A student said to his teacher: "Whatever I do, I am criticized. When I make a mistake, I am told, 'How could you have been so stupid!' When I speak to other people, I am frequently chided, 'You are making a fool of yourself!' When I finally do something right, I hear 'You should have done this a long time ago!' It's torture to be consistently told off and put-down. And this criticism follows me wherever I go...because it is my own inner voice that is doing the criticism."
Do you have an inner voice that criticizes and complains every time you do or say something? I have had problems with this. Many of us who grew up with a critical parent tend to continue the role ourselves when we get older. When I start feeling bad about something and say, "I should have known better," or some other self put-down, my husband will ask, "Whose voice is that?" It will strike me that it is one of my parents; that I am repeating something that they have said to me when I was growing up.
But we don't have to be self-critical. We can begin to acknowledge ourselves for the good things that we're doing and aplaud our efforts, even if they're not perfect. No one is perfect. Our parents were not perfect either. They thought they were helping us by pointing out to us the error of our ways. Unfortunately, they may not have realized that our egos took the criticism and ran with it. Our identities became linked to the criticism and we started to feel flawed. Unless our parents balanced the critical messages with positive messages, we probably bought in to the idea of us being flawed and low self-esteem resulted.
When I was older, I remember being told, "There's nothing wrong with you. God doesn't make junk." That was a relief.
If you make a mistake, forgive yourself. We are all evolving souls learning lessons in the classroom called planet earth. When the little voice in the back of your head starts criticizing, just say, "Thank you for sharing."
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