Judgments and Measurements

Last week I wrote about ego management and why we sometimes like to rant about the world. When I was writing it, I thought my writing was quite awful--my points were not well-organized and I was rambling. But never mine. It's only a blog post that no one reads.

But I read it again just now, a week later, I felt different about the piece. I thought it was actually pretty good. Sorry for the self-congratulatory note. My ego needs a bit of pumping today, I guess.

Actually the previous paragraph was meant to illustrate the subject of my blog post today--self kindness. We are often too harsh on ourselves. Everyday, when we wake up and look at the mirror, we see all our flaws. The mind-filter at work again. Every time we do a presentation, conduct a meeting or meet someone important, we always think that we didn't perform as well as we should have. But the fact is that, whatever we did was good enough. We are just too self-critical.

Self-criticism is good when it serves as a reminder for us to constantly improve. Unfortunately, we often take it too far. We always think we look bad in a photograph but your friends don't see that. You look exactly like how you normally do. Every day you put down yourself more than anyone else. The fact is that most people don't notice your flaws and even if they do, it is of no concern to them. They are too busy worrying about their own flaws!

Being kind to yourself is not a weakness. Set a high standard for yourself by all means when it comes to the performance of a task. But if you fall short, do not hit yourself too hard. You have an outcome and every outcome is another data point for you to gauge your performance. There's no emotion involved in that. Note it down and identify its causes. Then move on.

Too much self-criticism can be pathological. If you measure your height and it turns out to be 170cm. It is just that. You are not too short, nor are you too tall. The judgement is relative to the situation. If you are 12 years and you have that height, you could be considered very tall. But if you are an adult Asian male, you are probably average. If you are a woman, people might even say you are tall.

Let's have more measurements and less judgement. Judgments has a sense of finality to it, whereas measurements are just progress reports. We can measure and set reasonable goals for ourselves. You are not a failure if you fall short. There's always an incremental goal that you can reach. Get a win from a smaller goal and then progress from there.

Life is lived through a series of incremental improvements. As long as we know which direction that we want to go, and we make progressive movements towards it, we are living a good life. Measure, assess and readjust. As long as you keep doing that, you can only be closer to your goal.