How do I lower my expectations of myself?

Well, as silly as it sounds, I'm super sensitive even though I try to hide it. So when someone says something negative to me even if they didn't mean to hurt my feelings, I am sometimes hurt.

So instead of focusing on what they said that was hurtful, I remember when someone said something really nice to me that made me smile. Maybe you could apply the same idea and get similar results.

 

Well, this is inherently a subjective and vague thing that I can't give many definite answers to. Many people have this issue, though. I know I've had this problem on-and-off for a long while.

In the last year or so, things have been easier for me because I look forward, not back. "Okay, I messed up. But that's okay. Next time I'll do better," for instance, is what I tell myself quite often. It's a different mindset; it's more active than ruminative. It's not just acceptance — it's also about moving forward from that and actively trying to improve and/or maintain what I consider to be satisfactory behaviour. I'd think that'd be more helpful and sensible and healthy than reprimanding yourself, you know?

I've disappointed myself a lot ("I'm going to set 4 alarms and wake up early today." --> "Okay, I didn't wake up. I can't even trust myself. Hmph."), and to be honest, what I've written did happen today and many times before that. Even so... these days, it's easier to look past my faults because I've somehow gotten to a place with myself where it's okay to make mistakes and disappoint myself.

It may depend on each person. For you, rationalizing it may or may not be helpful.

For me, though, looking forward has helped. I had bad self-esteem until recently, and it sort of just started to improve after I got a lot of support. Reaching out, striving to do well and good, being more active... those all helped me become happier with myself. In the end, that's kind of what it's about, isn't it?

I'm thinking you hold yourself to a higher standard than you do to others. I do the same, and so while I'm a hypocrite of a high order, it won't hurt to allow yourself to not always be the best, or not always do things right.

And pardon me, but is there not a heat wave? It's amazing that you ran that much anyways... at least to me.

Congratulations, you just read a mess of a post If this helped a bit, I'm glad. If not, I'm sure you'll be able to find some answers for yourself with or without my help, ahaha.

 

This might sound silly, but maybe you should try writing down everything that you accomplish, big and small as a sort of ongoing list.

I'm sure that you accomplish quite a lot, but that the things you don't quite get to are the only ones that linger in your mind. As a way to combat that, you could actively keep track of all the things you do and do well so that you're forcing yourself to see that you're actually doing quite a lot of things well. Reflecting on everything that you've done will help even out the balance in your mind, reminding you that for every one thing you didn't accomplish there are tons that you did and just dismissed or forgot in favor of the negative.

Or at least that works for me.

 

We live in a culture of blame and guilt (it's what keeps the newspapers, and lawyers, busy), and we inflict this attitude most of all on ourselves.

I attended a support group on people with ADD (my first support group meeting for anything ever, I'm not the support group type, but this one was actually useful). People with ADD mess up a lot, we aren't focused, we procrastinate etc. The outcome of all this is that we also beat ourselves up a lot because of that.

The concept of "fast-fail" came up and I think it might be useful here. Simply put, anything you do has the risk of failure attached to it. If you do something and it fails, the idea is to consider it a failure as soon as possible, and then quickly move on (i.e. do not dwell on it).

You burned the rice? Take it off the stove, taste it and if it is indeed burnt, put it aside and order a pizza. Notice that an alternative was quickly sought, and the failure was simply dismissed without further dwelling on it.

You couldn't run as much as you wanted (in a heat wave!)? Ok, get to somewhere air-conditioned and do some jumping jacks, or whatever, or nothing (if your body is too tired, listen to it!).

I work in the pharmaceutical industry, it's a risky business. The mantra for the more successful ones is: fail early, and have some backup drugs that can be developed if the one you are working on (and spending millions on) fails. I remember having to stop a clinical research program in Phase 3, that is a very bad thing as millions were indeed spent at that stage. But even there, it is important to stop the spending and move on, just because millions were spent, a dead horse is a dead horse.

As was mentioned above, realize the good things that you have accomplished, it's easy to forget just how much we do that is positive and useful, both for ourselves and others. The best way to not dwell on failures (other than learning from them) is to quickly preoccupy ourselves with an alternative action, and move forward...until the next, inevitable and indeed necessary failure!

 

I haven't left my house for more than 3 minutes at a time, no human should have to deal with this kind of disgusting heat. Don't blame yourself. The heat tires me out like nothing else...