What the hell
Don’t get fooled into just looking at where you want to land and feeling disheartened that you haven’t reached your goal. Think of foregoing that cigarette, beer, or extra piece of cake as self-care instead of self-deprivation.Ĥ. Separate yourself from your shortfalls and see them for what they are: habits, old behavior patterns, or just plain mistakes that all of us make.ģ.
Accept the defeat, put down your gavel, and replace the judgment with self-compassion so you can recover more quickly.Ģ. You admit the frustration and disappointment while supporting instead of attacking yourself through the struggle.ġ. When you’re self-compassionate, you don’t deny the hardships you’re going through.
Self-compassion allows you to deal with the painful experience, not the added bad feelings from your self-judgment. When you have a setback-whether you’re trying to speak up more with your team, stay on an exercise regimen, or standing up to your boss-accepting exactly where you are without criticizing yourself makes you more likely to succeed. Studies show that when you substitute self-compassion for self-condemnation, you foster positive change in just about anything you do. You don’t have to berate yourself to make successful change. Or you might worry that giving yourself too much leeway would turn you into a total slacker. You probably have a deep belief that self-ridicule can help you do better. If you’re like most people, you kick yourself for your shortcomings. Studies show one of the best strategies to keep you from falling into relapse is to treat yourself with compassion after your shortcomings get the better of you. And the what-the-hell attitude gives you a way out-permission to backslide from your aspirations. The bad mood eclipses your goal of success. Once provoked into a bad mood, you’re more likely to give up on your goals and engage in self-defeating behaviors (negative self-talk, procrastination, throwing in the towel) so you don’t have to keep feeling bad about failing.
#What the hell license
Turns out the dieters saw the excessive pizza that they’d already consumed as a license to pig out. When a plateful of cookies came their way, dieters were inclined to eat more of the sweets than non-dieters.
She served dieters unusually large slices of pizza to compare with non-dieters who were served smaller slices. Janet Polivy at the University of Toronto put the What-the-hell effect under scientific scrutiny. It lets you return to the bad habit, which comforted you in the first place: procrastination, perfectionism, even diet restrictions. Studies show that when you’re trying to resolve disappointment, it can trigger a what-the-hell attitude and turn a minor slip into a major relapse.
Truth be told this attitude-scientists call it the what-the-hell effect-adds heartache on top of heartache. So you seek comfort in the very thing you’re trying to conquer. You miss the deadline, don’t get the promotion or your team doesn’t buy your ideas. This impulsive reaction is an attempt to bring quick relief to your misery of failing. When you have a setback at work, it’s tempting to condemn yourself and give up. If you were to plot the average person’s progress of changing a habit, it would make an upward zigzag, not follow an ascending straight line. When you’re grappling with changing a bad habit, relapse is often part of the package deal.