There are many people who make good resolutions every year. Almost half of people do this, but far fewer achieve their good intentions. The rest have set too high standards for themselves.
Setting high standards for yourself is something many ambitious people do. This can also help you greatly in climbing the socioeconomic ladder, but not necessarily.
At some point, though, you may find that setting too high a standard for yourself causes you to stop doing well. So how do you go about changing that habit of demanding too much of yourself so that you can function well in a healthy way?
Research does show that there is a correlation between performing well and making demands on yourself[1]. So it is not necessarily bad to make high demands on yourself, as long as they are not too high.
Where do those excessive demands on yourself come from?
Why is it that you often set too high standards for yourself? For example, people who suffer from perfectionism set very high standards for themselves, but that need to be perfect comes from somewhere.
So you can't want to be an average person. You are ambitious and want to achieve certain things in life; a certain status, for whatever reason.
You can also have the belief that you cannot win without pain. If you set too high a demand on yourself you are going to hurt yourself anyway to achieve that demand. You have to put effort into it, and you can see that effort as pain. Just like the idea "whoever wants to be beautiful has to suffer pain.
Again, these ideas can come from somewhere. Often these kinds of ideas come from your childhood. If you grew up in a loveless household where you only got good feedback from your parents for high grades or perfect sports performance (or anything else that went absolutely perfect), you may also have conceived the idea that you have to meet high standards for earning love and appreciation[2].
Disadvantages of demanding too much of yourself
The downside to demanding too much of yourself is that it can depress you. It can interfere with your relationships, and you can get low self-esteem, when it is completely unnecessary. In addition, it can also crazily reduce your self-control .
For example, you may be managing yourself in an unhelpful way. For example, you want to keep working until something is finished. As a result, you may be working until late, when it would actually be better to just stop, get a night's sleep and continue the next day rested. Then, all in all, you might even spend less time on the job.
You may also suffer from anxieties such as fear of failure, fear of tests, fear of giving presentations, writer's block and you may even suffer from compulsive disorder .
Another surprising finding is that people who are perfectionists, or who set (too) high standards for themselves and tie their self-esteem to what they achieve, often earn less from their work or business than people who do not suffer from this. In the study, people earned as much as $15,000 less per year. That's a considerable amount. Also, athletes who made too high demands on themselves often actually did not become top athletes (source 2).
So how good is it really to set too high standards for yourself and to be a perfectionist?
Be kind to yourself
One way to make sure you don't despair when you don't achieve your goals is to set more realistic goals for yourself. Then you will achieve those goals and suffer less from the feeling of disappointing yourself.
For example, if you like to run, but you can't manage it on a particular day, you can always catch up later in the week. That way you can still work towards your goal of becoming fitter.
You can also break down your goals into sub-goals, making it easier to enjoy the journey to achieving your big goal. The best part is that if you make goals smaller, you often still get more done than if you're up against such a big goal.
In doing so, it also helps in that if you have achieved that smaller goal, you are more motivated to achieve the next small goal[3].
When you set goals, set them positively[4]. Instead of the goal:
"I want to couch less."
Can you set the goal:
"I want to go out more."
List pros and cons
One way to stop setting (too) high standards for yourself is to make a list of the pros and cons of the high standards you set for yourself.
In fact, you then also make yourself aware of all the drawbacks it has and that can help you let go of those high standards a bit and be kinder to yourself.
In the process, you can also find out that your life can be much more enjoyable if you are a little less of a perfectionist. Not only because it allows you to relax more, but you may also make fewer demands on those around you, making your social relationships better as well (source 2).
Predict and check how much you enjoy doing something
Another exercise you can do is, when given a list of activities, indicate on a scale from 0 to 100 how much you will enjoy a particular activity. Think about the pleasure you can get out of it, the self-development and/or the appreciation you will receive.
You may find out that you get much more enjoyment out of certain chores or things you don't do at a top level than the chores and things you are very good at.
This can already give you a lot of peace of mind, and in the process, you can start certain projects that you put off because of those overly demanding requirements anyway, because you have less fear that you won't make them as perfect as you did before (source 2).
Change your beliefs
Beliefs about meeting high standards of esteem don't always go away quickly with the above exercises. For example, do you notice that the above tips are not really helping you? Then you can seek help from a hypnotherapist, for example. Hypnotherapy can be used to become less bothered by perfectionism, by making excessive demands on yourself[5].
Law students were used in a study on the impact of hypnotherapy on perfectionism. A total of sixty law students participated in this study. Thirty received hypnotherapy and thirty did not. Before and after hypnotherapy, their perfectionism was tested and after hypnotherapy, the group that had the therapy had significantly less perfectionism than the group that had not had treatment.
Hypnosis often involves changing beliefs. If you set too high a standard for yourself, you may wonder where that idea that you need to do that came from. With regression , you can go back in your mind to when you thought it was important to make very high demands of yourself.
Often these are moments from your childhood. Then you can reinterpret that moment, but with the knowledge you have at this point in your life. Often such a new interpretation is enough to remove the belief that it is important to set high standards for yourself.
In addition, installing new beliefs can also be helpful for your thinking and actions. This can be done, for example, by repeating certain suggestions; you can also do this at home. These can be suggestions such as:
"Taking rest when I'm tired is better for the quality of my work than continuing."
"People like it when I make mistakes, too, because it shows that I'm human," he said.
"I get to be average."
"I get to make goals smaller."
These are just examples, depending on your beliefs that lead to setting too high a standard for yourself you may get other suggestions from your hypnotherapist.
They can also work with symbols and how to give your life meaning . This can be changed, eliminating the idea that you only live a worthwhile life if you just achieve very high goals.
If you want to learn more about how hypnosis can transform your life and make it easier, come to the free online master class.
Or register for a seminar or one of the Hypnosis Institute Netherlands' training courses .
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