Stop trying to shame yourself into success
Photo by Man Chung on Unsplash
When was the last time you celebrated yourself after a failure?
Or gave yourself a pat on the back when you didn’t achieve your goal?
I know it sounds counterintuitive…doesn’t rewarding failure only encourage more failure?
Maybe you’ve set a goal to go to the gym 3 days a week, but only made it once.
Or you promised yourself you wouldn’t eat that cupcake during the office party, only to find yourself holding the empty wrapper without remembering having picked it up in the first place.
Once we’ve determined we “failed” everything else is downhill…we mentally beat ourselves up with our familiar, negative thought loops:
“I knew this wouldn’t work”
“I’ll never lose the weight”
“I can’t do this”
“Why do I even try”
“I’ll never be good enough”
Those thoughts leave us feeling dejected.
When we feel dejected we start to avoid and procrastinate. We double up on overconsumption because, why not? We’ve already screwed up, we might as well go all in.
The result is our efforts DO fail, just like we knew they would, and we end up building more evidence for all of the negative thoughts we were thinking in the first place.
We will never get a positive result from a negative thought.
Some of us might be able to shame ourselves into a few small successes, but I can promise you the journey won’t be enjoyable, which means it won’t be sustainable.
Mentally beating ourselves up keeps us stuck in the same negative thought loop–behavior that got us to where we are right now, with the unwanted results of overeating, over-drinking, or overconsuming.
We cannot shame ourselves into success.
In order to achieve the results we want, we need to become the person who can achieve those results.
In order to become that person who achieves those results we need to change our current (negative) thought patterns. We have to manage our minds to become the person who achieves those results.
–No more beating yourself up.
–No more focusing on past failures to determine your future result.
Who you were in the past does not dictate who you are capable of becoming.
Is your goal to lose weight? Eat better? Get healthy? Then figure out what steps a successful person would do to reach that goal, and do them.
Make sure to include a plan for what will happen on the days you ‘fail’ to execute those steps.
If getting up at 5 am every day to go to the gym isn’t realistic, then try 3 days at 6 am. Or set a goal to start walking every Saturday morning. Be creative, what would be a winning formula to help you get closer to your goal? Figure out those steps then plug them into that formula.
Think of it as math, not drama.
Then, celebrate your wins, no matter how small. Give yourself love and grace on the days you fall short because at least you’re trying. Then get up and get after it again the next day, because that’s what a successful person would do.
Think of the steps in your formula as non-negotiable. You need to commit to showing up, not just for your current self, but your future self. The future you who has already achieved that goal already exists, and she is waiting for you at the finish line.
The only true failure is quitting. Everything else is just a learning curve.
Celebrate yourself for trying, for committing to your future self, and know that you’re one step closer to becoming the future you that achieves your goal.
Manage your mind, to manage your results.
Discover What’s Possible
