The criticism you have against yourself, no matter if it’s against your body, your thoughts, your emotions, your actions or anything else is an attack against yourself.

You can call it friendly fire.

You aren’t a better person with higher morals when you are overly critical of yourself.

Criticism brings your attention to everything you don’t like. You want yourself to be different than you are at the moment.

What does this do with you?

Do you feel energized and enthusiastic about going out there and making the best out of your time?

Or do you rather want to hide under the blanket and not be seen?

Criticizing yourself makes it more difficult to show up as all of you and express your talents, gifts and potential.

You might think that being hard on yourself will make you try harder.

Sometimes it does.

But very often it just makes you smaller.

You become self-conscious. You think and think and overthink every move. You lose energy and power because so much of your attention is busy monitoring everything that is supposedly wrong with you.

And then the juicy, playful, joyful, expansive energy gets trapped inside you.

You become less willing to take risks.

Less willing to be seen.

Less willing to try something new.

And then you have even more reasons to criticize yourself.

The cat bites its tail and you’re off for more drama and shame.

So what if you tried something else?

Not pretending that everything you do is brilliant.

Not mechanically repeating positive affirmations that you don't believe.

But meeting yourself with a little more curiosity.

You can notice where you want to grow without making yourself wrong for being where you are.

You can ask yourself:

What would become possible if I stopped attacking myself?

What would you do differently?

What would you create?

What would you say?

Who would you be willing to be seen as?

Your attention is powerful.

Where you put it matters.

So instead of spending all that energy looking for everything that is wrong with you, try looking for what you want to bring more of into your life.

Celebrate yourself.

Show us how great you are.

Start now.

What do you celebrate about your life right now?