Why must we judge ourselves so harshly? My first thought about judging myself is: would I ever say this to my best friend? The answer is Absolutely NOT! It’s rude, hurtful and mean. Then why do I treat myself this way? Why am I making reasons to not deserve something? It’s hard to answer all of these questions because I’m not “perfect”. I have this idolized image of what and who I want to be, it’s so unrealistic but I strive for it and fall short every time. Every time I say to myself that I’m not reaching a standard that I’ve imagined it hurts. It’s not only putting my mood down but other areas of my life, like work and relationships, also suffer. Any progress I’ve had or am capable of gets put on hold, I’m not happy. I begin to believe things that are not true at all. I’ve had people in my life tell me how well I’ve been doing and I’m hesitantly believing them because self judgement gets in the way. It goes something like this …
“Oh Jane you have lost a ton of weight, looking awesome!”
“Thanks, I have to loose way more”
I worry that if I take the ownership of ‘looking awesome’ I won’t progress in ‘more weight loss’ but at this point it’s not about weight loss (it really is but let me explain) it’s about being happy with what I’ve done but I’m not. I still manage to say things like “it’s not good enough” or “I could be doing so much better”. I’m afraid to celebrate too early and pat myself on the back for the job I’ve already done. I’m ashamed to say that when some random person judges me it hurts, they make assumptions by my physical appearance. I know I shouldn’t care but it’s what makes me set an impossible standard. I recently had to do an exercise of picking out what were my top 5 priorities in life. The 2 out of 5 I selected were Acceptance and Self Acceptance, it really upset me that the acceptance of others is so important, I don’t want it to be part of my reality. What was more eye opening is self acceptance is something I can’t achieve yet, working on it though. I refuse to accept that this is my weight, this is my health and this is the body I want to live in. I don’t want to be this way and that’s why I have so much self judgement. Don’t get me wrong, I’m an awesome person but this is not the life style I want to have. I don’t want to have hypothyroidism or diabetes but that’s what I’m dealing with. That is the major reason why I judge so harshly. I know it doesn’t serve me very well but how else would I improve my life without a high standard to change my lifestyle? To be fair the short term goals I’ve set helped me loose 45lbs but I feel that the road head will be even more challenging. How do I stop self judgement and resentment of my past? How do I enjoy the moment without focusing on this one gigantic issue? How do I have self acceptance while still working my butt off? I don’t know but I just keep living my life, trying to enjoy it while having a balance of judgement and acceptance.