Everyone's worst critic is their self. There is a time and a place for everything just as there is a time and a place when to be hard on yourself and when to cut yourself some slack. The key thing in life is finding your balance. There is room for mistakes to be made, so if something goes wrong you do not always have to beat yourself up over it.
For me, I am just realizing now that when something unfortunate the world isn’t over. Sometimes it is just important to take time to check yourself before you wreck yourself. Beating yourself up over little things will get you nowhere. The uncertainty of life is what makes it so much better.
At the same time, be careful of your actions because you might not be beating yourself up over it but allowing room for mistakes doesn’t mean you can mess around and not care about the impacts of the mistakes you do make. You don't need to not beat yourself up, but you need to fix what went wrong. Apologize for your actions, mend the brokenness and move on.
I realized it was time to be hard on myself when the decisions I was making not only made me feel down, but when those decisions were starting to define who I was becoming. When you see yourself slipping and letting the most important things to you go out the window, you need to be hard on yourself.
From choosing a party over an essay or lying to someone you care about for a selfish reason, be hard on yourself or you will never learn. To be honest, no one cares whether or not you were at that party and there is no worse feeling than knowing you let someone down. Once in awhile we are able to slip and should allow ourselves to make a decision our mothers wouldn’t approve of. It’s when you start choosing the party every single time or you get away with the lie and continue to do it over and over again.
Thankfully, I was able to catch myself before I wrecked myself and I hope you are able to do the same.
