Feeling like a total mess-up in life? Become kinder to yourself by relaxing your rigid pass/fail mindset.
Today, I want to talk to you about what you should do when you feel like you are an utter, utter screw-up in life and steps you can take to help make yourself feel a bit better, that you don’t feel like as much of a mess-up and you get a bit more realistic about yourself.
Related: Look at yourself in a mirror while listening to my Ho’oponopono meditation
Watch the video or continue reading below…
Let me tell you a little bit of a story about me…
It’s because we are intelligent and we know that we are capable of achieving a lot.
We’re also human and sometimes in life, stuff just happens that might be out of our control that means that we don’t achieve what we had hoped to achieve.
And when you’re a high achiever, that can be a difficult thing to swallow.
So we expect a lot of ourselves and we expect more from ourselves than we would from the average person.
We also tend towards perfectionism as well.
So, when you’re a perfectionist, you want things done perfectly or, if they’re not going to be perfect or if you know that, say, a room’s going to be messed up just after you’ve tidied it, you won’t bother doing it at all because if it’s not going to be perfect, why bother, right?
So, that’s the thing: As anxious women, we hold ourselves against a very, very high level of measurement.
We expect huge things from ourselves.
And when we don’t measure up to our own expectations, boy, we can be tough on ourselves.
I managed to break this pattern in my life but I will admit it’s hard work and I work on it every single day to just try and be a little bit more lenient on myself, reasonable on myself and just be nicer to myself in general.
So I’m going to outline three steps that you can take when you’re feeling like an absolute mess-up and screw-up in your life just to bring things into a bit more of a real perspective and remind yourself how wonderful you actually are.
Step 1: Put things in perspective – you’re doing better than you think
You’re doing better than you think.
If you were to take a piece of paper and write down all the things, all of your achievements that you’ve made throughout your life, I would have a guess that that list would be fairly lengthy.
As perfectionists and as women with anxiety, we don’t dwell on this positive stuff, we don’t remind ourselves of it every single day.
Instead, we focus on the things that we’d like to improve.
When you’re focused on always doing better and better, better than before, you’re going to be looking at the things that you want to improve.
So it’s hard sometimes not to be distracted by the list of things that you haven’t achieved.
So, writing a list of the things that you have achieved can just help bring you back into alignment a little bit more.
Put those achievements in front of you.
This isn’t a brag list. This is a reminder list because this is the reality of the fact that you actually have achieved a lot on life.
For me, personally, I put down the fact that I’ve got two beautiful kids on my list of achievements. I put down on that list that I have my energy healing business that I am incredibly proud of. I put down on my list that I’ve written two books in my time.
Now, if you haven’t got those things, it doesn’t matter because you’ve achieved other things.
You might have a super high level of education. You might drive a fantastic car. You might have none of things and your achievement might be that you live a life that’s completely non-materialistic. That’s an achievement as well because that shows that you’re living in alignment with your values.
You really need to approach this with the lens of knowing what success or achievement might mean for you, what’s important to you, delving into your values and coming up with a list of stuff that you’re proud of.
It’s basically a list of things in your life that you’re proud of. Fantastic relationships with your family might be one of them. Great friendships might be another one. They’re all achievements and they’re all worth equal weighting as anything else. So, write down a list of your achievements, things in your life that you’re proud of. And really own that because that is a list of truth.
Step 2: Life is about growth – so always look for how you are growing.
Every time something doesn’t go your way, there is a hint in that for you, some people call it a lesson.
There’s a lesson in it for you for what you could do differently next time or what different perspective you could bring next time.
So, say you want to achieve making a video and with this video, you need a range of equipment. You need a webcam, you need a microphone, you need a computer so that you see yourself making your video. And one of those pieces of equipment doesn’t work quite as you hoped it would. For me, my microphone doesn’t work that great.
Just because what you’re putting out there isn’t perfect doesn’t mean that it’s of any less value. Just because a part of it doesn’t work, it doesn’t mean that it’s still not worth something.
So, the lesson in that might be go out and buy a new microphone, which I will, when I have an opportunity to.
Step 3: Know that tomorrow is a new day – and a new opportunity to break the energetic patterning
Put this idea of being an utter screw-up into perspective. What you’re feeling is an energetic pattern.
Your brain, as you may or may not be aware, is a super duper computer and it files all of your thoughts, feelings, emotions and reactions into files, like a system.
So if your go-to reaction every time you go through something that’s a little bit imperfect or you don’t quite match up to your really high expectations of yourself is to go back and whip yourself and feel like you’re a complete and utter failure who completely messes everything up in life, then you really need to see that energetic pattern for what it is.
You can actually use this as an opportunity to break that energetic patterning. It’s completely possible.
So it’s all about the intention when you’re sending out – to break a pattern.
You think about what it is you are currently doing and then you think about what you would like to do instead.
So, perhaps instead of wheeling out the old, “Ugh, I’m an utter failure. Oh, my God, I can’t do everything right. I always mess things up,” what if you instead adopt an attitude of, “I’m only human. I make mistakes like everyone else and I am going to be flexible with myself and give myself some forgiveness.”
So, next time you find yourself falling into that, “I’m an utter failure,” mindset and all of those feelings that come with it, you will get a little hint in your mind that this is a pattern that you are trying to break.
And this is because within that file now, you’ve embedded this new pattern.
So, even though this isn’t automatic just yet, by opening up this, “Oh, my goodness, I’m a failure” file, you also automatically open this, “I’m going to be gentler on myself” file.
So you’ll get this little memory in your mind that, “Oh, no, hang on. This is a pattern that I’m trying to break.”
And you will be able to run that new pattern and programming of, “I’m just going to be flexible, I’m human and that expectation that I set myself was probably a little bit high and I knew when I set myself that expectation that it was pretty high. So I’m just going to go easy on myself this time.”
And as you repeat that, as you’re doing it again and again, it might take some time and there might be times that you still find yourself falling off that cliff and into those feelings of, “I can’t do anything right, I always mess everything up. I’m not good for anyone…” fill in the gaps. I’m sure you have your own words that you tell yourself.
Those are the words that I tend to tell myself.
But as you do this again and again and start to replace those words with, “You know…no, actually, I’m just going to be gentler on myself this time. I’m human and I did the very best I could,” it becomes more and more automatic.
It does take effort to start with, though. This isn’t a magic bullet solution. But you’re worth it, you’re worth this effort. You’re worth trying to pick yourself up and improving your self-esteem.
I see women that absolutely paralyze themselves because they have this fear of failure because their failure is so horrible when they go through it and there’s absolutely no need for it whatsoever. Understanding that we all fail, we all try, we all fail, it’s just a fact of life. Those who succeed are the ones that are gentle on themselves and allow themselves to go back, learn the lesson and just do over again. And the more you do that, the more successful you become, the happier you will be and the less you feel like a mess up in life.
Mirror work is an extremely powerful way to heal your self esteem and your relationship with yourself. Download my free Ho’oponopono meditation and listen to it while gazing lovingly at yourself in a mirror. It really works!
Love + Light,
Eva xo
