How do I stop being so hard on myself

You are a "perfect"ly normal human being.

A lot of us are too hard on ourselves, but when it interferes with relationships and small things, I would say maybe put that energy towards listing something you like about yourself. We ALL have good traits including you.

Next time you have a typo error say to yourself "I'm only human" or "At least I type fast/enjoy proper spelling!"

Simple sounding, hard to do. I had self esteem issues up until recently using that method. Also maybe find the source of why you feel that way. Do you have a history of being bullied? Hope that I helped.

 

I used to be like that too. I still am sometimes. My hair had to be perfect, my clothes had to be perfect, my grades had to be perfect. Man that takes up a lot of energy.

Now I have a "I'm not perfect so why does my hair have to be?" attitude. I'm human. I'm going to make mistakes. I just need to make sure I learn from them.

If someone apologizes to me for a typo I tell them "no worries, I'm fluent in typo". Chances are, no one is going to notice until you bring it up.

 

Yeah, I ditto, a lot of us are far to hard on/harsh with ourselves. Just remember to demand as much from others as you give of yourself. And that no matter how hard we try, we will NEVER be perfect, or do a job perfectly or be the perfect boyfriend/girlfriend/sister/daughter, etc. People are flawed, none of us are perfect and we are bound to mess up or not do as well as we wanted to.

It`s not about never stumbling, it`s how you pick yourself up afterwards that matter! If you make a mistake, learning from that mistake makes it valuable, not something to be ashamed of. We learn more from messing up, than we do from getting it right. Sometimes we just have to focus on the fact that life has a learning curve, and as we get older we try, fail, pick ourselves up and learn something about ourselves, get better at our jobs or life in general. I am not saying I always succeed in this, some days we have to allow ourselves to just feel bad, and let it all out. Then we can start anew the next day

So being a bit hard on yourself can be a good thing, it can make you strive to be more and better. But at the same time, if it strains/damages your confidence, self-esteem, then doing something about that is important, because there`s the healthy variant of pushing ourselves forward, and then there`s the unhealthy variant where we`re stepping ourselves down, and if we keep doing that then we can`t move forwards and develop. You don`t deserve trashing, no matter how much that little voice in your head tells you that. I`ve been guilty of that more times than I could count. But truthfully, we only get further when we encourage ourselves to do better and rise to the challenge, not when we tell ourselves we`re worthless and stay down.

*Big hug!*

 

I used to be one of those kids who got straight As, looked sharp ALWAYS, you know, the kind parents love boasting about( The type most cousins love to hate). In simpler terms i had a ''perfect'' life. Deep down that was my way of dealing with life's imperfections, e.g being orphaned at a very young age, completely not knowing my father, never feeling love from the one man i called father, etc. It was all up until high school( A level) that the cracks started to show. My grades dropped, i was hated by most of my classmates, felt alone. I got really depressed and dropped out of school. Fortunately i dealt and made peace with some of the issues i had, picked myself up and developed a new ''humanly perfect'' attitude. When i make mistakes now, i just say to myself ''oh well'' and just move on. Hope sharing my experience will give you a better outlook on things. Nothing was ever meant to be perfect anyway'

 

Absolutely nothing wrong with you. We all can be a bit harsh on ourselves - in some areas more than others.

I look at it like this - is there really anything in this world that can happen to you that is going to stop life? (Besides death)

No, to be honest, not really.
Mistakes are part of life. Step into reality; live and learn.

 

I'd be much more worried if you thought you were perfect. I'm sure you've heard the sayings about how everybody makes mistakes. But try to look at every failure as an opportunity to learn. Thomas Edison said (paraphrased) "I haven't failed to find the right material for my light bulb; I have discovered 1000 materials that don't work." Failure is the stuff with which you build success.

"If you learn from a loss you have not lost." ~Vince Lombardi. He was pretty famous for winning, and even he lost at least occasionally.

 

Don't be down about it, nobody is perfect and nobody really wants to be, either.