I was catching up on my reading and came across this post by Seth Godin titled "Turning the habit of self-criticism upside down."  I've done enough 360 reviews to know that he's spot on when he writes:

When it's time to write a resume or talk to a boss or discuss a project glitch with colleagues, the instinct is to spin, to avoid a little responsibility, to sit quietly. Put a best face forward, don't set yourself up.

When reviewing just about anything you've done with yourself (in your head), the instinct is to be brutal, relentlessly critical and filled with doubt and self-blame.

What's equally interesting to me is how those habits are affected by the people you interact with.  For instance if you work for someone who's hypercritical you're much less likely to be self-critical because you can be sure that your hyperritical boss is going to pile on.  That's why I've never understood leaders/bosses who are hypercritical – you might get short term gains from running a tight ship, but in the long run you're going to have a team of people who work defensively and cover up small problems that will fester and grow into big problems.

I also believe that hypercritical personalities can actually inhibit the performance of those around them.  For instance I play a lot of tennis and my lifelong modus operandi is this: I can play four straight games of stellar tennis and then throw in one or two bad points and fall apart because all I can think about is what a loser I am for making that one mistake.  Pretty soon I've spent so much energy beating myself up that I've turned one or two bad points into a lost set or lost match. Over the years I've played on lots of teams and had literally dozens of doubles partners, and since I'm a head case to begin with, if you give me a partner who's going to get on me when I make mistakes then I'm going to absolutely implode.  On the other hand if you give me a doubles partner who's positive and a "shake it off" kind of player I'm much more likely to concentrate on the upcoming points and actually put together a solid match.  Heck, just the other night my partner and I won a tight match in a 3rd set tie breaker despite each of us double faulting twice in the tie breaker.  We just laughed and shrugged them off and proceeded to win.

So yes I can be a self-hating loser sometimes, but given the right atmosphere and the right team I tend to overcome my self doubts and actually produce something worth talking about.  As Godin pointed out I'm not alone in having this habit, but I feel like I'm one of the lucky people in the world because I'm surrounded on a daily basis by positive and inspiring people.  That's one of those blessings that's easy to take for granted, but never should be.