Meaning & use
re-evaluate yourself
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Meanings
phraseidiom
To think carefully again about your own abilities, goals, or behavior and decide whether they need to change.
Grammar: Reflexive phrase; the subject and the object are the same person. You can also say 're-evaluate myself', 're-evaluate himself', etc.
Patterns
- re-evaluate yourself after something
- re-evaluate yourself in light of something
- re-evaluate yourself as something
After losing the competition, she took a break to re-evaluate herself and her training routine.
Managers often ask employees to re-evaluate themselves during annual reviews.
If you feel stuck in your career, it might be time to re-evaluate yourself honestly.
phraseidiom
To reconsider your opinion of your own worth or identity, often in a new situation.
Grammar: Used when someone's sense of self is changing; often followed by 'as' or 'in terms of'.
Patterns
- re-evaluate yourself as something
- re-evaluate yourself in terms of something
Moving to a new country forced him to re-evaluate himself as a father and a worker.
Therapy helped her re-evaluate herself in terms of what she really valued.
Common combinations
- take time to re-evaluate yourself
- He decided to take time to re-evaluate himself before making any big decisions.
- re-evaluate yourself honestly
- You need to re-evaluate yourself honestly if you want to improve.
- re-evaluate yourself in light of
- She re-evaluated herself in light of the feedback she received.
- re-evaluate yourself as a person
- Travel can make you re-evaluate yourself as a person.
Synonyms and how they differ
- reassess yourself
- Very close in meaning, but often more formal and used in professional or academic contexts.
- take stock of yourself
- More idiomatic and focuses on reviewing your situation rather than changing your opinion of yourself.
Word family
- re-evaluation noun
- The act of thinking again about something to decide if it should change.
- re-evaluate verb
- To think again about something in order to judge it afresh.
Commonly confused: re-evaluate yourself or re-evaluate?
re-evaluate yourself vs re-evaluate
Without 'yourself', it means judging something else again, not your own self. Compare: 're-evaluate the plan' vs. 're-evaluate yourself'.
Practice
After the project failed, the team leader asked everyone to ______.
Choose one answer.
The subject is 'everyone' (plural in meaning) and the action reflects back on the team members, so 'themselves' is correct. 'Yourself' would only fit if the speaker were addressing one person directly.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “re-evaluate yourself”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.