How to Stop Doing the Same Thing Over and Over Again
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It's easy to get frustrated and self-critical when you repeat mistakes. You might think you're the only one who does this, but y'all're non. Each person's specific patterns might differ, but we can all relate to the general concept. The tips in this post utilise to a wide range of these types of recurrent mistakes, including:
- Overeating
- Ignoring your instinct to say no or speak up (and so regretting it)
- Prioritizing the wrong things
- Buying things you don't need, considering they're on sale
- Getting irritated with your kids, because y'all're stressed out about work
Note: To place your self-sabotaging habits, bank check out this list of 30 types. Once you know what you want to piece of work on, consider these points.
1. Vowing to never make a particular mistake again is the wrong approach.
Later you lot stuff yourself at Thanksgiving, you lot say "I'm not going to practise that again. I feel terrible. It wasn't worth information technology." However, side by side year rolls around, and when you lot get-go notice you're overeating again, you completely surrender and go back for two more slices of pie. Sound familiar?
Paradoxically, to alter recurrent patterns, it's oft best to assume you will make the same mistake over again. When y'all do this, you can alter your focus to developing practical strategies that will aid you make less severe mistakes, less often. This tends to exist a more successful arroyo overall.
2. Develop strategies for prevention.
Lets say y'all know you end up overeating when you've become overly hungry. What strategies do you need to put in place to prevent condign so ravenous you lot scarf four staff of life rolls that are hanging around in your suspension room at piece of work?
Let's take a deep dive into how y'all might solve this problem. Perhaps y'all know you lot should stop for lunch at one p.m., just you oftentimes terminate up not stopping until 1:xxx or even 2 p.m. You recognize that if you start new activities in the xxx minutes before you lot plan to take your lunch, it increases the chances you'll get distracted and non go to tiffin on fourth dimension. Therefore, y'all need to program activities for the 12:30-1 p.one thousand. period each day that won't run over time and cause the trouble of going to lunch late. If you take some control over your schedule, what would be the types of piece of work that would be predictable, not decumbent to running over fourth dimension, and well-suited to your energy levels at that fourth dimension of the twenty-four hour period?
Hopefully yous can see from this example how personalized your strategies need to be. You demand to take a problem-solving approach that's tailored to your exact circumstances, one that's actually achievable rather than aspirational. Your strategies should feel like a reflection of yourself and be things you'll want to do, rather than seeming unappealing.
3. Put aside time and mental free energy.
I know the case strategy I've given higher up seems simple, but this is deceptive. Improving your patterns doesn't simply happen. Success requires all of the following: thinking near what strategies you could utilise, making a decision nearly what to try, implementing your ideas, and, often, troubleshooting aspects of your strategies that aren't working.
All of that requires mental energy. It isn't the type of thing you'll but do while yous're on the run at work, or you'll clasp into your day at 10 p.thousand. when you lot're tired, tapped out, and you'd ordinarily be clicking effectually the internet.
The reality of life is that we don't ever have the fourth dimension or mental space available to mindfully address self-sabotaging habits. That's normal, merely until you have that energy available, you probably won't practise annihilation to turn around your patterns. What times during your day/week do y'all take enough cognitive energy available for cocky-strategizing?
4. Develop strategies for harm minimization.
Fifty-fifty the all-time prevention strategies are probable to fail at least occasionally. Therefore, y'all need a plan for what'due south known every bit harm minimization. This is the same principle that's behind the idea that it'due south improve for drug addicts to utilise make clean needles than muddied ones.
Allow's call up back to the problem of binging when overly hungry. Peradventure your strategy for when this happens might be to offset your lunch by eating some fruit, salad, or something else where it'south difficult to quickly stuff yourself with a large corporeality of calories.
Harm minimization is about having a safety cyberspace, and who wouldn't want to arrange that for themselves?
Consider making backup plans for when you've forgotten something. For case, I continue $20 in the glove compartment of my motorcar in case I forget my purse or get defenseless out by a shop that's "cash only."
5. Understand your "Seemingly Irrelevant Decisions."
A concept I cover in my book, The Salubrious Listen Toolkit, is what's known as "Seemingly Irrelevant Decisions." I'll give a quick overview of this concept here. Seemingly Irrelevant Decisions are decisions that gear up you lot down the path towards a self-regulation failure, even though the decisions seem relatively innocuous. For example, you lot're currently cut back on overeating. Yous plan to host a party, and although you don't intend to overindulge at your event, you realistically know from by experience that whenever you host a gathering, it ever results in overeating leftover food. Or you sign your child upward for a form that'south across town on the busiest 24-hour interval of your workweek, knowing that if you accept to boxing traffic at the end of a long mean solar day, you're likely to be very cranky and irritable. If you brand a Seemingly Irrelevant Decision then later realize information technology was self-sabotaging, you demand to be prepared to walk back that conclusion or put boosted applied strategies in place. Don't think you can just rely on your willpower to not echo mistakes.
Summing Up
If you focus on completely eliminating all mistakes from your life, this volition experience incredibly overwhelming. If yous instead aim to better, there are lots of practical solutions you can endeavour, and you'll likely experience much more than success. Addressing your patterns can fifty-fifty exist enjoyable if yous take a non-judgmental, problem-solving approach.
Note that I intend this postal service to use to ordinary mistakes, and not things like committing crimes!
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Source: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/in-practice/201809/5-tips-how-stop-repeating-the-same-mistakes