How to Be Less Critical

We tend to size up our own lives against what everyone else seems to have pulled off. Without comparing our looks, our stuff, and our talents to the people around us, how would we ever figure out whether we're winning at this? So we run the race. The winner, by society's scoreboard, owns the nicer house, drives the better car, holds the job people envy, and the list never actually ends. Staying locked in that competition stalls your own growth and quietly drains the calm out of your head.

Comparison is really two judgments happening at once: one aimed at yourself, one aimed at the other person. Both get measured against some ideal we're carrying around. Either we wish we were them and come away feeling smaller, or we fault them for falling short of what we expected and come away feeling a little bigger. The direction doesn't matter much. It's the same habit, and it damages the person doing it along with whoever's on the receiving end. Keep it up long enough and chronic criticism starts feeding depression, anxiety, and a steady hum of stress. If you want to grow, the disapproval has to stop.

Start with this: a negative outlook is a kind of poison. Think negatively and you'll feel negative, full stop. Approach other people with judgment and you'll push them away, forfeiting relationships that might have meant something. There's a second problem too. Idealism doesn't live in the real world. When we put parts of other people on a pedestal, or demand that they hit some fixed standard, we strip away the ordinary messiness of being human. That dehumanizing reflex is worth watching out for, because it guarantees you'll never arrive at happiness. Hold people to a flawless yardstick and they fail every time. The yardstick is the thing that's unfair.

Being too critical is one of the usual reasons a mind won't settle. Picture yourself in bed at night. Are you running the day's scenes back? Counting the stresses, the chores stacked up for tomorrow? The brain starts generating hundreds of alternate responses to things already done and things not yet here, weighing each outcome against the others. That's normal wiring. The brain wants the truth; its whole job is to work out what's going on. Sounds harmless, except it tips easily into fixating on specifics, and most of those specifics you can't do anything about. While it chews on your problems, it's also quietly grading how happy you are. The result: a mechanism built to make you feel better has left you feeling worse and eaten an hour of sleep doing it.

Growth takes some pruning. The task is to quiet the mind down. All that constant criticism is poisoning the ground inside you and leaking into how you treat everyone else. Peace and a real sense of your own worth both depend on dropping the comparisons, and dropping the habit of tearing other people down to feel momentarily okay.

1. A fool's errand. See the pointlessness of stacking yourself against other people. Whether you're straining to meet someone else's bar or just angling to feel superior, the feeling that comes from comparison is thin and doesn't last. A house bigger than your brother's won't make you happy. It'll only sharpen the rivalry that's splitting the two of you, and warp whatever you thought happiness was.

2. You, you, you. You can only change yourself. You only have control over yourself. And the only moment you hold that control is now. Say it again. Let that be the line you repeat to yourself. Notice what you're good at and what makes you you. Give yourself credit for what you've done. Those are your measuring sticks for growth. The only fair comparison is you against you.

3. Love more. Attraction runs on a simple rule. Positive pulls positive; negative pulls negative. Anger, resentment, hatred, all of it draws more of the same toward you. The encouraging half is that the rule cuts both ways. Kindness, compassion, and love reshape a life. Treat other people generously and you'll find it easier to be gentle with yourself.

4. Judge less. Comparing yourself to others wounds you. Judging others harshly wounds you and them. So first, catch yourself every time you criticize someone. Clock how often it happens, and then dig into why. Second, try meeting people from a different angle. The mother whose toddler is wrecking the grocery aisle isn't an easy target once you remember how brutal raising a toddler actually is. You want some grace when you're worn down and furious. Everyone around you wants the same.

Breaking the loop of constant criticism won't happen overnight, but growth requires it. Hold onto this much: we all arrive here the same way, all of us open to sickness and to death. We all want to be approved of, and every one of us gets let down somewhere along the line. That's unavoidable. That's human.

- Melissa Lavery, M.S.