That Voice in Your Head Telling You You’re Not Enough? It’s Lying to You.

It’s really important that we don’t be too hard on ourselves when thinking about what we could have done more.

This is because as humans, we can naturally tend to be harsh or overly-critical towards ourselves when ruminating on the things that we could’ve done more of in our lives.

This applies to both recent as well as old situations or events.

If we do this strongly and long enough, it can have serious implications on our mental health.

This occurs in the form of us feeling disappointed with ourselves, shameful, and/or guilty due to our decisions or actions, or lack thereof in certain situations throughout our lives.

In more extreme cases, we may talk down to, chastise ourselves, or feel bitter towards ourselves.

All these actions aren’t at all productive and will definitely not help improve those past moments that we’re feeling strongly about.

The healthier way to handle such instances where we feel that we could’ve done more is by acknowledging them and firmly cultivating a sense of determination to do better the next time we encounter similar situations.

This should be enough, without us feeling any more strong thoughts and/or feelings.

Of course, it’s completely natural to feel guilt and disappointment with ourselves when thinking about such situations, even more so for those that result in more serious consequences. And we should allow ourselves the time and space to feel such feelings.

This is important for us to properly process those feelings and it will enable us to move forward organically.

It only becomes a problem when we dwell upon such feelings for too long or let them consume us.

Because when that happens, we start feeling bad about ourselves such that it becomes a major inhibiting factor. We tend to lose important, necessary things like self-esteem, self-love, self-confidence, etc.

And that just makes things much worse.

This concept of not being too hard on ourselves should be firmly cultivated in everyone as a crucial life lesson, particularly in children.

This is especially important, given that when growing up, children do indeed encounter various life-changing and traumatic events, for which they later may very well feel that they could’ve done more or acted differently.

Such cases all too well result in them being too hard on themselves and consequently, seriously impacting their mindset and self-perceptions well into their adulthood.

Their parents, the education system, and society in general seriously need to stress to them the importance of not being too hard on themselves.

We must consistently remind ourselves to not be too hard on ourselves when thinking about what we could have done more. It’s high time that we stop this harmful tendency of ours to be our own harshest critic.

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