Seven signs of self-sabotage that show your inner critic is way too powerful.

​7 Signs of self-sabotage that show your inner critic is way too powerful!
 
Self –reflection that leads to self-awareness is an essential tool for personal growth. It’s through this process that we can learn, improve and create happier relationships and success in all areas of life. We all need to have access to our inner critic for self-evaluation so if we’re striving to be the best possible versions of ourselves a healthy, well-balanced inner critic is a wonderful thing. However, it’s easy to become too self-critical. A high level of self-criticism is detrimental to success and good mental health. In fact, excessive self-criticism is a form of self-sabotage and damages your self-esteem and conf
 
 

Consider these 7 signs that show you might be too critical of yourself:

1. No matter what you achieve, you feel that it’s not enough. It doesn’t matter to you that you scored 95% in an exam, you’re bothered by the remaining 5%. Or you decided to improve your fitness and went to the gym twice last week, but you’re feeling inadequate because your friend went four times. 
2. You consistently say negative things to yourself. A constant barrage of self-criticism is highly damaging. Imagine telling a young child that they can’t do anything right and should give up trying. It sounds crazy when viewed from that perspective. Your subconscious mind listens to every word you say and constant negative self-talk programs your mind for failure.
3. You’re suffering from analysis paralysis! One sign is that you’ve been stuck in the same situation for an extended period of time, because you’re overly critical towards yourself. You make mental lists of all your short-comings with no balancing awareness of your strengths and then you’re too scared to take action, in case it leads to failure.
   
4. You find it really difficult to speak up and share your opinion. You have to be comfortable with yourself to feel comfortable with asserting yourself. Assertiveness also brings the risk of rejection. Being too self-critical can increase the fear of rejection from others and on a subconscious level acceptance from the “tribe” is paramount to survival. Researchers have discovered that pain and social rejection are registered in the same part of the brain.  
5. You struggle to ask for help. It shouldn’t be extremely difficult to ask for help, whether it’s from team mates at work or family members at home. In fact, the more help the better! Are you afraid of being judged as incapable or less than others? If so, you’re too critical of yourself.
   
6. You spend too much time dwelling on your mistakes and you generalise. Can you move on quickly after a short period of self-reflection or do you dwell on your mistakes for an extended period of time? Do you criticize yourself in general terms, rather than just for a specific event? There’s a difference between telling yourself that you’ve made a mistake on a budget and telling yourself that you’re completely hopeless at math. General criticism is false and highly damaging. If you tried baked a cake and it flopped, it doesn’t mean there’s no hope for you in the kitchen. A lack of success at a particular activity doesn’t make you flawed at everything. It’s illogical.
   
7. You can’t accept a compliment graciously. If someone compliments you, you disagree with them or downplay what they’ve said. Everyone is good at something. Or maybe you know you’re good at a few things but don’t think you deserve a compliment. Either way, you’re being too hard on yourself.  

 
If these seven signs of self-sabotage resonate with you, it may be time to take steps to do the subconscious work and quieten your inner critic, so that you can create the success you desire.

Photo credit: Photo by Molnár Bálint on Unsplash

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