On Criticisms and Complaints

It was recently reported that for every criticism a baby received, it will take 7 compliments to maintain his self-esteem.

This was from an article on living life fully. The author has a nephew who criticised himself badly. This nephew had became so fearful of living that he cooped himself in his room, moribund and lethargic.

They tried a little experiment: the nephew has to count the number of times he self-criticises in a day.

The next day, after 3 hours of counting, he stopped. In that mere span of time, he had criticised himself 50 odd times. Not once, or even twice. Fifty.

We're our worst critics. We see flaws in ourselves that others don't. We beat ourselves up over what should have been and what could have been. Life was lived backwards.

We're criticised and we repeat these criticisms to ourselves, spraying salt on festering wounds.

Let's remember this: 1 criticism = 7 compliments.

While we're our harshest critics, we must remember to be our most ardent fans too.