Beating yourself up keeps you the same

We all get down on ourselves at times when we make a bad mistake. Is it helpful, or hurtful to emotionally beat ourselves up? Please consider …

Beating yourself up keeps you the same.

When this thought first occurred to me, I was teaching a corporate group to replace destructive thoughts with constructive thoughts. A lovely young lady stood up and said, “I want to lose weight, so I stand naked in front of the mirror every day and say, ‘You are ugly and fat.’”

It took a moment to collect myself. Her poignant, straightforward admission to self-berating in this corporate setting surprised everyone. When the silence grew deafening, I knew I had to say something … so I asked, “Has that helped you?” Looking surprised, she sunk back into her chair and said “No.” That was when I realized … beating yourself up keeps you the same.

She used all her energy to say awful, destructive things to herself, and she didn’t put any energy into improving or changing herself. Once she felt fully punished, she returned to her normal habits.

Consider this: When you make a mistake, don’t focus on the mistake. Create an image of what you would like to do, how to do it and how to get better at it. Athletes correct mistakes in their mind by imagining performing correctly. If you do this and keep replaying the correct image, you are training your brain to perform correctly.

Instead of beating yourself up, imagine performing your thoughts and actions correctly (over and over and over again) — training your brain and body to do what you would like to do and how to do it the next time.

TC North, Ph.D., High Performance Expert