How to Stop Punishing Yourself After a Mistake
Reflecting on what went wrong is healthy. Punishing yourself for it isn't.
Stop rewinding the tape.
You know how when something doesn't go the way you wanted it and it sits heavy on your chest. All you can think about is what happened, who said what, the moment where you had to make a choice about your next step and how in hindsight maybe that wasn't the next best step.
Not only are you replaying what happened but your mind is punching you left and right with every review.
Why did I do that?
[Person] isn't going to trust me anymore after this.
I can't believe that happened.
What is [this person] going to think of me?
Do I deserve to even do this [opportunity] anymore?
How could I be so stupid?
It's a mental dogpile on yourself and what's worse, doing this act of mental self-flogging yourself with shame doesn't help you stop feeling like a failure. But what can help you is a simple approach called positive reappraisal where yes you do reflect on the situation but from a growth mindset lens.
Positive reappraisal is a way of reflecting that has a focus of intentionally thinking about how you can improve and making sure that you don't take the experience as a personal failure that defines you. It's a way that doesn't allow anxiety and fear to overtake your thinking. And best of all one of the benefits of this practice is that it helps you have a sense of control of the situation.
Sure you may not have been able to control the outcomes. But just by using your free will to acknowledge what happen objectively, interpret the impact of it, and making a decision of how you will limit or continue the factors that you can control will change your whole viewpoint of what happened to you. We need this for our own healing. It's one of the best things you can do to ensure that situations don't define you. You'll feel more empowered and balanced to build that resilience skill.
What I like about positive reappraisal is that it's a great way to be fair to yourself. Let's acknowledge the bad that came out of this but let's also acknowledge the good. Let's be happy about even the smallest of wins and how we can continue those wins. Let's recognize that a certain aspect was temporary in this challenging situation and not allow it to ruminate in our mind. Let's make a conscious decision of what you would do the next time you have this opportunity.
And this is where it shifts from something that happened to you to something that you actively choose to see it as. You have control over deciding if you're going to make it your reality or not.
Now I'm not saying you should ignore any negative emotions that sprout up because of what happened. That you should instantly be a ray of sunshine! That's very unrealistic because of course you may not feel any happiness after a mistake, and that's ok! But what I am saying is that you shouldn't give it the mic in your mind.
You can recognize that something hurt or that it let you down or even embarrassed you. But true resilience makes a choice to say yes that wasn't a proud moment of mine but at least I've identified a plan of what I would do for next time and I'm not going to repeat negative commentary of the memory of the situation in my mind over and over again.
So give the mic in your mind to the part of you that's thinking about the lessons learned and the admiration of yourself for pushing through a disappointment and encouraging yourself to keep going. Shame and fear will only handcuff you from feeling like you can do it again.
Now sometimes that last thing we want to think about is doing something again after not having the best experience the first time. It's a very easy temptation to fall into to mess up once and avoid it for the rest of your life. But that's also being really harsh on yourself. There isn't one skill out there that you should be able to do flawlessly on the first try. So why do you feel that way about anything else?
Don't limit yourself. Don't condemn yourself to never trying again. Be intentional in how you reflect on past situations so that you have the freedom to show up in the way you want to be in the future. Yes bad experiences happen, but that doesn't mean that you're not equipped to do the task or the role. It means you're human. So really it comes down to…are you ok with being human?
Pause and sit with that. Humans makes mistakes and don't do things perfectly every time. So are you okay with the fact that you are human and that this is a characteristic of ALL human beings? How realistic are your expectations of yourself? And maybe just maybe you might see that you're being harder on yourself that you should be.
So let's stop rewinding the tape. If you'd like some help with applying this, there's a free guide that you're welcome to download to walk you through some questions that you can use to do so. You will answer questions that will help you identify your emotions, what's within your control, any lessons that you want to remember and how to combat negative thinking if it comes up again. If you'd like some company in walking through the guide, let me know in the comments. I'd be happy to go live on youtube and walkthrough it with you. As someone who has been there, I can OVERstand that it can feel heavy. But I have confidence that you can learn this skill so give it a shot, and tell me what you think.
I want you to ground yourself on this final thought. You are human. An ever evolving one. Protect and love yourself by being intentional of how you allow yourself to interpret what happens to you in your life. Be gentle with yourself as you learn and grow. In a cruel world like the one that we live in today, why can't you be the one person that will consistently be kind to YOU? Love yourself enough to be that person for you.
Warmly with a cup of tea,
Rachel
Tune in to my Grace in Progress series where I discuss why I wrote this article and my experience with it.
