. At the end of February 2020, I was at a wedding when I heard the term “coronavirus” for the first time. I overheard a conversation in which someone made a joke about Corona (the beer) being served and how it leads to “coronavirus.”

 

I didn’t understand the punchline, so I pulled out my phone and Googled the thing that would dominate the whole world for the rest of the year. It’s strange to think back to that pre-pandemic celebration where we were all so clueless about what was to come in the following days.

 

Flashforward to this past week, it was my birthday and I was having a great day with my family when a seemingly average conversation escalated into an emotional conflict. Once I removed myself from everyone else, I snapped. For a few brief moments, I felt so angry. And the level of angriness I felt was not at all proportionate to the “cause” of the anger.

 

I didn’t stay angry for long though, my heated emotion quickly turned to regret for blowing up over such an insignificant thing. Then my regret spiraled into sadness and lamenting over the past year.

 

It began with a thought something like:

 

“If you would have asked me on my last birthday where I’d be a year from now, I would have expected so much more.”

 

Ouch.

 

Before I knew it I was down the rabbit hole analyzing everywhere I went wrong or fell short the past 365 days – shaming, blaming, and kicking myself for everything I’d done or hadn’t done.

 

I knew I was being harsh on myself, but these thoughts and feelings felt so overwhelming to me that it was hard to stop thought-looping. So, in an attempt to pull myself out of this loop, I turned to scrolling Instagram for a positive quote to help lift me up when I saw this post by TV writer and author Jonny Sun:

 

 

Woah. That hit home.

 

It got me thinking about how much we’ve all gone through in the past year and how little slack we give ourselves.

 

We survived a pandemic, yet we’re disappointed in ourselves for not “doing enough” with our “free time at home” during COVID.

 

We shame ourselves for the weight we gained after months of gym closures, job loss, death of loved ones, and stressful event after stressful event.

 

We don’t take breaks when we need them, and even if we do we’re thinking about what we “should be doing” the entire time we’re “resting.”

 

How cruel is this? Why do we show ourselves so little compassion? I, for one, would never look at a friend who just went through the most traumatic year of her life and say “Well, you really should’ve been doing more…” That would be pretty messed up, right?

 

So why do we think it’s ok to talk that way to ourselves?

 

I’m here to tell you that it’s really not ok! We all need to be nicer to ourselves! This is why I came up with this “How-to-Not” Guide in regard to beating yourself up.

 

 

Disclosure: This article may contain affiliate links that direct you to another business’s goods and/or services. If you purchase anything through the links I provide, I may receive compensation or a commission – a percentage of the sales price you pay – at no additional cost to you. Please know that I only recommend products and services that I personally use and love, or those that I have thoroughly researched and believe would be of value to you.

 

I’ll start off with this: You don’t have to achieve huge accomplishments, be the “best” at anything, or be “productive” all day long in order to have value. In fact, you don’t have to do literally anything to be worthy.

 

You Are Worthy And Valuable & There’s Nothing You Can Do About It!

 

Here in America, we’re raised to believe that the more we achieve, the “better” we are. Productivity is king. If you’re not producing 80 hours a week, you’re not doing enough. If you’re content with your life or your job as-is and not constantly looking to “move up” or strive for more, you’re “lazy” or have a “poor work ethic.”

 

This mentality is so heavily beaten into us from such a young age that we don’t even question it anymore. We just accept it as fact. Well, the truth is that this is not a fact. You don’t need to produce or achieve or set goals or do anything else to be worth something as a person.

 

You are no better, and no worse, than the person next to you, no matter what you do. As humans, we’re all equally valuable regardless of what we’ve done or haven’t done. That’s right, even if you’ve made “gigantic mistakes” or if you think you’re a “loser” due to your perceived lack of knowledge/education/skills/looks/wit/charisma, you’re still just as worthy as the person you think the most highly of.

 

But if you’ve been encouraged to criticize yourself and beat yourself up for your entire life, and at the present moment you can’t imagine your life any other way, how do you go about changing this?

 

As with any other “problem” you have, the key to solving it is being aware of it.

 

Watch What You Say to Yourself

 

Awareness just means paying attention. Start paying attention to your thoughts and try to simply observe them without making any judgments. What does the voice inside your head stay about you throughout the day? If you’re like me, you’re probably a lot nicer to virtually everyone in your life than you are to yourself. Don’t worry, this is totally normal and fixable.

 

Here’s how you start:

 

• Become the watcher. Author Eckhart Tolle encourages readers to “Be the silent watcher of your thoughts and behavior. You are beneath the thinker. You are the stillness beneath the mental noise. You are the love and joy beneath the pain.”In other words, you are not your thoughts. You have the ability to observe your thoughts from the viewpoint of an outsider and to simply become aware of what’s going on in your mind, without judgment.

 

• Approach your thoughts with curiosity, not criticism. When you’re becoming aware of your thoughts, your initial reaction might be to shame yourself for thinking such things. Please don’t do this! The only thing worse than having negative thoughts or feelings is beating yourself up for having said thoughts and feelings.In other words, don’t beat yourself up for beating yourself up. It’s a vicious cycle that will lead you to feel worse than you did to begin with. So show yourself some grace and compassion and shift your criticism to curiousness. Instead of saying to yourself “wow, you are so mean!” say “oh, that’s so interesting that we’re thinking this, I wonder why.”

 

• Once you’re aware of your thoughts, start writing them down. Try this exercise: write down every single thought you think about yourself for one day. Seeing your thoughts on paper pulls you out of your own head and makes it easier to point out your most unhelpful or destructive thoughts. Remember, this exercise isn’t an opportunity to pile on the negativity, simply observe what you’ve written and commit to approaching your thoughts with genuine interest and investigation.

 

Now that you’re aware of your thoughts and noticing how not-so-useful they’ve been for living a happy, healthy life, you can begin the process of changing the way you talk to yourself.

 

 

Start Shifting Your Opinion of You & Improve Your Self Talk

 

You want to start shifting your negative thoughts to more neutral and, eventually, positive ones. Practicing this can be really fun. First, determine what you actually want to think of yourself.

 

Answer these questions:

 

• How do I talk to the person I love the most?

 

• How do I talk to children? Think about your own kids, your niece or nephew – what tone do you use when speaking to them?

 

• How would I talk to my best friend when she’s feeling really down or vulnerable? (tip: if you wouldn’t say something to your best friend, don’t say it to yourself!)

 

Once you have an idea of the way you want to be treated (by you), come up with thoughts you want to try out and begin to practice them.

 

If you catch yourself falling back into self-criticism or negative self-talk, gently tell those thoughts “I see you” and, just as gently, let those thoughts go.

 

Stop Comparing Immediately

 

Another strategy for halting negative self-talk is to commit to stop comparing yourself to others. You’ve undoubtedly heard this tip before, but have you actually tried to do it?

 

Intellectually, we understand how destructive it is to our self-image and mental health when we obsessively scroll social media, to compare our lives to our friends’ and acquaintances, and to measure our success against our colleagues’, but have you even made the conscious effort to stop doing it?

 

Try giving it a shot.

 

Proactively work towards quitting comparison in the following ways:

 

• Take a break from social media, it doesn’t matter how positive your feed is, you will inevitably find yourself comparing yourself to others.

 

• Start validating yourself rather than seeking validation from others.

 

• Focus on what you’re doing right and your accomplishments. Make a list of all of the amazing things you’ve done and read it frequently.

 

• Start and end each day by patting yourself on the back. Take your journal every morning and write down everything that you love about yourself. And every night, write down 5 things that you did well during that day.

 

And, most importantly, start making yourself a priority!

 

Put Yourself First…At Least For Now

 

Why are we brought up to believe that putting everyone else first is what we should strive for?

 

This is a generalization, of course, but women are especially encouraged to put LITERALLY EVERYONE before themselves.

 

You should put off your ambitions if it gets in the way of being a “good mom” (and by the way, if you’re not sacrificing your sanity daily for your kids you’re doing it wrong), you should make sure you love your spouse the most (even if you haven’t gotten around to loving yourself yet), you should drop what you’re doing at work if your colleague or boss needs your help even if you’re already swamped (you want to be a team player, don’t you?), and you should always do what’s expected of you (i.e. run yourself ragged in order to “do it all”) rather than doing what your mind and body are begging you to do.

 

It’s somehow become a badge of honor to be deemed “selfless” and to never devote time to anything for yourself. In fact, if you’re putting yourself first, you’re “selfish.”

 

This is garbage!

 

Making yourself a priority isn’t being selfish. “Selfish” according to Merriam-Webster, is defined as “concerned excessively or exclusively with oneself…seeking or concentrating on one’s own advantage, pleasure, or well-being without regard to others.”

 

If you’re putting everyone else first right now, you’re doing the exact opposite of being selfish, but this is an extreme that is not any healthier than selfishness.

 

You can strike a balance between these two extremes. You can be concerned with yourself, without being excessive or exclusive. You can concentrate on your own advantage, pleasure, or well-being while still taking into account the well-being of others. It’s not an all-or-nothing game.

 

Think of how much better everyone else’s lives around you will be when you are at your happiest and healthiest. You’re actually doing everyone else a favor by putting yourself first. And, apart from babies and vulnerable people you’re responsible for taking care of (and who truly do need quite a bit of your attention from you for their survival), other people can take care of themselves for now.

 

Of course, you should strive to be helpful and collaborative and giving, but not at the expense of surrendering your own self-care and self-love.

 

If putting yourself worth is tough for you, keep in mind that if you continue on the path of pure selflessness and putting yourself last, you’ll likely end up resenting all of the people and things you cared so much about due to devoting every fiber of your being to them your whole life. Then everybody loses.

 

If you’re in the habit of putting everyone else’s wants and needs before your own, it’s time to bump yourself to the top own priority list, at least until you stop this whole beating-yourself-up thing.

 

And the best way to treat yourself as your own number one is to start practicing real self-love.

 

Really Practice Self-Love

 

Self-love is arguably the most important gift we can give ourselves. When you love yourself, you show up in the world as your best and highest self. Yet, for a lot of us, loving ourselves is not something that we’ve been taught or encouraged to practice. Rather, we’re typically led to believe that “true love” comes from someone else.

On Valentine’s day, I saw this post by Melyssa Griffin, one of my favorite personal development teachers:

 

When I read this, I found my eyes welling up with tears thinking about how I have spent so much of my life not practicing self-love and instead choosing so often to beat myself up internally.

 

How many of us can genuinely say that we truly and deeply love ourselves?

 

If you can’t respond with a resounding “yes!” to this question, it’s time to make practicing self-love a priority.

 

True self-love and self-care isn’t just about taking baths and getting massages. It goes much deeper than that. It’s creating an inner dialogue where you support yourself, compliment yourself, have your own back, and genuinely care for yourself like you would the person (or animal) you care about most. It’s treating your body right with physical activity, healthy foods, and rest when your body needs it. It’s about spending quality time with yourself. It’s about knowing that, no matter what happens, you’ve always got YOU.

 

Here are some ways you can show yourself some love:

 

• Take yourself on dates;

 

• Get to know who you really are:

 

• Appreciate the little things about your personality and your experiences;

 

• Leave yourself love notes;

 

• Go on a gratitude spree about why you’re thankful for you:

 

• Trust yourself and your choices;

 

• Seek validation from you and you alone;

 

• Loving yourself the MOST.

 

When you love yourself the most, it’s so much easier to love everyone else. And if everyone else truly loved themselves, think of how much better this world would be.

 

Finally, my last suggestion for ditching self-criticism is to remind yourself that beating yourself up is not only detrimental to your well-being, it’s not actually even helpful in any way.

 

Remember That Beating Yourself Up Is Simply Not Useful

 

If you’ve spent a lifetime consistently beating yourself up for “mistakes,” you might be thinking that this way of life is something you can’t change. It may be so ingrained in you that the tips above seem like touchy-feely, getting-to-know-and-love-yourself mumbo jumbo that will never work.

 

If that’s the case, try looking at it from this very practical standpoint: Beating yourself up is just not useful for anything in your life.

 

It doesn’t solve any problem.

 

It doesn’t lead you to “do better next time” or prevent you from making mistakes in the future.

 

It doesn’t teach you anything new.

 

In other words, it’s a waste of your precious time. So if you can’t get behind any other reason for treating yourself more kindly, do it for efficiency’s sake.

 

Final Note

 

A lot of us are in the habit of beating ourselves up all day every day, but it doesn’t have to be this way. If we can train ourselves to be kinder to others, we can certainly train our brains to be kinder to ourselves.

 

When you let go of self-criticism and commit to truly loving yourself, life becomes so much easier, more peaceful and more fulfilling!

 

Now’s the time to ditch beating yourself up for good and love yourself. You know it’s long overdue.