The Reverse Golden Rule
Never treat yourself in ways you'd refuse to treat other people
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~ongoing to results
- Steps
- 4
- Confidence
- 82%
The Reverse Golden Rule, drawn from philosopher Iddo Landau, flips the classic maxim: rather than treating others as you'd want to be treated, refuse to treat yourself in ways you would never treat others. Burkeman offers it as a palatable form of self-compassion for people who recoil at the phrase. The mechanism is a comparison test: when your inner critic activates, measure its tone against how you speak to friends. Most people would consider anyone who ranted at a stranger the way they rant at themselves to be damaged. Because you already carry a workable ethic of decency toward friends, the fix is not to manufacture special self-love but simply to stop excluding yourself from that basic standard, especially when appraising a day's output or a difficult interaction that didn't go perfectly.
Origin
Burkeman credits philosopher Iddo Landau for the reverse formulation, and opens the book chapter with an Adam Phillips observation that the berating inner voice would read as damaged if you met it socially.
Core principles
- 01The standard you already hold for treating friends is the floor for treating yourself
- 02An inner critic you'd find damaged in a stranger deserves no more credibility inside your head
- 03Self-compassion doesn't require treating yourself as uniquely special, only as decently as anyone else
- 04You have a more intimate relationship with yourself than with any other person, so the double standard compounds daily
How to run it
- 1
Catch the critic in the act
Notice the inner voice that shouts at you to do more, work harder, or that tears apart the results of what you did.
Pro tip Adam Phillips' party test helps: imagine meeting this voice as a person socially.
- 2
Run the friend comparison
Ask whether you would ever address a friend, verbally or implicitly, the way you are addressing yourself right now.
Watch out Don't overshoot into treating yourself as uniquely wonderful and requiring the world's stroking; that is a different, unhelpful move.
- 3
Apply your existing ethic
You already believe it's good to be a decent friend. Extend that same basic decency to yourself rather than randomly excluding yourself from it.
- 4
Recalibrate your self-appraisal
When judging how much you achieved, the quality of your work, or whether you handled an interpersonal situation well, raise your treatment of yourself up to the level you already grant everyone else.
Pro tip Aim for equanimity and rationality about your own actions, not automatic negativity.
In the wild
Burkeman describes the voice in your head that berates you half the time, shouting at you to do more or tearing apart your results. If you met that person socially and they walked up and started ranting at someone the way your inner critic rants at you, you'd immediately conclude they were the damaged one. Yet we accept exactly that treatment from ourselves and would never dream of addressing a friend that way, which exposes the double standard the rule is designed to correct.
→ Reframing the inner critic as a person you'd reject makes its criticism easier to discount and self-decency easier to justify.
Common mistakes
Turning it into special self-worship
The rule is not about treating yourself as uniquely wonderful requiring endless care and stroking; it's the plainer move of not excluding yourself from ordinary decency.
Expecting the critic to vanish
Believing you can permanently silence the inner critic is itself perfectionistic; the practice is ongoing recalibration, not a one-time cure.
Is it for you?
Best for
Insecure overachievers whose default inner voice is relentless self-criticism.
Not ideal for
People who already err toward self-indulgence or externalising responsibility.
From the transcript
“you should uh not treat yourself in ways that you wouldn't treat other people”
“bring the way you treat yourself up to the level that you already treat other people”
“if you met that person so socially like you would just think they were damaged”
From the episode
8 Unexpected Lessons To Be Less Hard On Yourself - Oliver Burkeman - #840
Oliver Burkeman