Brené Brown's No. 1 tip for learning from your mistakes

You miss a deadline, forget an important birthday, say the wrong thing in a meeting: all these can induce a cycle of severe self-criticism, also known as negative self-talk.

You might think being hard on yourself after a professional or personal faux pas will help you to not make that same mistake in the future. Oftentimes this isn't the case, though, says Judy Ho, a neuropsychologist and professor at Pepperdine University.

"We beat ourselves up in our head thinking, 'Oh, this is going to motivate me,' but, actually, we just end up fulfilling a self-fulfilling prophecy," Ho says.

This pattern can undermine your goals, as opposed to motivating you to complete them.

New York Times bestselling author and a professor at The University of Houston, Brené Brown echoes the sentiment that being excessive self-scrutiny doesn't make you stronger.

"The core of mental toughness is actually self-compassion," Brown said on her podcast "Unlocking Us" in 2022. "People who are mentally tough stay mentally tough because they don't slip easily into shame or self-criticism or self-loathing." 

The science backs this up: When you feel like you're not performing at your best, self-criticism makes you more emotional and unable to learn from your mistakes, according to research from Stanford University's Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education.

Self-compassion, though, makes you more resilient.

To curb some of your more unproductive thoughts, Ho recommends giving yourself some slack. She offers up three ways to practice more self-compassion after a misstep:

1. Question your thoughts: Ask yourself what evidence supports your internal negativity, and what evidence contradicts it. Write down your findings in two columns and compare them. Oftentimes, Ho says, there is more evidence that speaks against rather than to your criticism.
2. Use the "Yes...and..." approach: Acknowledge what you wish had gone differently today and what you did well. Maybe your presentation to your boss didn't go as well as you'd hoped, but you did hit the your deadline on another important project. Instead of just focusing on the former, you can say to yourself: "Yes, I wish my pitch had gone better, but I did manage my time well this week."
3. Label your feelings as a "thought:" Remind yourself that not all the stories we tell ourselves are true. "It changes the relation to the thought because you're basically saying, 'I'm just having the thought and it doesn't have to be true,'" Ho says.

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