I was such a lucky child. I grew up with parents that taught me to always push through to the finish line of every task I took on. “You’re not a quitter” they would say. And they were right, but only because they taught me not to be. They also taught me to give everything my best. Through hard work and practice, I was expected to be the best that I could be at any given thing. I didn’t use to put these expectations on myself. As time went on I adopted these ideas and began to have expectations for my own performance. Unfortunately, I didn’t know how to handle not meeting them. When I was living with my parents I always had them to tell me it’s okay and that I did my best. Being in college I only have myself. This made it extremely difficult to handle my internal thoughts telling me that I needed to do better. I needed to make all As, I needed to nail that interview, I needed to eat healthy and workout every day, I needed to get elected to that position. When I didn’t meet these standards I tore myself apart. My second semester of college I got my first B ever. I was a straight-A student throughout all of elementary, middle, and high school. I made As in my concurrent classes so I came into college with a 4.0 and held it together after my first semester. So for me, getting a B was failing to be the best that I could be. I cried and I told myself that I could have tried harder and then I told myself that it won’t happen again. If that were the end of it then this would be okay. But it stuck with me. Every time someone mentioned a Grade Point Average or I saw my transcript that voice in my head came back. It told me that my value had decreased because of this letter on my transcript. It told me that I wasn’t good enough. It stayed with me. This wasn’t the only scenario that caused my voice to tell me these things. There were countless applications I received rejection letters from, positions I lost, and days (or weeks) I skipped the gym. I told myself that I was worthless each time something happened that didn’t meet my own expectations. Sometime over the summer during my mental break from college, I realized that doing this to myself was not helping me. While having the motivation to succeed is important it had gone too far. I was the most toxic person in my life. When I realized this I had an epiphany, I was holding myself back by pushing myself too hard. The mental pain I put myself through was so damaging that I wasn’t able to live up to my own potential. I’m always going to fail but carrying that with me will only cause me to fail more. Making the decision to relieve myself from my own self-pressure improved my mental health tremendously. While I still have issues with depression and anxiety, a lot of the ways I help myself are by fighting self-pressure. I found that it was the root of most of my issues and that it all boiled down to self-love. While I do make mistakes they do not define me. I have to continue to tell myself that while I am imperfect I still have so much value.
This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at OK State chapter.