“If you can’t fly then run. If you can’t run then walk. If you can’t walk then crawl. But whatever you do, keep moving forward.” – Martin Luther King, Jr. 

Smart, motivated people naturally hold themselves to unsustainably high standards. When they don’t live up to these overly high standards, they beat themselves up. This often leads to a negative spiral that demotivates them, leads to perfectionism and negatively impacts their interactions with others.

Learning to go easier on yourself has a lot of advantages. Here a few:

– Increased resilience. When you fail, you’ll get up quicker and more often.

– Improved relationships. We often judge others with the same ruler we judge ourselves. If our self-judgment demotivates us, imagine what it does to those around us.

– Lowers stress and improves your health. Which increases your longevity. The longer you can stay in the game, the better outcomes you will create.

So, how do we lighten up? Here are some tactics you can try:

Notice Your Self-Talk: Are you blowing this situation out of proportion using terms like always, never, everyone and every time?

Be a Good Friend to Yourself:  How would you respond to a good friend who is going through the same problem and came to you to talk? Would you encourage them? Of course. Would you let them use terms like always, never and every time? No! Then, why would we do this to ourselves?

Name Your Negative Nelly: Give your negative thinker a name. You might call it Negative Nelly, Darth Vader or any silly name that allows you to create distance from the thought. When the thought is coming from this persona, rather than you, it is much easier to shut down.

Switch from What If to Even If: When I start letting my thoughts go negative they spiral. One mistake leads to lost clients, lost work and then my entire family is living in a van down by the river. This sort of negative spiral is caused by allowing what-ifs to dominate the internal conversation. Switch to even if. Even if the worst-case happened, what positive steps would you take to fix it? Even if thinking allows you to walk your thoughts back to a more realistic and positive place.

Worry Later: Rumination on mistakes can kill your productivity. Get back to the work you need to do by setting some time on your calendar to worry later. You’ll likely feel better and skip the appointment. If you do feel the need to process your thoughts on the matter, try writing them down or typing them out. You’ll be amazed at your ability to process and rationalize your thoughts when you put them on paper.

Switch to Gratitude: Our brains are like river beds. Our thought patterns create grooves in our brains that make those thoughts or actions easier to take. That is why change is so hard for us. But we can do it. When we decide to change our thoughts, we are starting the process of creating new, positive grooves in our brains.