Being Upset With Myself

I think we have a lot more control over our emotions than we admit: we can allow ourselves to feel happy or sad, angry or closed off... and this morning, I came into work in a real mood. I decided that I'd allow myself to be moody. I decided not to put the small effort in to smile at anyone, to ruminate on my failures, to focus on the negatives. Why? I feel like I deserve it.

Why do I feel like I deserve to feel upset? Because my progression on the project that I'm currently working on is going a lot slower than I would have liked. I sometimes get the feeling that my colleagues are starting to wonder if I'm actually doing work. And this judgement gets to me all the more, because when I was almost complete (about a week ago), I slacked off for a few days. Now that my head is completely back in the project, more work has come out of the woodwork and I feel like they're justified in thinking that, as well as feeling like I'm chasing a point of where I should have been, had I focused 100%. I'm usually good at not allowing people's judgement of me get to me. However this one did: no insult hurts more, no judgement of our self stings greater, than one laced with truth.

But I've come to realise that being upset with myself is not the best thing to do. My productivity slips even more if I'm not in a good place, and what could have been a lesson to learn - so that I'm more productive next time - just becomes more emotional baggage. I may well deserve to feel bad for being lazy for a few days, but emotional self-flagellation won't help: to allow myself to do that only acts as a feedback loop that exacerbates the problem.

So I have two choices: the first is to continue to ruminate on my failings and punish myself, and the other is to forgive myself and move on. The odd thing is, I feel like 'me' is the hardest person for myself to forgive: I have control over my actions, anything that I do to upset myself is my own making and I should know better.  That's why the decision to forgive myself is all the harder. Sometimes the best thing to do, not only for our mental health, but for our productivity, is to forgive ourselves for not achieving our expectations. After that we pick ourselves up, learn the lesson so that we don't do it again, and move on.