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I’m reading a good book all about willpower called The Willpower Instinct.
It’s a great book and has loads of info in it but it takes a little deciphering!
Today I was reading the chapter called ‘What the Hell:How feeling bad leads us to giving in’
It talks about our brains reward system. How when we are feeling down or stressed we turn to reward to make ourselves feel better.
We use things like;
- eating
- drinking
- shopping
- TV
- Surfing the web.
But it’s not the ‘thing’ that makes us feel better it is the thought of the reward.
The thing that we chose to reward ourselves with can turn against us.
A study found that women who ate chocolate as a form of stress relief inevitably felt worse as they added the feeling of guilt to the mix.
And we repeat it over and over again!
It turns out that feelings of guilt and self-criticism actually make us more likely to be unable to resist temptation.
So when we beat ourselves up (self bully) for eating a certain food or missing a gym session etc. we actually make it more likely that we will continue the cycle.
‘giving in’ makes us feel bad about ourselves which makes you want to make yourself feel better. How do we do that? Usually by doing the thing that made us feel bad in the first place. Sounds crazy but we all do it!
If guilt doesn’t make us stop the self sabotaging behaviour why do we keep trying to use it?
If beating ourselves up was an effective way to help us lose weight, eat healthier, exercise more, relax more etc then I wouldnt be writing this as we would all be doing it! 🙂
The answer is self -forgiveness!!
It’s the thing many of us do not practice…..being KIND to yourself!
How?
Talk to women about self-compassion and self-forgiveness and you’d think I was asking them to sell their children!
Why do we find it so hard?
Why do we keep beating ourselves up with guilt, feeling less than and name calling?
In an experiment to see if guilt sabotages self-control and if the opposite of guilt could support self-control a group of women were fed doughnuts. (all in the name of research :-))
The group of weight-watching women were told the two tests were on food and mood and a sweets taste test. They all had to eat a whole doughnut within four minutes and had to drink a whole glass of water to make sure they felt uncomfortably full. The women then completed a survey on how they felt.
Before the sweets taste test half of the women received a special message from the researchers to help relieve their guilt. They were encouraged by the researchers not to be too hard on themselves and that it’s only human to indulge once in a while. The other half of the women got no such message.
All the women then received three large bowls of three types of sweets chosen to appeal to all kinds of sweet tooth. The women were asked to sample each sweet and rate it and were invited to eat as much of it as they liked. If the women still felt guilty about eating the doughnut they should ask themselves “I already fell of the diet, so what does it matter if I eat as many sweets as I like?”
After the test, the bowls of sweets were weighed to find out how much had been eaten.
The self-forgiveness was a clear success: The women who had received the self-forgiveness message at only 28g of sweets, compared to nearly 70g by the women who were encouraged not to forgive themselves.
Most of us think that the message “don’t be so hard on yourself everyone indulges sometimes” will give us permission to eat more. But it seems that getting rid of the guilt kept these women from overindulging.
So do you still think guilt motivates you? Do you still think you need to be harder on yourself? That you’re not critical enough?
If so then it’s not your fault 🙂 We leant about control and punishment from a young age from our parents. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing as we don’t develop our self-control until early adulthood. It’s just we tend to use that same approach on ourselves as adults.
‘But what will keep us in check?’ I hear you say…
‘If I don’t criticise myself how will i stop myself doing it again?’
Can I persuade you to think in a different way? Surely it’s worth trying a new approach to willpower and self-control?
Ask yourself this “How is being self-critical working for me? Is self-bullying getting me the results I want?”
Honestly, is it?
Before I share how to start practising self compassion and self forgiveness here’s a wee story……
A friend came over to see me last night in tears.
She’d just been to the gym, she couldn’t do one of the exercises and she burst into tears.
It wasn’t the gym or the exercise she couldn’t do.
It was the ‘straw that broke the camels back’
She was exhausted, she had been doing too much, not giving herself a break.
She’s getting married next month and is panicking so is exercising like crazy and dieting.
She’s rushing from dress fittings, hen weekends, engagement photo shoots, working, looking after the kids……
It could only end in tears. Her body and mind had had enough. The tears were her body’s way of getting her to take notice.
We’ve all been there right?
The thing is she see’s herself as a failure because she couldn’t cope with all the stress.
And the self-bullying started. The feelings of worthlessness, failure and being ‘less than’.
What would you have said to my friend? What advice would you have given?
Take some time off? Chill out? Don’t be so hard on yourself? It’s ok not to feel ok?
Do you give yourself the same advice?
So the theme this week has been about self-compassion and self-forgiveness. It’s about being your own best friend.
If you have spent years being hard on yourself then it is going to feel uncomfortable and a little weird at first.
Start by noticing the language you use on yourself. Where do you feel it in your body? What are the emotions?
Just start to notice.
Ask yourself how would you feel if you didn’t think those thoughts?
You see it’s not the thing that you are beating yourself up over its the thought about the thing.
What would happen if you let those thoughts go? It would be freeing 🙂
You are only human and we all struggle with life sometimes…..and that’s ok 🙂
You don’t have to be super woman today, let someone else do it!
Why not join me in my experiment? I am practising self-compassion and self-forgiveness wholeheartedly for two weeks.
What have you got to lose? Nothing me thinks! You have everything to gain 🙂
1. Notice your thoughts, feelings and how you talk to yourself.
2. Treat yourself like you are your own best friend (Go Team {sut-first_name:})
3. Give yourself a hug (not as crazy as you think…are you doing it right now?…go on it feels good)
So i urge you to give yourself a break. Be kind to yourself. Be your own best friend.
