I messed up. Now what?
· Source: Breines & Chen, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 2012
Being hard on yourself after a mistake can feel like taking it seriously. In experiments, kindness toward yourself went with wanting to put things right.
I messed up. Now what?
Kindness to yourself came with wanting to fix it. People recalled something they had recently done wrong. Those prompted to treat themselves with compassion reported more motivation to make amends, and not to repeat it, than people prompted to boost their self-esteem. Name the repair, not the punishment. Tell what happened the way you’d tell a friend’s story. Then name who was affected and one thing you can do to put it right. Go easy on yourself. Then put it right. Halflight keeps what you said under today’s date.