Bingeing and Thoughts About Messing Up
Hello World!
As you know if you have been following my blog, I have been working on my social media media addiction.
The process I have been following is simple:
Decide in advance when I will use it and schedule it in my calendar
Use it only during this time
Allow urges when it’s not during this time
Repeat
I was committed to following this process and was seeing amazing results - so much more time unlocked, my urges were less frequent and less intense, everything was amazing…until this weekend.
I thought “I’ve been so good, just a quick little peek won’t hurt”. And then that turned into, “This is so fun!” and then “Well, I’ve already checked outside my allotted time, so today’s a write-off. I’ll start ‘being good’ again tomorrow.” And then the next day, “I already messed up yesterday so I’ll just start on Monday”. And then Monday, “Just a little won’t hurt”… I binged on social media the whole weekend and part way through Monday.
I think when we binge, it is really tempting to blame ourselves and judge ourselves for messing up. But when we do this, we block ourselves from seeing what was the reason it happened and how to prevent it the next time.
For me, what I realized is that, when I tell myself “a little won’t hurt”, it’s a lie. It will hurt, it hurts my productivity, and more importantly, it hurts my commitment to myself. My commitment is to work on this addiction. I did not want to experience the discomfort of social media deprivation, and so I chose in the moment to get that instant gratification rather than my long term goal.
What you tell yourself when make a mistake determines if you will stay where you are or move forward. You can imagine that if I said “I’m a total failure. I keep messing up. I’m never going to be able to quit”, that I would probably actually just quit trying.
So instead of seeing this as a reason to quit, I can see it as one obstacle that I can learn to overcome to keep getting stronger, that it is in fact a necessary step to become the kind of person who honours their commitment to themselves. The thoughts I choose to think are:
It’s normal to fail sometimes when you are learning to do something new
Doing right isn’t never making mistakes: it’s failing and then learning how to get back up.
I am exactly where I am supposed to be.
To get to where I’m going, I need to pass through here first.
Think of a recent time you made a mistake or failed at something. What were the words you told yourself? Did they serve you?
Negative self-talk is one of the biggest reason we stop working towards our goals. Are you working on or have you quit one of your goals? It might be worth taking a look at the way you talk to yourself. Changing how you talk to yourself changes everything. I would love to show you how.