Cru’s Letter
We live in a very soft culture today that tells us to stop judging ourselves in order to practice self love. It sounds like a nice sentiment but I can’t fully agree.
If you had a friend that was extremely talented and had endless potential but they started to take it for granted, wouldn’t you remind them? If they threw their potential out the window and stopped showing up as their best, wouldn’t you be disappointed?
It wouldn’t show much love for you to simply stay quiet and let them slide. To remind them what they’re capable of is the real version of love.
When you recognize shortcomings in yourself, it’s not that unhealthy to be a little bit disappointed. Truthfully, it’s natural for those that want to achieve great things.
Now, perfectionism can absolutely get out of hand and in an unhealthy context, it usually manifests as a hyper fixation on something that doesn’t matter but when that same mental processing is applied to something meaningful, we call that greatness.
Think of athletes, intellectuals, creatives… they’re all perfectionists in some capacity and their self talk might not look too “healthy” to the average hallmark card writer. That said, our society values the peak of performance, intelligence, wealth, etc but most people don’t like how difficult it is to try and actually be great.
Growing up, I was always pretty self critical (and still am ofc) but it never felt problematic because I was just expressing the fact I knew I could be better. I can say with confidence that I wouldn’t have it any other way considering that the critical relationship with myself is the foundation of nearly everything I’m proud of.
Mastery in the art of being hard on yourself does involve knowing when to let off the gas a little bit. You have to get really honest with yourself and determine what things actually serve you and put your energy there. If you expect excellence from yourself in something that you don’t even care about, the empty anger that comes from that should be a good sign to check your priorities and lower misaligned expectations.
When you’re driven, people will give you permission to quit to make themselves feel comforted but I’m here to give you permission to trust yourself and remain aware
-Cru
P.S. Check out my recent youtube video:
