1. Some people set very high standards for themselves and allow no room for mistakes or slip-ups, and come down mercilessly on themselves when they don't come up to the mark.
2. Parents sometimes have adult expectations and perfect behaviour from their children, and people who have been brought up this way can generate a lot of internal misery by telling themselves that they have goofed up yet again, even when their mistake has been minor and they have done a fairly good job overall.
3. Start giving yourself credit for the 80% achievement instead of focussing only on the 20% shortfall, and don't let your conditioned sense of guilt deny the opportunity for success.
4. Focus on learning from mistakes and on action directed towards getting results, thus allowing your self-talk to acknowledge your essential humanity and your right to mistakes.
5. When the mistake is such that you can't do anything about it, just let go of the regret and the anger, while filing away a lesson to be careful in future.
6. The deisre for perfection is a good thing when it involves looking ahead in hope and not looking back in anger.
7. What is really harmful is when we use generalized condemnation words like "stupid", "silly" and "dumb" for ourselves or for others, when the purpose is merely to point out a mistake, becaues these labels are not realistic and reflect a harsh, critical approach which we have internalized from early influences in life.
8. We need to accept the troughs in life as gracefully as the crests, by reassuring ourselves that we don't have to operate at peak efficiency all the time, and that we are doing something because we want to rather than because we are being pushed into it.
9. Nobody is perfect and the pressure of conditioning can be self-defeating, because the restlessness and stress that it engenders is not conducive to high performance.
2. Parents sometimes have adult expectations and perfect behaviour from their children, and people who have been brought up this way can generate a lot of internal misery by telling themselves that they have goofed up yet again, even when their mistake has been minor and they have done a fairly good job overall.
3. Start giving yourself credit for the 80% achievement instead of focussing only on the 20% shortfall, and don't let your conditioned sense of guilt deny the opportunity for success.
4. Focus on learning from mistakes and on action directed towards getting results, thus allowing your self-talk to acknowledge your essential humanity and your right to mistakes.
5. When the mistake is such that you can't do anything about it, just let go of the regret and the anger, while filing away a lesson to be careful in future.
6. The deisre for perfection is a good thing when it involves looking ahead in hope and not looking back in anger.
7. What is really harmful is when we use generalized condemnation words like "stupid", "silly" and "dumb" for ourselves or for others, when the purpose is merely to point out a mistake, becaues these labels are not realistic and reflect a harsh, critical approach which we have internalized from early influences in life.
8. We need to accept the troughs in life as gracefully as the crests, by reassuring ourselves that we don't have to operate at peak efficiency all the time, and that we are doing something because we want to rather than because we are being pushed into it.
9. Nobody is perfect and the pressure of conditioning can be self-defeating, because the restlessness and stress that it engenders is not conducive to high performance.