For most of us, the harshest critic we face each day is staring back at us in the mirror.
No one knows our individual faults and shortcomings as well as we do.
No matter how polished or unruffled we may appear to others, every single one of us has things that bother us about ourselves.
Some of those faults may be things we’ve done or things that are part of who we are.
This is not a free pass to wallow in self-pity.
It’s a two-pronged opportunity to find peace and satisfaction in a world where everyone is touched by imperfection.
Paul Rosenberg advises that we start by forgiving ourselves for those personal defects rather than using them as an excuse to hate ourselves.
Once we’ve done this, we can get to work repairing those deficiencies.
We don’t have to fix them all at once—that’s unrealistic.
But we can certainly begin addressing them, one at a time, in ways that don’t leave us mired in self-hatred.
Each of us was born into an imperfect world and there’s no point in blaming ourselves for things over which we had no say.
At the same time, even those defects that are part of our genetics are not as limiting as we sometimes allow ourselves to believe.
We underestimate our power to rise above our faults through a steady process of growth and self-improvement.
These are things that our critic in the mirror needs to understand if we wish to move forward.
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