Don’t be so hard on yourself!

I had a fantastic conversation with a colleague recently at lunch.

We were discussing, amongst other things, some of the topics of this blog and I was sharing some of the observations that I have made about myself as I have become more aware of myself. My colleague observed that others in the organisation were recognising the improvements I was making and that I shouldn’t be so hard on myself.

Obviously I was happy to hear that others in the organisation were recognising my improvements :) but it also made me wonder… was I being hard on myself? Are we so used to criticisms and judgements that we’ve lost of the art of giving honest feedback… even to ourselves?

As a recovering perfectionist, I have traditionally been rather hard on myself (and others!). This is something that I’m working on and, whilst I’m obviously not quite there yet, I think I’m getting better at it. Lately I’ve been trying to apply the Learner vs. Judger model from Change Your Questions, Change Your Life. Based on this, here are some thoughts on how NOT to be hard on yourself and others:

1. First, just observe:

Whenever you, or someone else, does something, pause for a moment to observe. What just happened? What impact did that have? What did I want to happen instead?

I was focusing on the observations that I had made about some of my characteristics that I want to reduce / remove. In other words, the bad stuff. This led my colleague to feel that I was criticising myself and he did a very nice thing, he defended me. I wasn’t trying to criticise myself though, I was trying to demonstrate the improvements to my self-awareness.

2. Don’t just observe the negative:

Some people are natural optimists and some are natural pessimists. If you default to looking for the negatives, that’s ok, just look for the positives as well. Don’t just ask “what didn’t work?”, also ask “what worked?”.

I was observing how I was getting better at recognising and learning from observations of myself. My colleague got that. In fact, not only did he get it, but he observed that others in the organisation got it too! Obviously I’m doing something right! :)

3. Learn, don’t judge

Learning is looking at what worked and what didn’t and considering what we could do more of (the good stuff!) and what we could do differently (replacing the bad stuff with good stuff!). Learning allows us to change for the better. It’s easier to learn from observations than from judgements. That’s why #1 and #2 above are so important! Judging is the “being hard on” part, it implies (and encourages) permanency. When you categorise people or assume things about them, you’re judging them.

At first, I responded to my colleague’s observation with self-defence. “I’m not being hard on myself…”. Then I went back to #1 above and observed what happened. I am improving my self-awareness and I should do more of that. At the moment, I’m applying this mostly to my bad stuff. I can change that by applying this to my good stuff too.

What have I learnt…

I am becoming more aware of myself and the impact of my actions. As this happens, it is important to look for both the positive observations and the negative observations; and to learn from both. Do more of the good stuff and less of the bad. Pretty simple, right?