If you feel like love needs to be earned and you take criticism or inattention to heart, it will be difficult for you to succeed. Difficult experiences undermine self-confidence. Psychologist Aaron Karmine shares how to overcome these doubts.
If we do not love ourselves, it may seem that we need to «prove» our superiority over others in order to alleviate the inner pain. This is called overcompensation. The problem is that it doesn’t work.
We feel like we have to constantly prove something to others until they realize that we are «good enough.» The mistake in this case is that we take other people’s accusations and criticism too seriously. Thus, it is as if we are trying to defend ourselves in an imaginary court, proving our innocence in an attempt to avoid punishment.
For example, someone tells you: “You never listen to me” or “You always blame me for everything!”. These «never» and «always» often do not correspond to our real experience. Often we begin to defend ourselves against these false accusations. In our defense, we present various pieces of evidence: “What do you mean I never listen to you? You asked me to call the plumber, and I did. You can look it up on your phone bill.»
It is rare that such excuses are able to change the point of view of our interlocutor, usually they do not affect anything. As a result, we feel like we lost our “case” in the “court” and feel even worse than before.
In retaliation, we ourselves begin to throw accusations. In fact, we are «good enough». Just not ideal. But being perfect is not required, although no one will directly tell us this. How can we judge which people are «better» and which are «worse»? By what standards and criteria? Where do we take the «average person» as a benchmark for comparison?
Each of us from birth is valuable and worthy of love.
Money and high status can make our lives easier, but they don’t make us «better» than other people. In fact, how (hard or easy) a person lives does not say anything about his superiority or inferiority compared to others. The ability to persevere in the face of adversity and keep moving forward is courage and success, regardless of the end result.
Bill Gates cannot be considered “better” than other people because of his wealth, just as one cannot consider a person who has lost his job and is on welfare to be “worse” than others. Our value does not come down to how much we are loved and supported, and it does not depend on our talents and achievements. Each of us from birth is valuable and worthy of love. We will never become more or less valuable. We will never be better or worse than others.
No matter what status we achieve, how much money and power we get, we will never get «better». Similarly, no matter how little we are valued and respected, we will never get «worse». Our successes and achievements do not make us more worthy of love, just as our defeats, losses, and failures do not make us less worthy of it.
We are all imperfect and make mistakes.
We have always been, are and will be «good enough». If we accept our unconditional worth and recognize that we are always worthy of love, we will not have to rely on the approval of others. There are no ideal people. Being human means being imperfect, which in turn means that we make mistakes that we later regret.
Regret causes a desire to change something in the past. But you can’t change the past. We can live regretting our imperfections. But imperfection is not a crime. And we are not criminals worthy of punishment. We can replace guilt with regret that we are not perfect, which only emphasizes our humanity.
It is impossible to prevent the manifestation of human imperfection. We all make mistakes. A key step towards self-acceptance is to acknowledge both your strengths and weaknesses.