3 Steps to Use Self-Criticism as a Tool for Self-Improvement

Hey lovely, do you ever self-criticize?

I bet you do. We all do it, right? But here is the real question – do you do it in a productive way?

I strongly believe self-love is the most important thing in personal development. Depending on how much you love yourself will depend on how well you treat yourself and others. It’s the foundation of everything, lovely.

Only if you’ve developed a healthy amount of self-love will you be able to respect yourself, to respect your thoughts, feelings, and emotions. Even though self-love is sometimes mistaken for selfishness, I will defend it with my whole heart. I truly believe that only if you love yourself can you love and respect others the way they deserve.

You see, that’s not selfishness – that is necessary.

However, the fact that you love yourself doesn’t mean you don’t indulge in some self-criticism. In fact, a healthy self-criticism can help you to become a better, more productive, and more successful person. If used in a healthy way, it can benefit you in ways you wouldn’t imagine, friend.

I’d love to know – do you struggle to find the balance between pushing yourself and loving yourself? Share your thoughts in the comments, let’s open up this conversation!

Healthy self-criticism is a tool for self-improvement and NOT self-punishment.

It will help you to recognize your mistakes, to learn from them, and to understand what led you to unwanted results. But it also helps you to change your behavior and achieve better results in the future. It’s about growth, not guilt.

Unfortunately, more often than not, we all indulge in negative self-criticism which can be incredibly harmful to us. We call ourselves names, we don’t forgive ourselves when we make mistakes, even though mistakes are completely natural! We would likely forgive our girlfriends for a similar mistake without even thinking twice, right? Sometimes we are so harsh on ourselves – much harsher than we would be to any other person on this planet.

Let’s talk about 3 steps of healthy self-criticism that can benefit you

Ready to turn that inner critic into an inner coach? Here is how we do it, ladies.

Step 1: Separate your personality from your behavior.

With this step, you’ll learn to criticize the only thing that actually went wrong – your behavior. Behavior is what didn’t produce the results you wanted to achieve. This has nothing to do with your personality traits, beautiful.

The fact that you’ve made a mistake doesn’t mean that you are a mistake as a person. It only means that your behavior didn’t give you the results you wanted. See the difference?

So, to criticize yourself in a healthy way, you should separate your personality from your behavior and criticize only the behavior. You are still capable of achieving the results you were seeking, but the execution on the path to get you there was what caused your plans to fail. You are still worthy.

Step 2: Consider which consequences you’ve got.

Every past mistake is a lesson you can learn from. But the only way to learn is to analyze what went wrong without beating yourself up. So the second step of healthy self-criticism is an objective analysis of your past behavior to find out what you did in order to create an unwanted consequence.

Think of it like a detective looking at clues, not a judge handing out a sentence. What actually happened?

Step 3: Express positive intention for your future behavior.

This is why self-criticism is a tool for self-improvement. After you separated your behavior from your personality, and after you’ve analyzed your behavior and unwanted consequences, it’s time to learn from your experience and express positive intention for future behavior.

Take a look at your goal and the behaviors you expressed or executed on your way there. How can you make adjustments moving forward to get you to your goal? What’s the new game plan, friend?

This will change not only the way you act in a similar situation in the future, but it will also bring you better results. It’s all about moving forward with grace.

We Want to Hear From You!
Has there ever been a time where changing your perspective changed your outcome? Share your story in the comments below – your experience might help another woman who is struggling right now. Let’s support each other and grow together!