I ran down to the bank yesterday afternoon in drenching rain while at work and left my wallet apparently at the bank. On my walk to the parking garage, I realized I didn't have my wallet. I walked back to my office and searched frantically but couldn't find it. I called the bank and the lady who helped me earlier said there was no wallet there.

Thinking, I had lost it while I ran back to my office, I was in total despair. I called my credit card company and bank to cancel all my cards. I drove home without my driver's license feeling miserable. But my wife cheered me up as I was down on myself. Around 7PM, one of my colleagues called me and told me that the bank had called to say that they have my wallet. I was so relieved.

My wife told me I should learn from this experience and be more tolerant of other people's mistake as I tend to be very hard on myself most of the times. I didn't think I was hard on others but what do you all think about this notion that when we are hard on ourselves, we tend to be hard on others as well.

 

First of all thank goodness you got your wallet (and license, ID's, etc) back.
As to your question: Yes, I think that oftentimes people expect the same standard of others as of themselves, and this can be frustrating. With age, experience and maturity however, people should realize that:
1) We are all human and can make mistakes sometimes.
2) People have different priorities, expectations and ideals. What may be critically important to you, may be completely unimportant, or even plain stupid, to another person.
Recently, I learned a good lesson about this from my daughter, now 18 years old. She has never been into athletics, where I have been pretty heavily involved all my life, and came down to a bitter argument about how unfair I had been to her for "pushing her" to be always fit, never overweight, to a point where she had gotten a bit of anorexia, (told me months after the fact). I had been so hard on her that she was afraid of getting fat, because of me!
Needless to say she was right, I was wrong. I felt horrible for quite some time, and realized, more than ever, # 1 and 2 above. I apologized to her and we are closer than before because of it.
So there you have it. It's probably hard not to expect the same from others as from yourself, but I think it's important to be flexible and look at things from different perspectives.
In other words: Yeah, your wife is right...again

 

I think the same way as your wife, about my husband. He has little tolerance for others mistakes. I once reminded him of a doozy of a screw up he made, when I got sick of his hollier-than-thou attitude he was showing towards others' mistakes.

I tolerate others' mistakes more than I do my own though.

Earlier in the week, I was in the post office and there was a pile of trash mail sitting on the table where we all look at our mail, before we take it home. I thought someone had walked off and left their trash mail, so I scooped it up and threw it in the trash can. A couple seconds later, as I was going through my mail, a man said, "I wasn't done with that yet". I felt like such as ass. He had walked in to the service desk, to give back mail that was put in his box by mistake, and left his mail there. I apologized a couple times, and explained it looked like junk mail left behind, but I still felt bad. Times like that though remind me there are always two sides to a story.

But, I agree, that when we are hard on ourselves, we tend to be hard on others as well.