10 ways to be less hard on yourself –
Introduction 👋
When life doesn’t go your way it can be soo difficult to know how to cope! 😨
In a lot of situations, it can almost feel natural to blame yourself and beat yourself up when things don’t go your way. 🥊
The problem is, being hard on yourself can be really damaging to:
- Your mental wellbeing 🧠
- Your emotional wellbeing 💖
- and even your physical wellbeing! 🏃♀️
So, it’s important to know how to avoid being hard on yourself. 💞
Today we’re going to teach you how to be less hard on yourself, so that you can feel happier in difficult situations. ☀️
1. Your mistakes are part of your learning 🤓
When you look at someone who is successful, it’s easy to think that they’ve probably never failed at anything. 🏅
In reality, people who are successful, usually make the most mistakes, and fail the most! 👎
Did you know that JK Rowling (author of the Harry Potter series), failed to get her book published 12 times, before someone agreed to publish it? 🪄🧹
Imagine if she’d given up after failing just once, or even 11 times! 🤷♀️
There would be no Harry Potter! 😱🧙♂️🪄
How many times would you retry something if you failed? ⌚
Would you redo a test after failing it 12 times? 🔁
The more you feel good about failing, the more likely you are to try again, and succeed. 🏆💖
Even if you fail, challenging yourself will be an amazing learning experience for your brain. 🤓
So – if you make a mistake, just remind yourself that:
- Failing is a good thing ✅
- It’s a great learning experience, 🧠
- and that successful people make mistakes! 🏅🙌
2. Don’t compare yourself to others 🪞
Be a Beyoncé 💃
We live in a world where everyone is constantly being compared to each other. ⚖️🌎
Your grades, your appearance, how much money you have… 🎓👗💸
This can be really stressful. 🤯
On top of that, we’re surrounded by images of “success” online, where people often only show the best parts of their lives. 📱🏖️
It can be easy to be hard on yourself, when you don’t feel like you’re better compared to others. 😢
BUT-
How you compare to others, shouldn’t matter! 🤷♀️
Do you think Beyoncé sits around beating herself up for not looking like Britney Spears? 🤔
No! 🙅♀️
She’s busy being Beyoncé! 💃
Life is not about becoming better than everyone else — it’s about being the best version of yourself. 🌟🤩
A lot of people who become successful, do it because they’re busy focusing on improving themselves, instead of comparing themselves to everyone else! 🏋️🪞
Your life story is unique 👌
On top of this, remember that your life circumstances are completely unique to everyone else. 🌎
Your upbringing, life experiences, talents, and opportunities you come across are also completely different to everyone else. 👣✨
A lot of these things are out of your control. 🎮
When you compare yourself to someone else, there are about a million different steps in their life, that has taken them to a different place than you. 🗺️
So, if you’re living on a completely different map, why should you feel bad for not being in the same place as them? 🤷♀️📌
Find inspiration from other people ✨
It can be so easy to look at other people’s achievements and get jealous! 😒
You might find yourself thinking things like:
“They’re just lucky” 🍀
or “They’re so much better than me” 🌠
Instead, you should use other people to inspire you, not to make you feel bad about yourself! 🤩🙌
Instead you should think things like:
“Wow, I’d love to learn from them.” 😃
or “I’m going to try and work as hard as them!” 💪
You can use other people’s success to help you grow and improve yourself. 🪴
3. There is no right way to do anything 👷♀️
Life doesn’t come with an instruction manual –
So it’s fine to find your own way of doing things! 🛤️
Even if your way of doing something doesn’t feel perfect, as long as it works for you, that’s what matters!
4. Learn from people who criticize you 🤔
It can be really easy to feel scared, hurt, or annoyed to hear other people’s opinions. 🤫
If someone gives you feedback or criticizes you, don’t beat yourself up with it! 🥊
When someone tells you how you can get better at something, it’s usually not because they want to hurt you. 💣
People give you their opinions because they think it’ll be helpful. 👌
If someone gives you their opinion, you should:
- try really hard to not take it to heart 💘
- decide if you want to agree with what they’ve said 🤷♀️
- if you agree – find ways to learn from what the’ve said 🤓
- if you don’t agree – don’t stress about it 🛀
- don’t dwell on what they’ve said or beat yourself up about it 💖
You should love getting feedback and hearing what other people think, because it helps you to grow. 🪴🌱
5. Accept your weaknesses💃
You can’t be perfect at everything, and that’s okay!! 👌
Everyone has weaknesses – that just makes you human!
Don’t be hard on yourself if you’re not good at something. 💖
You can always learn to get better, or find ways around them!
Did you know?
A lot of successful business people know their weaknesses really well. 🕵️♀️
They hire people with different talents to help make up for their own weaknesses!
6. Look at your past as an adventure 🏞️
It can be very easy to be harsh on yourself when life doesn’t go your way.
If something goes wrong – you failed an exam, you embarrassed yourself, you upset someone.
Try not to feel negative about these things! 👎
Feeling negative about the past can:
- eat away at your confidence
- prevent you from trying again
- make it difficult to move on
If you can change your mindset to feel positive about the past, it can help you to feel more confident for the future.
Everyone fails, everyone has embarrassing moments. These help us to learn and grow, and get better at things.
They’re all part of your life adventure! ⛰️
7. Don’t decide that you’re bad at something – until you’ve tried it 100 times 🔁
Learning something new is challenging! 💪
It can be easy to get annoyed at yourself for not being good at it straight away.
But, learning takes time! ⌚
You can’t expect yourself to be amazing at everything straight away.
Before you try something new, decide how many times you’re going to keep trying before you let yourself think that you’re bad at it!
Why not 100? 🤷♀️💯
8. Remember your problems probably aren’t that unique 🦄
If you’re struggling with something – you’re probably not alone!
Plenty of people are facing the same troubles as you.
If you Google it, you’ll probably find people talking about the same problems online! 🔎
Would you be hard on someone else for having those same problems? 🤷♀️
Probably not!
9. Exercise out your anger in a creative way 🏋️
It can be really frustrating when life doesn’t go your way.
But – being hard on yourself only makes it worse!
Instead of being hard on yourself – find creative ways to work through your frustration.
If you lose/fail/make a mistake, instead of beating yourself up over it, you could:
- Go for a walk
- Relax 🛀
- Practice some self-care
- Play a game
- Read a book 📚
- Do some exercise
- Make some art 🎨
10. Surround yourself with people who want to see you succeed 🏆
If you’re surrounded by people who are hard on you, it can make it really easy to be hard on yourself. 😟
Make sure that you’re surrounded by supportive people, who will cheer you on! 📣🎉
If the people around you are encouraging and supportive, it’ll encourage you to be less hard on yourself!
Conclusion 👍
So that’s it!
You can be less hard on yourself by:
- Remembering that your mistakes are part of your learning 🤓
- Not comparing yourself to others 🪞
- Knowing there is no right way to do anything 👷♀️
- Learning from people who criticize you 🤔
- Accepting your weaknesses💃
- Looking at your past as an adventure 🏞️
- Deciding that you’re bad at something – when you’ve tried it 100 times 🔁
- Remembering that your problems probably aren’t that unique 🦄
- Exercising out your anger in a creative way 🏋️
- Surrounding yourself with people who want to see you succeed 🏆
If you know any friends or family members who might benefit from learning about how to be less hard on yourself, share this post with them!
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