People have always told me I'm too hard on myself.

Then again, I've made mistakes to know I wasn't hard enough on myself.

If you're worried about causing a negative effect on someone and then you do, the solution isn't to not worry about that.

As someone who has been quite hard on myself too:

To err is to be human. If you minimize your life to minimize negative impacts on others, you are hurting yourself (and your friends and family). If you make a mistake, learn from it and try to be better. None of us are born with the skill and knowledge to do the right thing all the time, and sometimes there is no right thing, just different tradeoffs with different costs.

> If you minimize your life to minimize negative impacts on others, you are hurting yourself (and your friends and family).

Mind expanding on that?

I'm not the commenter, but I interpret it as:

The benefit that others get by you reaching your potential is greater than the risk to others of you making space for yourself to reach your potential.