Feeling Your Personal Best By Alice Greene
Stopping to See Your Successes
Have you ever felt like giving up when you “blew it” and couldn’t meet your goals or the specified eat- ing or exercise guidelines?
Falling Victim to Self-Criticism What if instead of dwelling on what you did wrong or beating yourself up… you focused on what went well, assessed whether the goal was reasonable in the first place and then got back on track without making a mountain out of a mole hill. For some reason it is human nature to focus on the negatives, dismiss the positives and mercilessly beat ourselves up for bad behavior. Have you ever noticed how little impact your self-criticism has on changing your behavior?
I see how frequently my clients fall victim to this inner critic. One of them recently said “I failed to meet my exercise goals for the week and
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I might as well give up”. In her mind she had already done that, believ- ing that she just couldn’t succeed. I asked her if she had done any of the things she had set as goals. She told me she had walked her dog once for about 45 minutes, used the ellipti- cal machine at the gym twice for 30 minutes and done her stretching. But she added, “I didn’t go to the gym the third time as I was supposed to. So I failed. I just don’t think I will be able to do this.”
Looking at Failure Differently But she WAS doing it. How did she fail? Where was that belief coming from? She said that she just couldn’t ever get things right. She added that she always failed to get in all her days of cardio when she worked with someone at the gym. She wanted to do it, but she knew that she let people down and just couldn’t fit it all in. Then she told me that one
Dec/Jan 2011-2012
of the things that got in the way the previous week was an accident that put her husband in the hospital for a few days. She had been spending most of her time with him or at home with the kids. Wow, and she got in three days of activity despite what had happened in her life.
I asked her to see how much she had accomplished and to recognize that
“From now on, noti well and pat your and then look at w well and see if ther can learn from
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