Do this to close all your doors of progress

The year was 2020. I hit a low point in my career.

My side hustle of import and export got shut down and in tandem,

I lost my job.

Recovery was a distant dream.

But in the year 2021, I made a comeback and found my passion in my life.

Again.

What did I do? What happened? And what made it possible for me?

The answers to all this will be in today's edition of Good Luck and Good Growth.

The Year 2020:

The year 2020 wasn't the best for anyone (to the best of my knowledge).

I found myself at a low point in my career.

My personal passion project didn't go as planned.

There were mistakes.

Some small, others glaring.

And to top it all off,

the job that was sustaining my dreams, decided that it did not need me anymore.

It felt as if each mistake was a direct reflection of my worth.

Instead of addressing these missteps constructively,

I started tearing myself down.

Every day, I replayed those mistakes in my head.

How could I have missed that?

Why wasn’t I better prepared?

What’s wrong with me?

The harsh words and self-blame became constant companions.

They whispered that I wasn’t good enough.

At first, I thought this self-criticism would motivate me to improve.

But the opposite happened.

I became paralyzed by fear.

Afraid to try.

Afraid to risk.

and ultimately,

Afraid to move forward.

Instead of learning from my mistakes, I became trapped by them.

I had locked myself in a cycle of self-condemnation

and threw the key away.

With each passing week, my performance declined.

I hesitated before every decision.

Second-guessed my instincts.

And as a result, avoided taking on new challenges.

My confidence eroded to the point where even small tasks felt monumental.

I had closed off all possibilities for growth, afraid of making the same mistakes again.

This self-doubt became like a heavy weight and dragged me

further down with each attempt to climb back up.

I remember one day vividly.

A friend who knew me well noticed my struggles.

He asked,

"Why are you so harsh on yourself?

What would you say to a friend going through the same thing?"

His words stopped me in my tracks.

I’d never realized how much damage I was causing by refusing to forgive myself.

It was as if, by condemning myself, I had closed every door to growth and progress.

Darkness doesn't come into our lives. It is only the absence of light that creates darkness.

That conversation was a wake-up call.

I realized that self-condemnation wasn’t helping me to improve.

It was holding me back from becoming who I wanted to be.

Slowly, I started replacing self-criticism with self-compassion.

Instead of berating myself for past mistakes,

I started treating them as learning opportunities.

Instead of questioning my worth, I focused on rebuilding my confidence, step by step.

This process wasn’t easy, and it didn’t happen overnight.

But as I let go of self-condemnation, I felt lighter.

I began to take small steps forward, to try new things again, and to accept that mistakes were simply part of the journey.

I started writing blogs and articles to let people know what I think.

By 2021, a company called Prepladder saw one of those articles and decided to give me a chance as a subject matter expert.

What happened after that is history.

The Moral:

Through this experience, I learned that self-condemnation closes every door to growth.

When we trap ourselves in a cycle of harsh criticism,

we rob ourselves of the opportunity

to learn

to grow, and

to become better.

Never forget:

Self-condemnation keeps us stuck. And, self-compassion opens new paths.

Failure is not final, and mistakes don’t define you.

True progress begins when you stop being your harshest critic and

start being your own guide.

Until next time, this is Manikk Gupta , advising you to keep moving forward, and wishing you good luck and good growth.

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