When Your Toughest Critic is Yourself

I think all of us have had one of those days where we feel like everything seems like it’s going wrong. We feel like a nutcase and we’ve totally lost our mind. If not, maybe then it’s just me!

I had recently gotten engaged and the whirlwind of all that comes with planning a wedding can be somewhat crazy. Scheduling appointments, looking up inspiration and booking venues left my mind spinning. The other week I encountered a day where it felt like I had totally lost my mind. While I was at work I was struggling to mentally stay sane.

When I experience moments of confusion and notice all my shortcomings I can quickly allow them to inflate to extreme proportions. I’m not sure about you, but the hardest person for me to impress can often be myself. The view I have of me is sometimes the harshest critic. Expectations of where I should be in life often stem from thoughts I conjure up. The worst case scenarios I can imagine are the ones I allow to originate in my mind.

Maybe you feel defined by a stage of life that you feel entrapped in, and you wish you could move past. Maybe the mistakes you’ve made handicap you into ever believing you are capable of God’s love. Maybe each day your future feels like it is drifting farther away from what you dreamed it would be. Maybe you feel like a failure when your career takes a different path than what you expected. Maybe you compare yourself to that “perfect” person who seems to have it all together, and feel like you’ll never appear flawless, like they do.

Whatever negative thoughts you may be experiencing, often times the person hardest on us, is ourselves. We hold high expectations of what we should become or what others expect of us that we fail to remember what God expects of us. He has never called us to lead a perfect life, full of great success.

Here in Matthew we find what God desires from us. He desires us to love Him with all our heart, soul and mind. He also asks that we love others.

Nowhere do we find that we need to constantly beat ourselves up for our imperfections, incapability or failures. We should learn from our mistakes, but God doesn’t desire that we become defined by them. When we allow our shortcomings to define us, it handicaps us for becoming all that God has desired us to achieve.

Instead of listening to the harsh voice in your mind telling you all that you could do better or be better, focus on God and remember what He says is true about those who have accepted Him as their Savior. I will list some below…

Satan knows our weak areas and how to get us so caught up on our shortcomings and flaws. He can get our mind so entrapped on every negative aspect of ourselves that we fail to see the amazing purpose we have. We will never be enough on our own, it’s not our job to be perfect on this earth. We should aspire to be Christlike, but God knows that due to our human fallibility we are incapable of perfection on our own. It is only through Jesus we will one day become perfect. Until then, God understands our weakness and our need to lean on Him for guidance, support and strength to overcome.

Our imperfection allows us opportunity to rely more on our God than we ever could if we were perfect and capable. Our weakness grants us the ability to call on our God, deepening our relationship with Him. The next time you are enduring through a day that you tend to be beating yourself up for your mistakes and flaws, remind yourself of who God says you are. Turn from Satan’s lies and replace it with God’s truth. Often the lies we believe are ones that relate to temporary success or earthly benefit. Neither of those will outlast this world!