Gemma Speck

more and it actually doesn't do anything to improve your baseline level of confidence the same can be said for self-hatred again it may get you to over prepare for one presentation it may get you to push yourself harder in one workout or it may get you to obsess over getting better

for one assignment or one exam, but as a long-term strategy, it erodes the very capacities that you need the most to succeed in the long-term, like confidence, like curiosity, like resilience, self-trust, and also the ability to recover after setbacks.

Self-criticism is actually consistently associated with diminished goal progress across almost all research, diminished feelings of self-efficacy, diminished feelings of preparedness.

One of the best examples of this was five studies done by researchers at the University of Massachusetts that found that people who motivated themselves through self-criticism and through self-hatred actually moved slower towards their goals.

By contrast, people who had self-oriented standards and set goals because they wanted to prove that they could do it, because they wanted to prove their own self-belief or because they genuinely enjoyed what they were doing, this was a much greater predictor of goal progress.

The people who had self-hatred as well, they may have shown more initial progress, but often tape it off because it's not a sustainable motivator.

And this is really important to remember.

Although, you know,

Our self-hatred is disguised as having high standards.

It's not the same thing.

Like high standards occur because you believe you deserve to be elevated.

Self-hatred occurs because you believe that you're destined not to be who you want to be.

So we can't confuse them and think that they're the same thing.

We can't think that I'm just putting pressure on myself because I really think that I'm capable of more.

I'm just putting pressure on myself because this is just like the way that I've always done things.

There's probably a reason why you have to keep relying on self-hatred and you have to keep relying on this short-term, really intense kind of motivator because you haven't built any of the actual long-term reserves and sense of self-worth that would allow you to achieve your goals efficiently, effectively, and to the level that you want.

that you would want them to like to the level that you want for yourself.

So let's take a short break here.

Then we're going to get into how we can counteract this.

Like we kind of know now, like it's pretty clear self-hatred isn't going to work.