Living up to my own standards

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Yeah, that probably is the biggest challenge I can possibly think of.

As much as I am aware of the value of learning from my own mistakes, I have a tendency to really hit myself over the head when those mistakes come about. Not literally. But I expect other people to criticize me harshly, so I do that to myself before I give anybody else the chance.

I know I should not be demanding perfection from myself, and that nobody but myself is expecting that from me. Well, does anybody have experience in making an old habit like this go away?

When I was younger, I thought that being honest with myself meant being harshly critical of myself for every mistake I made. As I got older, I realized that I was just as wrong being critical of myself as I would have been if I had only seen my successes and ignored any flaws.

If you are going to be HONEST with yourself, you have to see both your flaws AND your virtues and you have to have a reasonable and balanced perspective on both your strengths and weaknesses. To be blind to the good side of yourself is as bad as being blind to the bad side because if you can't see the good, it is very hard to efficiently direct your efforts at improving yourself.

Much time and energy is wasted in berating ourselves for our failures when we could be using that energy to getting on with life and using our strengths to their best advantage. Yes, be aware of your weaknesses and, if necessary, try to improve on them, but don't ignore your strengths by spending all your time obsessing about your flaws.

Easier said than done. But it might be useful to regularly remind yourself that you can more effectively improve yourself by building on your strengths rather than by dwelling on your mistakes.

If you catch yourself being harshly self critical, think about how you would feel about a friend if he or she made the mistake you are beating yourself up over. Would you cut them out of your life? Would you criticize them incessantly until they improved them selves?

Or would you try to help them see the situation with some degree of perspective? Perhaps you wouldn't want to fully downplay a flaw if it were important that the person not make that mistake again, but you'd also probably try to point out how the mistake isn't the end of the world.

If you catch yourself beating yourself up, try turning the tables to assess how critical you would be of a friend and then try to apply that attitude toward yourself.

The dude above laid it out clearly.

I have the same problem too. I hold myself up to a pretty high standard. When I screw up, I nearly beat myself up over it.

Same, same. This is one of the mot challenging things I have to deal with. I'm harder on myself than anyone could ever be and it leads to a serious lack in confidence and unshakable feelings of failure. Say I cover a song; despite having a few dozen people tweet or Facebook that they loved it, no matter how gushing their opinion, I almost completely reject their praise and instead, can barely listen back to it without cringing. In fact, I usually end up deleting and/or distancing myself from any product of my creativity more than a few years old. It sucks but you guys know what it's like.