psychology
4 simple ways to be less hard on yourself
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Do you find it difficult to be gentle with yourself? We’ll show you four simple but effective strategies on how you can stop judging yourself so harshly.
Most of us have pretty high expectations of ourselves. We should be constantly productive, never exhausted and in a good mood. We often underestimate the high price we pay for all this self-optimization – and how much energy it costs us. So instead of expecting more and more from ourselves, we could just let it all hang out and consciously do something good for ourselves.
These tips can help you be more loving with yourself
1. Start the day with peace
No, this isn’t about developing a super productive morning routine and getting up at 4:30 a.m. every day to exercise and make a green smoothie. But consciously planning a little more time in the morning can help you start the day more relaxed. So instead of clocking the time between getting up and leaving the house (or turning on the laptop in the home office) down to the second, you could easily plan 15 minutes more. This means you are less rushed and may even have time to consciously and calmly enjoy your first coffee or tea of the day. And that’s much healthier than any morning routine, no matter how perfect, that just ends up stressing you out.
2. Write down what you are proud of
There are very different types of journaling and diary writing. What they all have in common is that they want to help us practice mindfulness, reflect and consciously pause. Try to find at least one point every day that you are proud of, something you did well, a person you helped or made happy. And then write these things down – this way, on days when you judge yourself very harshly, you can consciously remember what you succeed in and where you do good things.
3. Spend time alone
Regardless of whether you are an introvert or an extrovert, everyone benefits from stepping away from time to time and taking time to reflect on what is going well, what is not, what they are comfortable with in their life and what is not. Time that you consciously spend alone and only with yourself is therefore an important form of self-care and can help you, with a little rest, to make your view of yourself a little more realistic – and therefore probably milder.
4. Forgive yourself
Do you also have a tendency to spend hours thinking about your mistakes and replaying situations in your head that went wrong? Even if we may realize in theory that this is not helpful, it is often not so easy to simply stop this self-flagellation that has often been practiced for years. But this technique might help you: When rumination sets in, you could try writing down what’s bothering you. So what you supposedly did wrong and wasted. Then you could deliberately tear up or burn the piece of paper that says this. This little ritual might help you forgive yourself – and be less hard on yourself in the long run.