You Don’t Need to Self-Hate to Be Great

Being self-critical can cause more harm than good — here’s what to do instead.

“Being self-critical is excellent — if you were not self-critical all the time, you would be cruising and never growing”.

These are the words of a 25-year-old entrepreneur friend and mentee of mine.

While there might be some merit in being self-critical — I prefer the term personally accountable — most things exist on an inverted-U curve.

A little self-criticality and you might address behaviours that are holding you back from your goals. Too much self-criticality and you’re more likely to end up in an institution than the front page of a magazine.

Knowing that my friend was just a sample in a large population of people who share this philosophy, I felt it my duty to pen a rebuttal of sorts that I hope will change some minds.

The inverted-U: Too much of most things = net bad for performance

Types of Self-Criticality

Comparative — comparing ourself to others