Brave Enough to Succeed by Valorie Burton

Author:Valorie Burton
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780736970976
Publisher: Harvest House Publishers

A high school freshman soccer team had a run of horrible luck. They got a new coach who had been a terrific college player but was a not-so-terrific coach. They lost every single game that season. One parent thought the way to motivate his son to play better and help the team was to punish him every time they lost. In fact, the poor kid got grounded after every loss. I would argue the father’s approach was abusive. At the very least, it was counterproductive. As the season went on, his son’s motivation plummeted. Soon, he was ready for the season to be over. The sport he once loved he now dreaded. Not only that, he didn’t want to try any other sports because they now seemed nothing more than a setup for failure and punishment.

What Good Is Beating Yourself Up?

If every time we don’t reach the goal—or don’t reach it in perfect fashion—we get beat up and punished, eventually our motivation to keep trying can begin to diminish. But unlike the story above, we’re the ones beating ourselves up. Our expectations of what we should achieve and how we should achieve it can be unreasonably high. If you give yourself no margin for error, when you veer off course you can focus so much on your mistake that you lose perspective. If you expect perfection, you are guaranteed to fall short at some point.

God gives us grace. He looks at our hearts and our efforts. He wants us to learn and grow from our mistakes, not ruminate on them. When you ruminate or repeatedly mull over what went wrong, you get stuck. When you beat yourself up, what are you actually accomplishing? What do you get out of it? We do everything for a payoff. Getting unstuck from bad habits is largely about understanding the payoff you get from continuing in that pattern of behavior. Here are a few common “benefits” of beating yourself up.

You get to be the victim. As a victim, you get the attention—and this can divert eyes from the real issue. You can get sympathy from others and sometimes even manipulate them in some way. If you are the victim, you may be able to escape harsh judgment or consequences. You may be looking for compassion that is lacking from others, and victimhood is a way to get it. Caring people find it difficult to ignore the plight of others. Ultimately, the greatest judgment you may seek to escape is God’s. Ouch. If you are a victim, maybe God won’t blame you for not being obedient. After all, your fear/anxiety/stress was so intense. The situation was so unfair. The people were so difficult. How could you be expected to overcome such odds?

It creates a distraction from taking action. Sometimes beating yourself up is just another excuse to procrastinate. Instead of taking action, you analyze, you cry, you get angry, and you blame yourself for not being able to do more.

Negative reinforcement and motivation. The prospect of avoiding pain (beating yourself up) can be considered a motivator.

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