Why we answer "well done" with "oh, I just got lucky": a psychologist explains when modesty becomes unfair to yourself

Someone tells you "you did a great job on this", and you immediately pull out a list: "Oh, I had help", "It was luck", "It was nothing special". It sounds like modesty. Psychologist María Jesús Andrés of the Psicomaster centre says it's often something else - a habit of judging ourselves more harshly than we'd judge anyone else.

According to her, many people learned that a job well done is the minimum expected, while a mistake is what gets noticed. So successes barely count. There's also the fear of looking arrogant or provoking envy. Perfectionism does the rest: as soon as the goal is reached, attention goes straight to what's still missing, instead of to what has been achieved.

Andrés draws a clear line between healthy self-esteem and a sense of superiority. Healthy self-esteem lets you say "I did this well" without anyone else having to be worse. You can be pleased with your work and still admire someone who does it better. You can admit a mistake without thinking it devalues you completely. When your worth depends on being better than others, other people's success starts to look like a threat.

Three signs you're underrating what you've achieved: you always put success down to luck or other people's help, while taking all the blame for failure; you reject compliments almost automatically or immediately list what went wrong; you're happy about a friend's success, but consider a similar result of your own a trifle. Andrés says this double standard shows your judgement is harsher than you think. If every achievement comes with a new condition before you allow yourself any satisfaction, it's worth asking - when, exactly, will you allow it?

What to do? First, describe what you did without shrinking it: you prepared well for the meeting, you finished the hard task, you had the conversation you'd been putting off for ages. Acknowledging it doesn't mean posting it on every network. When someone praises you, "thank you" is enough, without rushing to correct them. You can acknowledge the help you got and, in one sentence, your own contribution. And if sharing good news makes you uncomfortable, that doesn't mean you're doing something wrong - maybe you're just not used to it.

The last step is the inner voice. "That conversation went badly" and "I'm a disaster and I always ruin everything" are two very different sentences: the second turns one episode into a verdict on the whole person. Andrés advises catching that leap and going back to the facts - what happened, what was up to you and what you can do differently next time. Speaking more gently to yourself doesn't mean convincing yourself that everything you do is great, but correcting yourself without insulting yourself.

How many times have you heard "don't brag, or you'll jinx it"? But telling yourself "I did this well" isn't bragging. It's just an accurate assessment.