Most all of us are our own worst critic. We pick ourselves apart, we put ourselves down, we stress over every flaw and imperfection. And heaven knows we women are far worse than the men when it comes to vocally putting ourselves down, although I happen to believe that men are just as hard on themselves internally and they are just better at not vocalizing it. \u00a0Whether we vocalize it or internalize it, we all fall victim to putting ourselves down far too often.<\/p>\n
Back when I was a single mom trying to juggle being the CEO of my company while raising two little kids on my own was probably the time I peaked at being my own worst critic.\u00a0 My problem was that I would compare myself to all the other stay at home moms who had impeccably clean houses and beautifully set tables with an actual home cooked meal for their family\u2026oh, and I can\u2019t forget their perfect fresh flower centerpieces and their home baked bread they made from scratch\u2026.ARGHHH\u2026I could never compete with that. So I would walk around beating myself up that I was a horrible mom who didn\u2019t bake her own bread and who served microwave mac and cheese to her kids for dinner with no centerpiece to speak of.<\/p>\n
Forget the fact that I was working more than full-time growing a healthcare technology company who had to take care of two kids and manage a household on my own\u2026that didn\u2019t get to count for anything in my mind because all I could see was that I was a horrible person for not baking my own bread\u2026<\/p>\n
We all do that to ourselves in one way or another. We focus on what we DON\u2019T do well rather than focusing on everything we DO do well and we blow the things we don\u2019t do well WAY out of proportion. Why do we do it?? Heck if I know! But we do. And we have to stop. Seriously\u2026we have to STOP!<\/p>\n
What finally squashed the voice of that inner critic judging me all the time about how horrible I was, was this:<\/p>\n
One night after a particularly brutal day I had come home and fallen apart crying alone in my room so my kids wouldn\u2019t see me upset. I don\u2019t know exactly why but instead of the mean voice I typically heard in my head I heard a nice voice saying \u201cYou will still get to go to heaven even if you buy your bread\u201d.\u00a0 And I started to laugh. Then I was laughing and crying at the same time because I realized that was true. God will still let me go to heaven even if my house is a mess once in a while, and even if I feed my kids microwave mac and cheese sometimes, and even if I can\u2019t fit into my skinny jeans anymore, and even if I have wrinkles, and even if I don\u2019t have a fresh flowered centerpiece, and even if I serve dinner on a paper plate, and even if my kids outfits don\u2019t match and their hair is a mess, and even if I fail at different business ventures, and even if I don\u2019t have a particular job title or a dime of money in my bank account, and God would definitely let me into heaven even if I buy my bread from a store!<\/p>\n
So if God wasn\u2019t going to hold those things against me then why the heck should I spend my time fretting over them??? If God doesn’t judge us for those things then why should we judge ourselves for them?!?\u00a0I finally realized that I needed to stop stressing over the things that weren\u2019t going to keep me out of heaven and just focus my attention on doing the things that would get me in. Like trying to be a good person, trying to develop my talents, and trying to be loving and kind.\u00a0At the end of the day all God wants is for us to try our best to keep progressing a little bit more each day. He expects improvement, not perfection. And He is just fine with store bought bread \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n
Two great quotes to leave you with today:<\/p>\n
\u201cNo matter how many mistakes you make or how slow you progress you are still way ahead of everyone who isn\u2019t trying.\u201d\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n and<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s no need to be perfect to inspire others. Let others get inspired by how you deal with your imperfections.\u201d<\/strong><\/span>\u00a0 – Dr. Laura<\/p>\n Love to all<\/p>\n ~Amy<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Most all of us are our own worst critic. We pick ourselves apart, we put ourselves down, we stress over every flaw and imperfection. And heaven knows we women are far worse than the men when it comes to vocally putting ourselves down, although I happen to believe that men are just as hard on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3686,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[738,1475,5823,5825,240,5800,2115,5821,5820,2417,3087,171,218,3047,996,5822,5827,29,1163,5829,5491,5828,378,629,439,1053,324,728,574,138,415,630,5819,1769,1488,1480,1511,5826,456,2239,5830,1168,5824,275,98,442,172,5832,5831,3348],"class_list":["post-5351","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-abilities","tag-attempt","tag-bake-bread","tag-celestial-kingdom","tag-children","tag-critic","tag-critical","tag-do-well","tag-dont-do","tag-dr-laura","tag-eternity","tag-fail","tag-failure","tag-fat","tag-father","tag-fatherhood","tag-fret","tag-god","tag-heaven","tag-homemaker","tag-imperfect","tag-imperfections","tag-improve","tag-inspiration","tag-inspire","tag-judge","tag-judgment","tag-mistakes","tag-money","tag-mother","tag-motherhood","tag-motivate","tag-own-worst-critic","tag-parent","tag-perfect","tag-perfection","tag-progress","tag-sin","tag-single-mom","tag-skinny","tag-stay-at-home-mom","tag-stop","tag-store-bought-bread","tag-stress","tag-talent","tag-title","tag-try","tag-what-really-matters","tag-working-woman","tag-wrinkles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5351","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5351"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5351\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5354,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5351\/revisions\/5354"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3686"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}