Failure,self-disappointment and self hate, these and many other similar feelings don't just come over us. We all put certain demands on ourselves hoping that we will be able to pull them through and when we fail to do so we enter a state of punishing ourselves beyond the limits of reasonable chastisement. It is fair and normal for us to be unhappy with ourselves when we have failed ourselves but how far we should go with the reprimand should not exceed the boundaries or else we end up totally destroying ourselves. Everybody has the right to have expectations about self and to be dissatisfied when he or she fails to achieve them. But we must be careful about how far we push ourselves in our quest to prove to ourselves that we are actually able to do even better than what the others say we can't do. Remember that you are your greatest motivator, critic and coach and if you destroy yourself through unreasonable criticism you may not recover from the self destruction that you mete out to yourself. I have learnt to love myself a little more than I should so that when I fail to achieve something's I should not be too harsh to myself but be lenient and patient with myself. I found this to be working more than my previous attitude towards myself. I used to be too harsh and I pushed myself beyond what I could bear and this left me disappointed many times. Leave yourself enough room for self forgiveness and self tolerance and you will find it easy to re-visit some of your past failures with a little more boldness than before. Re-visiting your failures is like re-visiting an accident scene, you want to go there and be like a forensic investigator and not like a victim. When a forensic investigator visits a crash site he goes there to investigate and find facts unlike the victim who re-visits the same crash site to find closure. There are so many things you can achieve in life if you learn to accept that you will not always win but that sometimes you will come out second best or even worse you may lose altogether. Trust God to give you the grace to be self-forgiving and everything you do will become a pleasure even if it is the toughest thing you have ever attempted to do in your life. Each time you show love and appreciation to the others do the same to yourself twice as much in order to increase the your ability to love and forgive. The Bible says that we must love our Neighbors as we love ourselves. Many of us will never be angry with our neighbors up to the point where we kill them but we will not hesitate to kill ourselves over the some petty issues. The bottom line is this; Put reasonable expectations on yourself and you will be able to achieve them. Be blessed - MVK Read More!