Rule 17 Cut yourself some slack

 Let's try a couple of quiz questions:

1. You have invited several people for a meal. You put lots of effort into cooking a complicated dish. Unfortunately it spends too long in the oven. Its fine, but not as good as you'd planned. Do you think:

  1. Who cares? Its the people that matter and they've all had a good time.
  2. I should have set a timer. I must practise cooking it before I serve it up again.
  3. I'm useless at cooking. I don't know why I bothered.

2. You apply for a new job and you don't get it. Do you think:

  1. That's a shame, but I'll find something else. I'll get some feedback and incorporate it into my next application.
  2. It's my own fault, I messed up the interview. I'll research the company better next time.
  3. I'm just not good enough to do the job.

I imagine you can see where I'm going here. If you answered (a), you're pretty resilient and recognise that life doesn't go perfectly every time and that doesn't have to be your fault. You're not giving up or being lazy, you're just being realistic.

The (b) answers are a bit less forgiving but, crucially, you're only criticising yourself for this specific thing. You're setting yourself an achievable target for next time.


It you answered (c), you have taken one setback and seen it as a damning indictment of your whole self as a cook, an employee or whatever. You have used it to reinforce your feelings of inadequacy and failure. For goodness sake, you just left the food in the oven for a few minutes too long. And you have no idea how well-qualified the competition was for the job.


Resilient people know how to be kind to themselves. This isn't about letting yourself off the hook, it's just an understanding that self-criticism isn't helpful. Recognising where you went wrong - if you even did - is simply a practical pointer for next time. Not a reason to beat yourself up. Those (b) answers have a hint of unhelpful self-blame to them (should have', my fault), but at least it only relates to the mistake in question, and we all do it occasionally.

If you're prone to the (c) way of thinking, you could aim for (b) thoughts before you move on to mostly (a)s.* Listen, sometimes - often - 'good enough' is just fine. We can't all be brilliant at everything and we don't have to try. Think how bad it would make everyone else feel.


You can see how if every tiny setback knocks your whole perception of yourself, it's going to be harder to recover than if each individual setback is self-contained and doesn't spread ripples throughout your whole sense of self. So when something doesn't go the way you want it to, forgive yourself, and recognise that it doesn't have anything to say about who you are.


SOMETIMES - OFTEN - GOOD ENOUGH IS JUST FINE

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