One of the most common things I see in people who write to me is something we all share: disappointment in ourselves.
We all feel this because we constantly fail to live up to our standards:
We aren’t as disciplined as we’d like.
We don’t stick to the habits we’re trying to create.
We aren’t as productive as we plan to be.
We leave small personal tasks, and large work tasks, undone.
We fail to exercise as much as we’d like and eat as healthily as we want.
We fail to be the best parent, partner, or friend, as we think we should be.
We should, we should, but we don’t. And that is frustrating and disappointing. We all feel it, so much of the day.
A friend of mine wrote to me about her disappointment in herself concerning doing all the things she’d hoped to do, and I saw myself in her. I am never all that I hope to be. I constantly fail, like everyone else. So what can we do about it? I’ll share some of the strategies I’ve been using lately to deal with this and hope that this post can serve as a guide to all of us (myself included) in dealing with these difficult feelings.
Step 1: Noticing the Signals
The first step, as always, is awareness: pause right now and turn inward, to see if you are feeling frustrated or disappointed with yourself for anything. Are there any goals you haven’t accomplished? Habits you haven’t stuck to? Eating you haven’t done perfectly? Relationships you’re not being good at? Skills you’d like to learn that you haven’t devoted time to? Errands or tasks that aren’t getting done? Projects that you’ve procrastinated on?
What kinds of feelings come up for you? These feelings are signals that you have expectations of yourself that you aren’t meeting. We all have them, all the time, and we can’t help but continually hope we’ll do better. These expectations aren’t realistic, but when we fail to meet them, we tend to think they’re realistic but it’s our actual selves that are the failure.
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