Over the past week, I have been trying to come up with the perfect idea to write an article about. Anything that sparked my interest and could have developed into a wonderful topic would slowly fizzle out. It’s not that I didn’t have anything to say, I just didn’t think that any of my ideas were important or valuable enough. I was afraid the topics lacked depth or would bore the reader. I immediately started critiquing my own incipient ideas instead of allowing them the opportunity to become something awesome.
Natural self-criticism, concerning our creativity, begins when our convergent and divergent thinking clash. Basically, this means the left side of our brain starts working to refine and reshape our ideas at the same time that the right side of our brain is only beginning the rough draft. This type of toxic thinking process starts to develop at a young age.
Whether it was through a teacher, caregiver or someone we saw as a prominent figure in our lives, we were disciplined early on in life to know how we are “supposed” to act and react. This creates an impossible standard in our subconscious mind that we won’t live up to other people’s and even our own expectations.
This fact is especially true for women. In 2018, a benchmark internal report done by Hewlett Packard found that women tend to apply for a new job only when they meet 100 percent of the job qualifications whereas men apply when they meet 60 percent, and women applied to 20 percent fewer jobs than men.
I don’t know about you, but I have definitely fallen into that standard. As I scroll through the description of a potential job, my anxiety rises as I near the required — or even preferred for that matter — qualifications section. As soon as I see one bullet point that I may not fit the bill for, I immediately become apprehensive about applying.
While it is normal to criticize yourself and your performance in various facets of life, we need to be mindful of the extents we go to. We need to ask ourselves what criticism is considered healthy, as well as recognizing and criticizing undesirable behaviors that are changeable. On the other hand, we should steer clear of negative self-talk and self-doubt because it can limit our scope of thinking and decrease our motivation.
There are several ways you can combat this negativity in your life. Start by accepting yourself and who you are before you engage in self-improvement and let all of our spontaneous ideas flow before you revise them. We shouldn’t let the fear of failure or rejection stop us from reaching for our goals and — as Wayne Gretsky famously said — “You miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take.”