Compliment Your Mirror!

July 3rd is Compliment Your Mirror Day. Make it work for you.

We all go through times when it seems like someone is constantly pointing out our shortfalls and criticizing every little thing that we do. Sometimes, it is a parent or a spouse. Maybe it is a friend who is critical about your behavior, or a coworker who is nitpicking at every detail on a joint project. Sometimes, however, we are our own worst enemy. Often there is no one in our life who would judge us as harshly as we judge ourselves.

Constantly examining our own faults or being overly self-critical can affect how we feel about ourselves and how we function in our daily activities. While self-reflection can help us discover the aspects of ourselves that we want to improve, we need to keep it positive and be comfortable acknowledging the strengths that we already have.

Let’s say your boss pointed out that you need to improve your performance in a certain area.  Instead of focusing on that short coming, compliment yourself for the skills that you possess that will help you improve that part of your performance.

So, how can you turn the talk around?

Quite literally, you can look yourself in the mirror (or just take a quiet moment alone) and compliment yourself.   After the performance evaluation from your boss, you might say, “I’m a hard worker. I will do what it takes to get better at this task.”  Or, “I’m a quick learner. I’ll study up on this and be better in no time.”

You can tell yourself that you will succeed because you are determined and you’ve succeeded at things in the past.

There are times when hearing, “Thank you. You’ve done a good job” from someone else is far a few between.  Often people are better at telling us what we haven’t done well rather than all that we have succeeded at.  We can let that get the best of us and even take part in the self-bashing.

Or we can give ourselves our own compliments and pats on the back. As we get better at complimenting our own reflection, we’ll see the same from those around us.

Guest blogger: Carly Borenkind. Carly is a licensed therapist since 2002. She specializes in treating people with serious and persistent mental illness, chemical dependency and Aspergers Syndrome. Carly currently serves as the Chief Compliance Officer for The Guidance Center of Westchester.You can reach her here.