Being too demanding on yourself: how to deal with it

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 be very helpful in climbing the socioeconomic ladder, but that’s not necessarily the case.

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, actually, that you often set your standards too high? People who struggle with perfectionism , for example, 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 may also hold the belief that you can’t win without pain. If you set the bar too high for yourself, you’ll inevitably end up hurting yourself in order to meet that standard. You have to put in the effort, and you can perceive that effort as pain. Just like the saying, “You have to suffer to be beautiful.”

Those ideas likely come from somewhere. Often, these kinds of ideas stem from your childhood. If you grew up in a loveless household where you only received positive feedback from your parents for high grades or perfect athletic performance (or something else that went absolutely perfectly), then you may have also come to believe that you must meet high standards to earn love and appreciation[2].

Disadvantages of demanding too much of yourself

The downside of setting your standards too high is that it can lead to depression. It can disrupt your relationships and cause you to develop low self-confidence, even though that’s completely unnecessary. Strangely enough, it can also 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 experience anxieties, such as fear of failure, test anxiety, fear of giving presentations, writer’s block, and you might even develop a compulsive disorder as a result .

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 ensure you don’t get discouraged when you don’t meet your goals is to set more realistic goals for yourself. That way, you’ll achieve those goals and feel less like you’re letting yourself down.

For example, if you’d like to go running but can’t manage it on a certain day, you can always make it up later in the week. That way, you’re still working toward your goal of getting 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 be less demanding of those around you, which will also improve your social relationships (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 your standards too high, you might ask yourself where that idea—that you have to do this—came from. Through regression , you can mentally go back to the moment when you decided it was important to set very high standards for 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.

You can also explore symbols and how to give your life meaning . This perspective can be changed, so you no longer feel that you’re only living a meaningful life if you achieve very high goals.

Want to learn more about how hypnosis can transform your life and make it easier? Then 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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