The virtue of self-criticism.

By Shiftrox_ | True Reflection | 4 Mar 2026

I always say that people have strengths and weaknesses and that we are all subject to showing one side or the other to those around us. You can be remembered for the positive side of your attitudes, as well as the negative side of them. It all depends on how you want people to see you and remember you.

Now, on a more positive note, what would be the best virtue a person could have? It's a very personal choice, we all know, but if I could choose one in particular, I'd stick with self-criticism, which for me is that individual who manages to realize that they've made a mistake in something and isn't afraid or proud to say so, always seeking improve and correct this mistake or quirks to become someone better.

I faithfully believe that people who have self-criticism should be evaluated in a different way, after all, knowing how to look at their own mistakes and decide to correct them is not the kind of thing that everyone does, how many times do we ask a person to change for the better in certain moment? Or in a certain addiction, or mania? And how many times has this actually occurred? It's not always is it?

Human beings have a defect called pride that tends to get in the way of everything, because this feeling (which in my opinion is very negative) often prevents us from recognizing our own mistakes and with that we lose many important things, such as evolving our mind individually, friendships, loves, families, jobs, among many other things, just for not having the self-criticism to evaluate yourself and find the point where you really went wrong.

Experiencing this at #Hive, I believe that I greatly improved my sense of self-criticism, because here I truly learned the meaning of living in a community, with many people thinking differently from me, it is normal at times to have disagreements and thus, to write words that can hurt one person. So, I usually evaluate my behavior and think: where did I go wrong? What did I do that didn't go well? How can I resolve this?

If I were an extremely proud person or without humility, I could just let the bad moment happen and then act as if nothing had happened, forcing an air of superiority, that even if I was wrong or treating people badly, why should I apologize? Why should I reiterate what I said even though I know I'm wrong? These points are some that go into the self-assessment, and you agree with yourself that you passed the point at some point and that you need to correct and improve it.

Now, why do I consider self-criticism so important?

As a personal example, I remember a time when I got to argue with a friend, if I'm not mistaken, it was when I was a teenager, it's been a long time, so I don't remember the details well, but I can remember perfectly that each one of us he fervently defended his point of view and that created a very tense atmosphere between us.

After a few days, he came to me and apologized, so I took a deep breath and also apologized, but it didn't stop there. In that moment of peace, he was the one who introduced me to this subject of self-criticism, until then I had never thought about that word and its meaning.

It was something so cool and spontaneous at that moment, that I carry with me for more than years this teaching he passed on to me. When we talked, we managed to explain our points of view once again, but calmly and politely, showing the positive and negative sides of our ideas. Now, after we were able to self-evaluate where we went wrong in expressing ourselves, it became even easier to understand his point of view and mine.

Since then, I was marked by this ideology and I learned that self-criticism in your attitudes can be the basis for you to improve as a person, either individually or collectively, which is why I defend this thesis that you often need to look inside yourself and just evaluate, meditate on what you did or didn't do and simply go there and correct it.

This action of scanning yourself was what enchanted me the most since the day I learned about it and thus, it became the greatest of virtues for me, after all, that way we can be better today than we were yesterday!

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