Maybe I Can® with Debbie Weiss

Ep. 131: Why Are We So Hard On Ourselves?

• Debbie Weiss • Episode 131

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In this episode of the Maybe I Can® Podcast, I’m getting real about something many of us struggle with: being our own worst critic. After giving a keynote speech that left me on a high, I received the photos and video — and immediately started picking myself apart. Sound familiar?

We’ll dive into:
✨ Why our inner critic shows up (especially after moments of success)
✨ The power of zooming out to see the whole picture
✨ A simple mindset shift to help you focus on facts, not feelings

This isn’t about perfection, it’s about progress. And it’s time we stop talking to ourselves in ways we’d never speak to a friend.

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Speaker 1:

Hello and welcome back to the Maybe I Can podcast. I'm your host, debbie Weiss, and thank you so much for joining me today. What I want to talk to you about today is the question of why are we so hard on ourselves? But before I jump in there, I just want to remind you that right now, registration for my eight-week small group coaching program, sprinkle Forward, is open, and this program's for you if you have recently been or are going through a major life transition, like divorce, losing a loved one, becoming an empty nester, retiring, or if you simply know something has to shift. You've spent years, I'm sure, investing in everyone else, and I am here to remind you. It is time to make the investment in yourself. You deserve this. This is your one and only life, and together in our small group, we are going to lay out the steps that you need to move forward into your next chapter with intention. So make sure to check out the show notes. It'll give you all the information of where to go, how to join and all the things All right, so let's jump into it.

Speaker 1:

I chose this topic because I just returned, two days ago, from the latest keynote that I gave down in Georgia for the Renew Conference for the National Board of Georgia Realtors and it was an absolute pleasure. It was just so wonderful. The women were so warm and welcoming and they invited me out to meet them for a drink the night before the conference and I enjoyed getting to know everyone and just hearing about their journeys and was just blown away with how generous they are with their time and how they volunteer and support one another and I just really you could feel the love and the community amongst them. So it was really an honor for me to be there. So I gave my keynote and I felt good about it and people were coming up to me afterwards and telling me how I inspired them and sharing some stories of their next steps and their hopes and dreams. It was great. I left there on an absolute high, just thrilled.

Speaker 1:

And then yesterday in my inbox I get the pictures and the hour-long video of my keynote and what I noticed is, looking at the pictures, the first thing I start doing is criticizing myself. I start to notice oh my gosh, your hair looks so frizzy. You should have tried to do a better job. What were you thinking wearing that dress? Your big tree trunks, cams look so large. Maybe you shouldn't have worn those pink shoes. And then when I start to watch the video, I'm thinking do I think I sound like a robot? I'm not moving enough, I'm not like, oh my goodness, where did this come from? Then I was very pleased about on Friday, after it was over. All of a sudden, less than 24 hours later, on Saturday, when I get all this stuff has completely flipped upside down and feeling good about my performance and how I looked and all the things, and I really had to stop and remind myself to change my mindset, because half my talk was about your mindset and here I was not taking my own advice. But before I get there, let's just talk for a minute about but before I get there, let's just talk for a minute about why do we do this. I know I'm not the only one who does that, this right, come on, hopefully you don't do it now, but I'm sure there was a time in the past that you did do it.

Speaker 1:

I feel like we're hypercritical of ourselves, and it's very common, and I think that social media, of course, just makes it so much easier, because what are we doing? We're comparing ourselves right, and I have to say, like I could compare myself to the other speakers in the room and, oh, they felt so much more natural than I did and they walked around and they you know whatever it was that they did and maybe that worked for them and maybe that is something that I can incorporate. But that doesn't mean that what I did was any less or worse, or everything is not a comparison game, right? Even if somebody else spoke, they spoke on a different topic. So how can I compare what I did to what they did? It's so easy on social media, right to and I don't remember if I said this in the keynote, but we have to remember. What are we seeing for the most part on social media?

Speaker 1:

Not my social media, because here I am on screen, if you're watching on YouTube, my hair's a mess. I didn't blow dry it after I exercised, I just washed it and let it dry. I have no makeup on. I'm not even wearing my good pink glasses today. I had to wear something that had blue for what I was wearing yesterday and when I go on now, when I go on social media in the beginning, when I first started making videos, and I told a woman there at the conference who was sharing with me how she's afraid to go and make videos to post on social media.

Speaker 1:

Me, when I first started several years ago, I had to make sure that my hair was perfect, that I had makeup on. That I knew exactly what I was going to say. I had, like, these little index cards that had my bullet points. After I tried to memorize the minute long you know message that I was going to say. And then one day, soon after, I made a couple of these videos where I thought this is the most exhausting thing. I don't know how I'm supposed to do this on a regular basis. I was outside walking Yogi, my dog, and something came to me that I knew I wanted to share with you guys, and so I just said, oh, let me just hit record. No makeup, hair, a mess, the whole deal and I just shared, not scripted, not outlined, literally just out of my mind, you know, cut right from my thoughts onto the camera.

Speaker 1:

And what I discovered is that's when the good stuff comes out, instead of being so contrived and everything looking perfect, and I always default back to what do I like to watch, what do I like to read? Before I wrote my first book, on second thought, maybe I can my memoir. I remember thinking well, I'm not a writer, I don't know how to use you know, my sentences don't sound beautiful, they don't use these wonderful words and phrases and paint this gorgeous picture with all these flowery adjectives. It just kind of sounds like me talking. And then I realized well, wait a second. Do I like to read what I just described to you? Not so much.

Speaker 1:

I connect to the person, the real person, not the someone who's trying to impress me with what they say, how they look, all the things, because I want to connect based on who they really are. Because even if you look perfect on camera, I bet you you have days where you look crummy, just like I do on a regular day, or hanging around in my sweatpants, whatever it is. And so that's when I realized you know what? I don't care. People are either going to like me or they're not going to like me. For who I am. It has nothing to do with how I look. It just has to do with who I am as a person. And the only way that I can convey who I am as a person as is to to be my honest self and just share my thoughts. Nothing scripted, nothing that AI gave me, just what comes out of my head, based on my life experience.

Speaker 1:

But when we get stuck on comparing ourselves to someone else's highlight reel on social media, we feel like we don't compare. We feel like our life isn't as good as theirs. I used to do it all the time when my kids were younger and I would see all the posts of you know, this one's so smart, this one's so athletic. Oh, we're out having this fabulous you know athletic. Oh we're out having this fabulous you know? Celebration for Father's Day. Because as I'm recording, it's Father's Day and in my house people would be crying or fighting or whatever it was, and I thought why can't my life, why can't my life be like everybody else's? Is that everybody else's life? Is everybody smiling and hugging and kumbaya all the time? No, that's just not reality. So I think that social media definitely has something to do with it. I think also that we're always focused on how we look, how we perform, instead of maybe how we feel.

Speaker 1:

Tapping into how did I feel? Like I felt really good. I felt like I did a good job. I felt like I delivered the message that I wanted to. Now, did I say everything perfectly? No, did I talk too slowly or too quickly? Yes, did I lose track of my thoughts for a minute? Absolutely. You know, nothing's perfect, nobody's perfect. And so, instead of focusing on the mistakes that I made or something that I think I could have done better, I need to focus on overall how did I feel about it?

Speaker 1:

Of course, I want to learn from my mistakes right, because we all make mistakes and the only way we improve is by learning, by making the mistakes and learning from them. And you know that's something that I have not watched back the keynote yet, the whole hour's worth, and it's difficult. It's difficult because I want to be able to look at it objectively and say, not only here's the parts where I want to improve, but also to say honey, you did a good job conveying that message, or I like the way that you exclaimed that. So it is hard, especially, you know, when you're listening to your own voice and you're thinking, oh, my gosh, my voice is so annoying. Don't we always think our own voices are annoying Because we don't sound how we think we sound.

Speaker 1:

So I know, listening to the podcast, it took me a while and actually I haven't really done it in a long time, oops, but when I listened back to my podcast, I was able to really give myself credit where I did feel like I, where I had done a good job, and I think that that's important. It's fine to to look back and say, okay, how can I improve? But then to also give ourselves credit for what we feel we did. Well, all right. So what do we do when this inner critic comes up? Well, one of the things that we can do is zoom out, meaning, instead of obsessing about one look or one thing that you said, why aren't we saying, overall and I'm going to use, I have to use my keynote as an example all, and I'm going to use I have to use my keynote as an example what's the bigger picture here?

Speaker 1:

Did you show up with heart? Yes, did you show up with energy? Yes, did you connect to people? Now I can say, based on what the audience members said to me afterwards yes, I did connect with people, because people were coming up and they were sharing their stories and they were sharing their hopes and their dreams, and they thanked me for my vulnerability and found my story powerful and thought that what I shared was not only inspirational but also that I had given them practical tools that they could walk out and use, so that I had given them practical tools that they could walk out and use. Wow, all those things that I just said, those were my goals.

Speaker 1:

Did every person feel the same? I'm sure, right, none of us are. We're not for everyone, right, but I did connect. So why don't I think about that, instead of thinking about that one moment where I might have paused too long because I lost track of my thoughts? How about thinking, what did it look like through someone else's eyes? Because if they are engaged, if they are engaged, hopefully they're not sitting there picking my appearance apart. If they are, quite frankly, I shouldn't care, because that kind of person who would sit there and that's the only thing that they got from my talk was they're sitting there criticizing how I looked, what I said, you know how I sounded, all the things. Then they're not my person, right? They're not the person I was ever going to connect to.

Speaker 1:

And how about the fact that these feelings that I have, or that we have, of not feeling like enough or criticizing ourselves, who says they're the truth? You know part of my talk I say I never knew that I had the power. I never knew I had the power to control my thoughts. I just thought, if I thought it, it must be true. But now I certainly know that's not the case. How about, instead, I focus on the facts. What happened after the talk? People stood up at the end of the talk and gave me a standing ovation. Like I said, people came up to me and shared, shared. Those are facts. Those things happened.

Speaker 1:

So, regardless of how I feel, let me tune into. My feeling is not necessarily not that your feelings aren't true, but my thoughts based on these feelings are not true. I know the facts and I did have people who I know connected and I know that people appreciated what I shared, done, period. I should leave it there and let's say you know what? If I'm telling myself I'm not good enough, how about I just shift my thoughts and say you know what? We've been there, we've done that and I have proved that belief wrong time and time again. I am good enough and I am not listening to that voice today who wants to whisper to me to tell me that I'm not. It's just not true. How about the fact I got on the stage and I made a difference. I did it. I did it, and there was a time that would literally have been my worst nightmare. Let me remind myself where I was, just I don't know a year ago, two years ago, five years ago. Would that version of me five years ago have done what I did, what I do now, getting on stages and sharing my message? Well, no, how about that? Why aren't I giving myself credit for that? And thank you for listening, because now I am. That's what we need to remind ourselves.

Speaker 1:

One other thing that I've shared in my keynote, which I've said to you guys before too, is make a. Maybe I can list, write down all the things that you thought you couldn't do, but you did do and you did it. Well, you got through it. Even though you thought that you could never get through it. You did, and let that spur you forward with confidence and courage, because we can do it. We're never going to be perfect. We don't have to have it all figured out. We just have to take action. And you know what the next talk I do will be a little better, and this was better than the last talk that I did, and so on and so forth.

Speaker 1:

Each time we improve. So it's time to be kind to ourselves, right, and to just take a minute and think about what we're saying to ourselves, and I really do like the idea. I think the thing that resonates most with me is reminding ourselves let's think here what's that and what's not, because that really does put it in perspective and it allows us to kind of not rely on how emotional we can get or how caught up in that self-criticism we all do it. It comes from somewhere, somewhere different for each of us, mostly, for the most part maybe from childhood, where we develop these limiting beliefs of not being good enough or worthy or smart enough or pretty enough or whatever. Whatever it is, we're on our way. That's why you're listening to me, that's why I listen to other people. We want to improve and we are improving, but we have to remind ourselves we're not perfect and instead of looking for all the faults in ourselves, let's turn around, zoom out and take a look at the big picture, look at how far we've come.

Speaker 1:

Say I want you to give yourself the same kindness that you give everyone else. You would never criticize a friend like you criticize yourself. You just wouldn't do it and you would tell her don't do that to yourself, you don't deserve this. Why are you berating yourself Like don't do that to yourself, you don't deserve this. Why are you berating yourself Like be that person for yourself, be your own best friend? Why? Because you deserve it. And as I close, just a little reminder. I want to walk this journey, this path, with you. I've done it, I'm still doing it. It's not over. It won't be over until I take my last breath. So you've spent time, energy and money on everything and everyone else. I want to remind you it's time to invest in yourself. So check out the show notes, grab your spot to the Sprinkle Forward group coaching or head over to debbirweisscom and get information there. And until next week.

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Debbie Weiss

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