Make it worse
Let's say you are too critical of yourself.
How do you fix this?
The trick is to do more of it first. Practice actively being extremely critical of yourself.
This sounds paradoxical, but by doing it consciously, you start to become aware of it, and now you notice when you do it subconsciously.
This is the reason why a lot of people live in a self-inflicted hell: they are not aware that they are extremely critical of themselves. And when you don't notice it, you can't fix it.
“You’re angry at yourself all the time,” says the hare. “I can see it. But how can I explain that to you?”
“I’m angry at myself all the time. I can’t even be kind to myself,” says the boy. “I can’t do anything right.”
“Yes! Exactly that!” says the hare. “You’re doing it again. You’re angry at yourself for being angry at yourself.”
Being too critical of myself
If somebody says to me, “You are too critical of yourself,” what am I supposed to do?
Because I have to stop doing something, which is very confusing. I have to stop being critical of myself.
Does that mean saying to myself, “I shouldn’t be too critical of myself”? Because that sounds an awful lot like another thing to be critical about myself.
Knowing that you do something a certain way is a nice beginning, but it doesn’t solve it immediately.
Should I just do other things? Maybe that’s not a bad idea as a start.
Yes, that’s what I am going to do. I’ll start doing other things, and then I’ll reflect later.