A video showing a Saudi man named Maeed punishing little children with a cane has gone viral on social media. In the video, the children were crying out loud and begging Maeed not to cane them. Certainly, the act itself was horrendous and unacceptable. Believe it or not, some people inflict punishment on themselves more severely than what Maeed did on those little children. By that, I mean excessively criticizing themselves. I know some people who act with great hostility to themselves and excessively rebuke themselves if they make mistakes. I know someone who has been criticizing himself for years because of a mistake he made a long time ago. Some people tend to hold themselves in contempt and belittle their own achievements. Why do they do that? Do they deserve such punishment? Perhaps the big question is: Do they treat themselves as infallible? Excessive self-criticism can have a destructive effect in the long run and can shake one's trust in oneself? More importantly, people who engage in these practices will influence their children negatively and make their children grow up to be like them? Psychiatrists list the numerous negative effects of self-flagellation. For example, it destroys determination and strong will and makes a person misbehave. It also kills ambition and ethics and makes a person become involved in unethical practices. There is a story of a great thinker whose name I cannot remember. He asked his servant to repeat the following words every time the servant woke him up: "Sir, wake up. You have great tasks to achieve today for all of humanity." The American gymnast Shannon Lee Miller said: "Other people may not have had high expectations for me but I had high expectations for myself." No wonder she is the American gymnast with the largest number of medals in US history.
