Why Being Hard on Yourself Isn't Helping You Change

Do you remember those Carfax commercials?

"Show me the CARFAX!"

The whole point was that you didn't want someone's sales pitch about how great the car was.

You just wanted the facts.

That's exactly how I encourage my clients to approach looking at their own behavior.

Show me the facts. Not the story you've created about what those facts mean about you.

Let's say you've been keeping a food journal, and you see that you ate pizza three times last week.

That's a fact.

But your brain might turn that into:

"Ugh. I eat terribly."

Now you've stopped talking about what you ate.

Instead, you're talking about a judgment you've made about yourself and your behavior.

For many women, that judgment feels like a fact.

It can also feel like an honest assessment of their current situation.

And even a helpful thing to say to themselves to motivate a change in behavior.

But most of the time, those kinds of judgments shut down one of the most important tools we have for changing our behavior: CURIOSITY.

Telling yourself "I eat terribly" because you ate pizza three times last week doesn't help you figure out WHY that happened.

Maybe you've been feeling lonely or overwhelmed, and pizza has become a way to comfort yourself.

Maybe you didn't get to the grocery store, so ordering pizza was the easiest option.

Maybe you planned elaborate dinners that sounded great on Sunday but felt impossible to make after a long day at work.

Or maybe you had a bunch of social plans that happened to involve pizza.

Those are very different situations.

And they might call for very different solutions.

But if you stop at "I eat terribly," you never get to find out what's actually going on.

You've replaced fact-gathering with storytelling.

And curiosity with criticism.

And while criticism can feel like a way to hold yourself accountable, it's often a way of avoiding the much harder work of honestly examining what's going on.

Because just like looking at a Carfax report might reveal a history of multiple crashes that make you think twice about buying a car, looking honestly at your own behavior won't always make you feel comfortable or proud.

Maybe you have to acknowledge that you've been using food to cope with emotions you don't want to deal with.

Maybe you have to admit that the expectations you've set for yourself aren't realistic right now.

Or maybe you have to recognize that a behavior you've been justifying isn't helping you move toward the life you want.

That honesty is what helps you find solutions.

Because once you understand what's driving your behavior, you can actually do something about it.

If you're ordering pizza because you're too tired to cook the elaborate dinners you've planned, you can start planning simpler meals.

If you're using food to cope with loneliness, you can start exploring other ways to meet that emotional need.

But if all you've concluded is "I eat terribly," what exactly are you supposed to do with that information?

Just...eat better?

Gee, why didn't you think of that before? 🙃

Criticism gives you something to feel bad about, but curiosity gives you something to work with.

And that's why I encourage my clients to approach their behavior like they're reviewing a Carfax report.

Not to find evidence of what's wrong.

But to understand what's actually happening so they can make informed decisions about what to do next.

So the next time you catch yourself making a judgment about your behavior, ask yourself:

"What are the facts, and what story am I adding to them?"

Then see what happens when you replace that judgment with a little curiosity.

Because you can't change what you can't see.

And criticism has a way of keeping you from seeing the whole picture.

P.S. If you want 2027 to be different from the years before it, you need more than another plan telling you what to do. You need to understand what's been getting in your way.

Learning to look at your behavior with curiosity instead of criticism, and using what you discover to make meaningful changes, is a big part of what we work on in coaching.

I'm currently welcoming new 1:1 coaching clients, and there's still plenty of time to start doing that work before the new year.

Book a free call here to learn how we can work together to make 2027 a year of real, lasting change.