I Promise That I Will Not Make the Same Mistake Again
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It's easy to get frustrated and self-critical when you echo mistakes. You might think you're the only one who does this, but you're not. Each person's specific patterns might differ, but nosotros tin all relate to the general concept. The tips in this post utilize to a wide range of these types of recurrent mistakes, including:
- Overeating
- Ignoring your instinct to say no or speak upwardly (and and so regretting it)
- Prioritizing the wrong things
- Buying things y'all don't need, because they're on sale
- Getting irritated with your kids, considering you lot're stressed out nigh piece of work
Notation: To place your self-sabotaging habits, bank check out this list of xxx types. Once you know what you want to work on, consider these points.
one. Vowing to never make a detail mistake again is the wrong arroyo.
Afterward yous stuff yourself at Thanksgiving, you say "I'm not going to practice that again. I feel terrible. Information technology wasn't worth it." However, next year rolls around, and when y'all starting time observe y'all're overeating again, you lot completely surrender and go back for two more than slices of pie. Audio familiar?
Paradoxically, to change recurrent patterns, information technology'due south often best to presume y'all will make the aforementioned error once again. When you do this, you lot can change your focus to developing applied strategies that will help you make less severe mistakes, less often. This tends to be a more successful approach overall.
2. Develop strategies for prevention.
Lets say you lot know yous stop upwardly overeating when you've become overly hungry. What strategies do you lot need to put in place to prevent becoming so ravenous you lot scarf four bread rolls that are hanging effectually in your break room at work?
Let's take a deep dive into how you might solve this problem. Mayhap yous know you should terminate for luncheon at 1 p.m., but yous often end up not stopping until one:30 or even 2 p.thou. Y'all recognize that if yous start new activities in the thirty minutes earlier you plan to take your lunch, it increases the chances yous'll go distracted and not go to tiffin on time. Therefore, you need to plan activities for the 12:30-1 p.grand. menses each twenty-four hour period that won't run over fourth dimension and cause the problem of going to lunch late. If yous have some control over your schedule, what would be the types of work that would be predictable, not prone to running over fourth dimension, and well-suited to your energy levels at that time of the day?
Hopefully you can come across from this example how personalized your strategies need to be. Y'all need to have a problem-solving approach that'due south tailored to your exact circumstances, ane that'southward actually doable rather than aspirational. Your strategies should experience like a reflection of yourself and be things y'all'll want to practise, rather than seeming unappealing.
three. Put bated fourth dimension and mental energy.
I know the example strategy I've given in a higher place seems simple, just this is deceptive. Improving your patterns doesn't just happen. Success requires all of the following: thinking about what strategies yous could use, making a decision about what to try, implementing your ideas, and, oftentimes, troubleshooting aspects of your strategies that aren't working.
All of that requires mental free energy. Information technology isn't the type of thing you'll just practice while y'all're on the run at work, or you'll squeeze into your twenty-four hour period at 10 p.g. when yous're tired, tapped out, and you lot'd normally exist clicking around the internet.
The reality of life is that we don't always accept the fourth dimension or mental space available to mindfully accost cocky-sabotaging habits. That's normal, just until you take that free energy available, you probably won't practice annihilation to plow around your patterns. What times during your mean solar day/week do you take plenty cognitive energy available for cocky-strategizing?
four. Develop strategies for harm minimization.
Even the best prevention strategies are likely to fail at least occasionally. Therefore, you demand a plan for what's known as harm minimization. This is the same principle that's backside the idea that it'south better for drug addicts to apply clean needles than muddied ones.
Let's think back to the trouble of binging when overly hungry. Perhaps your strategy for when this happens might exist to commencement your luncheon by eating some fruit, salad, or something else where it's difficult to quickly stuff yourself with a large amount of calories.
Harm minimization is most having a safety cyberspace, and who wouldn't want to adjust that for themselves?
Consider making backup plans for when you lot've forgotten something. For example, I keep $20 in the glove compartment of my automobile in case I forget my purse or become defenseless out by a shop that's "greenbacks only."
5. Empathise your "Seemingly Irrelevant Decisions."
A concept I cover in my volume, The Healthy Mind Toolkit, is what's known as "Seemingly Irrelevant Decisions." I'll requite a quick overview of this concept here. Seemingly Irrelevant Decisions are decisions that set you down the path towards a self-regulation failure, even though the decisions seem relatively innocuous. For example, you're currently cutting back on overeating. You lot program to host a political party, and although you lot don't intend to overindulge at your outcome, you realistically know from past experience that whenever y'all host a gathering, it e'er results in overeating leftover food. Or you sign your child upward for a course that's across boondocks on the busiest day of your workweek, knowing that if you take to battle traffic at the end of a long day, you're likely to be very cranky and irritable. If you make a Seemingly Irrelevant Decision and then later realize it was self-sabotaging, you demand to be prepared to walk back that decision or put additional practical strategies in place. Don't call back you can just rely on your willpower to not repeat mistakes.
Summing Up
If y'all focus on completely eliminating all mistakes from your life, this will feel incredibly overwhelming. If you instead aim to improve, in that location are lots of practical solutions you lot tin can try, and you'll probable feel much more success. Addressing your patterns can fifty-fifty exist enjoyable if you have a non-judgmental, trouble-solving approach.
Annotation that I intend this post to use to ordinary mistakes, and not things like committing crimes!
Source: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/in-practice/201809/5-tips-how-stop-repeating-the-same-mistakes