A short spoken YouTube reflection by Chad Silverstein presenting the mantra "be hard on yourself, not down on yourself." He urges listeners to motivate themselves ("kick your own ass") while avoiding excessive self-criticism that leads to depression, and emphasizes building awareness of inner negative self-talk so you can catch and pivot away from it.
Chapters
Hard on self, down on self. It's one of my favorite mantras at Built to Lead, probably because I had to be reminded of it so many times as a client. And, you know, again, it's. It's important to hear the nuance. The nuance is, is that you should be hard on yourself. It's important to be able to kick your own ass. It's important to be able to, you know, light a fire under yourself when you need to. It's important not to go down the bunny hole and being so down on yourself that you are depressed and that you make yourself feel something that isn't warranted just because you're catastrophizing something or you make a problem out worse than it actually is, which. We're human and we tend to do that. So you want to be harder on yourself. You just don't want to be down on yourself. And you have to be able to be aware of the fact that you're doing that. We have this little voice that plays in our head, and we have to catch it. We're talking to ourselves all day long, this inner voice. It's a natural thing to be able to talk about. Talk to yourself. It's another thing to be aware of it. And when times are tough and you're going through something hard, you have to be able to catch it and you have to be able to, like, pivot. When you feel yourself playing victim, when you feel yourself feeling sorry for yourself and you're telling yourself something in your head, no one else can hear it, but you're telling yourself. And that's a powerful thing. So build the awareness and hold onto that mantra of like, be hard on yourself, not down on yourself. Catch people that you love doing this. The more you can repeat it, the more you can think about it, the more you can see it in other people, you'll be able to start to see it in yourself and how you do it. And the key is to catch it, catch it quick. When you feel yourself feeling down, when you feel yourself kind of going dark, remind yourself not to be down on yourself and just. It's okay to kick your own ass. It's just. You don't want to depress yourself. So hold on to that one. That's a nuance worth remembering.
