Are you your own worst critic? We can experience judgment and criticism from other people, but sometimes we can be pretty harsh to our own selves! Can you really break the cycle of habitual self-criticism?
Today, we’ll continue our special “How To” mini-series where we’ll deal with a single topic and go as deep as we can in just a few minutes. This time around, we’re dealing with the judgment and criticism that comes from within.
We’ve all been there: nit-picking and critiquing every little thing that we do or say. Self-loathing is an easy trap to fall into, especially when we spend too much time on “social” media platforms.
We can quickly find ourselves comparing ourselves to others and complaining to ourselves. Self-berating, self-defeating, and self-loathing statements quickly follow.
It’s a tricky trap to get out of. While it’s healthy to have a level-headed, and even humble, view of ourselves, we are often our own worst critics, which can lead to unhealthy behavior!
What do we do if we take self-inspection too far too often? That’s what I’ll unpack today.
Enjoy today’s episode,
Chris
470 | How To Stop Being Your Own Worst Critic
Brian A 0:00
For some people, it's not the opinions of others that they fear most but their own how to stop being your own worst critic right after this.
Chris LoCurto 0:19
welcome to the Chris LoCurto show where we discuss leadership and life and discover that business is what you do, not who you are. Welcome to the show, folks. Hope you're having a fabulous day, wherever you are. It is a great day here in Tennessee. Brian, how is it in Sicily?
Brian A 0:41
We're having a fabulous day where I am.
Chris LoCurto 0:44
Today all around
Unknown Speaker 0:47
globally, globally.
Chris LoCurto 0:49
Joining me on the show is Brian Alex again from Sicily. Welcome, welcome. Welcome. And we're doing in a while. That's good. It's good to have it good to have you. We're doing this three part series, a three part series. I didn't never ask you how many parts? Maybe more? Who knows? Who knows. So we're on our 99th part. We're doing this. We're doing this series of foundationally tackling a question. And so Brian is going to hit me up with this next question. And I love this because all I get to see on my end is how to stop being. So I don't know where we're going. So this could be a very interesting conference.
Brian A 1:32
I don't know where we're going. I don't know. I don't know. So take it away, brother.
Brian A 1:36
Well, you know, we did a series years ago, about eight negative people to avoid, do you remember that? Do you remember what the eighth person was about that person? You said, you can damage you, like no one else can? Yeah, you can be your own worst critic. I mean, you know, just think about some of I mean, we do Next-Level Lives all the time. These events, these many event, life changing events that we do. And you know, people come in with all these thoughts and the negative tapes that play, I'm not good enough, I'll never be smart enough, attractive enough, good enough to be at a higher level in my business, I'll always have to prove myself, I'll never be good enough for a great relationship. I'll never be worthy, you know, this or that, or this family member, all the people in my my life, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, we have all of these tapes that play and so here, here's the context, I'm going to set up the context, try to balance it out, we'll go to a break, we'll come back, I'll deliver the question. And then it's all us. So the world that we live in could be compared to kind of a carnivals fun house of mirrors, right? We're getting feedback all the time. And we've hit on this before, about, you know, these people approval platforms that we get on, we get all these crazy sources of life, you know, informing us of who we are, who we should be, how to think or believe about ourselves. But you know, at the end of the day, we've got to judge the veracity, the truth of it all. And, you know, this kind of predisposes us to be a little bit harsh on ourselves, because we're never measuring up to all of the mirrors around us. But there's a deeper root of self loathing here that I want to I want to get to and so coming up next, what does it look like to get free from being your own worst critic, that's right after this.
Speaker 2 3:46
Freedom, it's so powerful,
Unknown Speaker 3:48
I felt rejuvenated, almost renewed,
Speaker 2 3:50
I just felt so welcomed and loved and accepted for who I am, and not an ounce of judgment. So I was very comfortable there. That had a really big impact on me, that's going to be worth it. It's going to be hard, but it's going to be even better. On the other side.
Unknown Speaker 4:07
For me, it was just, it was just very refreshing. And I'm gonna say lifegiving. For me, it really was,
Speaker 2 4:13
you know, I would go through next level life again, and probably again, and probably again, because it's so powerful.
Chris LoCurto 4:21
I want you to ask yourself a question. Could you hear the sense of hope and freedom and their voice is just that I want you to know, that could be you. Look, it's easy to get trapped in old habits, negative thought patterns and unhealthy relationships. It's gonna take some work, but yes, there is hope for you. If you want to experience the same kind of life transformation, the same kind of self awareness and freedom that they have, or maybe you're just curious what the process would look like for you. Then head on over to Chrislocurto.com/nextlevellife
Brian A 5:00
All right, welcome back. So we've set up the context. Now let's get into the question, Chris, how can people truly stop being their own worst critic,
Chris LoCurto 5:11
you can't just accept it.
Chris LoCurto 5:16
Just please, please let it not be true. Here's the thing, we have to go back to, again, something we discussed on another episode, which is, your so much of your worth, is coming from the suggestions of the opinions of other people, or the just the flat out suggestions of other people. So it without going into all of that detail, we have to recognize that when we self sabotage, you know, there's one thing and so many women will say, you know, when they struggle with how they look, or you know, something that they're experiencing, and we will dig in, it's like what, you know, who are you worried about? Oh, I'm not worried about anybody. It's, it's my own opinion of me. No, no, it's me. Time after time, after time, we will hear that same thing. And as we dig deeper, what we discover is, it's actually not what they tell themselves on the surface. And men do this all the time, just with other areas. But this is just such a easy example for us to go, oh, my gosh, I see that all the time. We say, Oh, I'm only worried about myself, I'm concerned, I'm judging me. No, you're judging you. Because you know that a the world is, and B that you have a tendency to judge others as well, according to the same thing you're judging yourself on.
Chris LoCurto 6:53
When you dig in now, again, on the on the surface, whenever we would have those conversations, or whenever we do have those conversations, the initial response is no, no, no, no, no, no, no, that's not true. When you dig into it, and you pull little pieces here, here, here, well, what's this? What's this? What's this, all of a sudden, it becomes very clear. Same thing with guys. When you look at guys, it can it can I'm only picking one topic, right? When you look at guys on the the need to be significant. In a manly way, well, I'm not going out to this thing, or doing that, or trying to create this or make this, you know, be successful over here, because anything but me it's only a it's only about me, it's all it's just something that I want to do. When you dig deep down inside, there is a suggestion of you're not good enough. If you don't, you shouldn't be doing this thing, right? So it has nothing to do with gender. It's not women's specific men's specific. I'm just using a couple of examples. And I think most everybody can quickly hear those and go, if I'm being honest with myself, yep, I may struggle with one of those pieces, right? And maybe you don't, then it's something else, right? You don't just critique yourself on one area, you critique yourself on 4 billion different areas. So if we understand that the major problem is is that I'm really self sabotaging, because I'm worried about what people think. I don't look good enough. I'm not funny enough, I'm not smart enough. I'm not successful enough. I don't have enough stuff compared to the neighbor, the neighbors got a bigger house, they've got a better car, my team members have more kids, they're you know what, somebody else has a better family, whatever the thing is, we are beating ourselves up. Because of this belief that we are not good enough. That we don't, we're not worthy enough. Now, for a lot of people, I will say this and in you know, Next Level life is something that takes us two days to get through this process. But for most people, there's what we would call the root says not most people, every single person walking this planet has a root system. There is a level of deposits that exist that have helped them to form their decision making processes, but we'd call the surface level responses, as well as one of the most self sabotaging things, what we call the lies. Every single person lies to themselves about things about them. Even the person that goes I don't lie to myself, when you spend 15 minutes, all of a sudden they can come up with you know a good list of oh my gosh, I didn't realize I tell myself this I tell myself that I tell myself this over here. There's a ton of lies that we tell ourselves and unfortunately, we believe them now. A lot of those lies have come from other people or other situations. You know, we may have a parent who continuously communicates by holding back love that we're not good Enough, you know, we have done something wrong that's caused them to hold back love, we may have a parent that constantly tells us or compares us to a sibling or a cousin or somebody else. We may have a parent and I'm just using parents here because that's where a lot of our deposits come from. But it goes to family members, siblings, teachers, coaches, friends in school. You know, I can think of, you know, times in school, I think everybody can think through times in school where, you know, some kid is having a bad day and you become their target. Well, for me, I was a people pleaser, like crazy. So I became a target a lot, right? People enjoyed being able to try and tell me something was wrong with me because they were having a bad day. And they knew that I wouldn't push back. It wasn't until God wrapped me upside the head with a two by four and, you know, told me to grow a backbone and stop people pleasing and start learning what unhealthy.
Chris LoCurto 10:55
People pleasing is compared to healthy serving in a godly way, and being able to have healthy boundaries, right. So if I'm going to stop being my own worst critic, I must first understand that I'm criticizing myself. And it is way deep, but it's based on the fact that I'm concerned about the judgments and the opinions of other people.
Chris LoCurto 11:21
The second thing is, is I must discover, and I believe you cannot do this, you know, that we have believers, non believers that follow the show. So speaking to believers, I believe you cannot do this by making the statement. Well, I'm a child of God. It doesn't mean anything to just say, you're a child of God, if you don't understand what that means. So many times, I'll ask somebody, what does that mean? What that means that I'm his, I'm a son, or I'm his daughter. What does that mean? Well, that you know, that he, he accepts me and he died from what does that mean? When you dig, dig, dig, dig, dig, we have grown up in these churches that don't dig in and teach us God's Word. To a great degree. They teach us sound bites, you know, we get three different scripture verses and a bunch of personal stories. And that's it, right? We you know, we have rock star preachers now in rock star bands and all this stuff, instead of knowing God, instead of knowing him, instead of knowing his character, instead of digging in and finding out what does the god the King of the universe, God Almighty say about me? Now, what is scripture for it's for us to learn. If you ask somebody in a Western Christian society, by the way, they'll say, oh, you should read the Bible for what it says about you. Nobody in a Middle Eastern lens would look at it that way. Nobody in a Hebrew Hebreic lens would go, you should read the Bible for what it says about you. Why? Because it's not about you. It's about the King of the universe. It's about God. It's about Him. We read it to discover Him. And as we discover Him, it teaches us about us, what did He do with the children of Israel at Mount Sinai, He taught them who He was, then He taught them who they were, that was super important to understand who we are as his kids, right? We're not just children, we are those that if we follow His ways, then actually we become inheritors. Right? When you discover that there is a all powerful, all knowing, all loving God, who loves who also corrects, who judges, you know, who dishes out blessings, who also dishes out corrections, when you discover what he truly believes of you and thinks about you. And you can when you take this concept, and by the way, let me throw this in there. You cannot, it is impossible to understand the New Testament until you understand the Old Testament. All of these folks who think that the Old Testament is antiquated and not needed. The New Testament didn't exist. It nobody wrote anything in the New Testament thinking we're gonna put together a whole new book, everything that happened in those ministries was based on the Old Testament, the more you recognize that you start to see God's true love for us, and his desire to be patrolled to us to carry us forward. We are the bride of Yeshua, we are the bride of Christ. We are the bride who's going forward to the marriage ceremony. If we do it his way, not the world's way, not our way. Not even a bunch of the bad teaching that's out there.
Chris LoCurto 14:47
Instead, if we follow what God says about us that we are fearfully and wonderfully made in His image, that if we do the things that He's that He tells us to do, He reveals to us He blesses us He, He brings us things into our lives, that cause us to know Him more, to love Him more to experience Him more. Right? All these people that are out there teaching, don't do any of that stuff. Just show up to church and you know, spend an hour in church and you're good to go. God's happy with that, that there's no relationship there. Right? He's looking for a relationship, the greater relationship you have with God, the greater relationship you have with, with God, the less you self sabotage, and critique and destroy yourself, because of what man thinks about you. The greater relationship you have with Yeshua, which you know, we call Him Jesus, but His actual name is Yeshua, the greater relationship you have with your Yeshua, the less you care about Frank's opinion of us, you know, Sarah's opinion over here on that's telling you that you're a horrible person, and you should do everything, you know, that pleases them. And you know, you do everything wrong. And the more you see what God thinks about you, and how He cares about you, the less you care about what man thinks about you, that is the ultimate first step of getting rid of the lies that you tell yourself, I'm not good enough, I'm not worthy enough. I'm not pretty enough, I'll never have a good enough spouse, I'll never have a good enough career. My brothers is better than I am. My parents don't like whatever that thing is. Those lies that you tell yourself. When you discover God's love for you, then you can start bringing the truths to the battle. And when you battle the lies with the actual truths, and the truths are rarely ever the opposite of the lie usually have to find out. Why am I telling myself that and then get to that truth. When you bring those to the table, man, it's a much more equal battle. emphatic matter of fact, it's a much more powerful battle on the side of the truth, right, you can destroy the lies, you can get through them a heck of a lot quicker and be less of a self sabotaging self critic. Does that make sense?
Brian A 17:05
Yeah, yeah, that's beautiful. And so just to kind of sum up, if we really want to get free from beating ourselves up all the time being our own worst critic, then we've got to start accurately assessing our own self worth, not in the mirror, the funhouse mirror, like the metaphor we started with, of the world's opinions and all of the platforms that are that are for people pleasing out there, but in the mirror of God's word, ultimate truth about who he is, and who he says that we are to him. I think that is freedom right there for the grabbing. And I hope people will, will take hold of that. So folks, I hope this has helped you today.
As always take this information, change your leadership, change your business, change your life, and join us on the next episode.
