How many times did we all judge ourselves based on a particular behavior in a particular situation? For example, I like to cook, but there were a few times I f*cked up the dish. My automatic thought was: I’m the worst cook! I’m never going into that kitchen! So I just ignored all my previous delicious dishes, I generalized my failure and I judged myself based on that failure.
We often do things like this. We find “excuses” for the things we do great and we dwell on things we do bad. Whenever I find myself in this situation I think about this: Whooo brain! Hold on with that negativity! A person is more than a behavior. A person is a complex entity made of thoughts, emotions, behavior and ideas which combine in unique ways. The fact that I scr*wed it up now means I did something wrong, not that I am wrong. Maybe I haven’t study enough or maybe I wasn’t paying enough attention. We as humans can be so easily distracted and influenced by everything. One bad situation cannot define a person.
It is interesting how easily we’re defining ourselves by our failures without taking into consideration the intention which I believe is the key here. We are defined by intentions even though they cannot be easily seen by other people. In my example, did I want to make a sh*tty dish? No, of course not. I wanted it to be perfect. I could define myself as a sh*tty cook only if I want to make a sh*tty dish and I succeed doing it.
Let’s take another example. A mother yells at her kid for taking a bad grade and the kid starts crying and the mother defines herself as the worst mother ever. Did she want to make her kid cry? I don’t think so! She probably wanted to make him understand that she was disappointed by the result, not by the kid himself, but when we’re ruled by emotions we cannot find the proper words to express ourselves.
I believe the core problem here is that we often don’t really know who we are. When we’re letting ourselves be defined by some random bad behaviors while we might be ignoring the good ones, we just don’t know for sure who and how we are. We just need to analyze the situation and find out why we scr*ewed things up.
There are also people that do a few good things and they think they’re awesome. I’m not saying they’re wrong, but when we think we are the best and we cannot get better, we’re getting stuck in our own ego and we’re just gonna stop evolving.
As always, there needs to be a balance. We cannot be great at everything because we are not prepared for everything so it’s normal to s*ck at something. That’s where we can grow if we want to.
What do you say to yourself when you scr*w things up?