Don't Go Easy on Yourself; Be Hard on Yourself
Friends commonly give each other the following advice when something is wrong:
“Go easy on yourself.”
While the advice to go easy on yourself is both caring and compassionate, it can actually do you more harm than good. Going easy on yourself can easily slip into self-indulgence and self-enablement, preventing you from critically looking at your own life and pushing yourself to make whatever (sometimes difficult) changes are necessary to really improve your quality of life or your character traits and habits.
While the advice to go easy on oneself is heartfelt, friends who really wasn’t to see you improve will give you the opposite advice:
“Be hard on yourself.”
Being hard on yourself doesn’t mean to beat yourself up over your faults and failures. But it does mean that you should look critically at the short- and long-term causes of unhappiness and failure in your life and that you should push yourself relentlessly to improve and to change.
The ancient Roman stoic philosopher Seneca gave similar advice to his friend and younger mentee Lucilius, even quoting his stoic predecessor Epicurus in the process:
"The knowledge of sin is the beginning of salvation." This saying of Epicurus seems to me to be a noble one. For he who does not know that he has sinned does not desire correction; you must discover yourself in the wrong before you can reform yourself. Some boast of their faults. Do you think that the man has any thought of mending his ways who counts over his vices as if they were virtues? Therefore, as far as possible, prove yourself guilty, hunt up charges against yourself; play the part, first of accuser, then of judge, last of intercessor. At times be harsh with yourself. Farewell. (Seneca, Letter No. 28)
According to Seneca we should constantly serve as prosecutor and judge—and we contemporary thinkers might also say “jury”—of ourselves, seeking out the darkest, most hidden faults and vices within ourselves and bringing them to light for our rational faculties to be able to address. Note that Seneca also says that we must finally also serve as intercessors to ourselves, which means that we must actively intervene in our own lives (doing an intervention with yourself!) to make whatever changes are necessary to squash our vices and cultivate virtues in their place.
If you have bad habits, you must train yourself out of them. If you have moral faults, you must first be aware of them to cultivate better character traits in yourself—perhaps through the kind of moral practice, habit formation, and character training advocated by Aristotle in his Nicomachean Ethics. If you have disappointed yourself and feel like a failure, going easy on yourself will not give you the strength to pick yourself back up, shrug off those negative feelings, and push forward with another attempt at life or following your dreams.
Instead, look at your own life harshly and critically, and pulling no punches with yourself. Fellow stoic philosopher and Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius similarly reminds us that we have the rational capacity to endure anything that the universe or our present circumstances may throw at us:
Nothing can befall any man which he is not fitted by nature to bear. (Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, No. 18)
This sentiment from Marcus Aurelius echoes the following passage from the Apostle Paul in the Christian New Testament:
No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to mankind. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it. (1 Corinthians 10:13, NIV)
Whereas Paul, along with many Christian advisers, might advocate patient endurance of hardship and trial, a sentiment shared by Marcus Aurelius and stoic philosophers generally, Seneca seems to be advocating for a more active approach both to your present circumstances and to moulding your own character traits with the tools of your own mind and reason.
The distinction, however, between patient endurance and active intercession is a false dichotomy. In reality you can do both, using your own strength of character and willpower to endure whatever trials you may be facing while also using your powers of critical reasoning to find the solution to your current dilemma, to make whatever changes in yourself or your environment are necessary, and to become the person are able to be.
But going easy on yourself won’t get the job done. You need to be hard on yourself and your own shortcomings while being proactive enough to take control of your own life and character—as Seneca says, being your own accuser, judge, and intercessor in the process to make it happen.
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