On the uselessness of blaming yourself

 Let me start this one, by acknowledging we all do it. We all, at some point and for some time, have a tendency to blame ourselves for things in our lives when we get results or situations we’d rather not experience and that we feel we may have contributed to them happening. It’s a natural and human thing to do. And contrary to the title, in some circumstances m, it may even be useful. Feeling the feeling of blame, is sometimes a valuable signal. A signal that we’ve made a choice or dealt a certain way with a situation, that is now making things worse so being aware of that feeling may help as a future reminder to not make similar choices in the future.

Where it is a problem, is when we let that feeling of blame linger within us. When we don’t let it go, and often use it as an excuse to not do things or not get back to them, where they could be valuable learning and development tools.

And the main reason why blame is useless, is that most of the times, whatever we blame ourselves for is a sunk cost. Sunk cost is a term in finance, that basically says “you already paid for it, there’s nothing you can do about it now so it’s no longer relevant for future decision making”. You paid for it, it’s done so just move on.

Not only a sunk cost, but blame is also an energy vampire. The energy we spend feeling sorry and blaming ourselves, takes the life out of us. When we’re focused on blaming ourselves, humans tend to go on spirals of all our perceived inadequacies and we feel sad, lonely and often treat others around us badly too as a result. And with this comes an opportunity cost too. All that energy could be much better used in different ways. Instead of sulking and blaming, that same energy could be used for strategising. For thinking and planning how we can improve our odds that we won’t make the same types of decisions or reactions, that are now making us feel bad. Strategizing on skills or habits we need to acquire so as to not find ourselves in similar situations in the future. 

So, Rafael, stop blaming yourself or if you can’t do that, get better at identifying when you’re entering spirals of blame. And when you become aware that you are, remember it’s both a sunk cost and that it carries an opportunity cost too, and try to redirect that energy you’re spending anyway towards something more useful for you, something that has a building and development value and not destructive value to yourself. Because on the other side of building and development, there’s a better version of you that uses every challenge as a stepping stone to reach higher heights and better things.

On being kind to yourself

 Since you were born, that one of your strongest personality traits has been your kindness. That has always come up in everything you do and how you deal and behave with others. Even with some of your autism traits, you often get triggered by the lack of kindness of others, whether it’s directed at you or at anyone around you. You always get upset when see unkindness around, and one of the many reasons why you’re a wonderful and lovely boy.

Having said that, you do not extend that same grace to yourself, and you deserve that from you. Because we both know, that if you saw other people talking to you or your friends with the words and tone you so often speak to yourself, you wouldn’t have it. More, you would intervene and stand up for others and remind them that that’s not ok. That they weren’t being kind.

And this is something I’ve also struggled with most of my life. Even my study of Philosophy and Stoicism, made it worse and not better. Epictetus said “be content to appear foolish or stupid to externals… but demand much of yourself”. Seneca said “let us be more just with others and more severe with ourselves”. Augustine of Hippo said “Be severe with your own sins, gentle with the sins of others”. And for years, I did exactly what you do, so I get it. It wasn’t until past my 40s, that I started being kind to myself and not consider a lack of elite level performance in all areas of my life (work, fitness, jiu jitsu, parenting, marriage) as if I’m somehow lacking. As if somehow, I’m just lazy and not working hard enough, not being disciplined enough, not being good enough for others around me. Because that will never happen. We are born and die as incomplete products , and that’s a good thing. It means we had standards, it means we kept trying to improve until our last breath and it means we kept working on ourselves and how we show up for others.

But that shouldn’t be done at the expense of your unkind self talk. That shouldn’t be done or achieved by being a tyrant to yourself, by being so critical that we didn’t perform as we hoped or expected that we just quit. As Ryan Holiday mentions on one of his books “If your standards are so high, that you give up when you fall short of them then you don’t actually have high standards. What you have are excuses” 

So, please, be kind to yourself. Know we’re always incomplete, there’s always more that we can do, and using that as something to be violent and u kind to ourselves is unnecessary, counter productive and makes living inside our heads a dark and violent place to be. Be kind to yourself, because you’re kind to others and you deserve more from you. You deserve for you and from you what you demand of the world around you.