Getting My Body Back Friday - Overcoming Guilt When You Fall Off Track

If you've ever experienced the psychological effects of guilt as you're working toward your weight goal, you'd know it's not a good feeling at all. 

You're working out, eating right and feeling good about yourself, and then it happens. You fall off track one day, which turns into two which turns into a week and by this time you're feeling guilty because you're not doing what you're supposed to do to reach your goal and depression begins to set in. 

What can you do to overcome the psychological effects of guilt so you can get back on track and not be overcome by it?

Click here to access the 4 tips that will help you through this process.

Action Thursday - Practice Prevention to Overcome Psychological Effects of Guilt

Practicing prevention is the best cure to overcoming the psychological effects to guilt. If you stay alert and keep an eye out on your thoughts and emotions you can prevent the feelings of guilt to take over your mind. 

Let's review the 3 tips to prevention.

Tip #1 - Quickly identify situations that contribute to stress or depression

Action Steps 

What situations contribute to stress or depression in your life? 

What can you do to avoid them or avoid being consumed by stress or depression?

Tip #2 - Change your perspective on the situation

Action Steps

How can you look at your situation differently?

What can you learn from your mistakes?

How can you use your mistakes as your strengths instead of being weakened by guilt?

Tip #3 - Physically move from the event

What strategies can you implement now to help you avoid situations that will cause you to get off track?

What can you do if you find yourself in a vulnerable situation?

Take action and practice prevention.

Guilt - 3 Tips on Using Prevention to Overcoming Psychological Effects of Guilt - Tip #3

If you're in a situation that causes you to go deeper into guilt or bring on feelings of guilt, you don't have to stay where you are, you can do something about it. Let's look at Tip #3 on Using Prevention to Overcoming Psychological Effects of Guilt.

Tip #3 - Physically move from the event

Certain situations, activities or company may arouse memory of a past event which in turn brings on the feelings of guilt. Physically remove yourself so you can refocus your mind onto something more positive. No point staying where you are and succumb to guilt. It will continue to consume you and take you further downhill. Find something positive to shift your attention to and bring your emotions on a higher energy vibration.

Let's look at a practical example.

Say you are trying to overcome a smoking habit. You find yourself in the company of other people that are smoking, what do you do? Do you stay and try to be strong? No, this is the time that you walk away so you're not overcome by the desire of wanting to smoke and refocus your mind to reaching your goal.

At this point you're still vulnerable and you need to protect what you've already accomplished - whether it's a day, a week or a month that you've not had a cigarette - so you don't fall back into the habit and find yourself in a situation of feeling guilty for giving in.

Guilt - 3 Tips on Using Prevention to Overcoming Psychological Effects of Guilt - Tip #2

Let's look at Tip #2 on Using Prevention to Overcoming Psychological Effects of Guilt

Tip #2 - Change your perspective on the situation

The way you choose to look at your situation could either push you further into guilt or lift you up to a more positive plane.

Change the way you look at your mistakes. Instead of beating up on yourself for the wrongs you did, search for the hidden gems in them.

What have you learned from this experience?

Let's say you've made a wrong decision in your business or you've fallen back into a bad habit, what can you learn from this? Look closely and ask within, "What do I need to know? What am I not seeing here? Clear my eyes that I may see what's important."

What have you learned about yourself?

Our mistakes show us where we are in the growth process. It can show us our inner strength in certain areas and our weakness in others. A baby learning to walk realizes that he/she needs to learn the art of balancing to avoid falling over. This is a natural process of self-discovery. So, instead of feeling guilty about 'falling' into bad habits again or making a mistake, look for what you can learn about yourself.

What can you change about the way you're thinking right now?

What are the thought patterns that are causing you to get caught up in the feelings of guilt? Observation of your thinking patterns can reveal this so you can shift your thinking to create a more positive mindset. When we're not alert to what's going on inside our minds and our emotions that's the time when we go of course in our most vulnerable moment.

What can you teach others from this?

The lessons you learned can be passed on to others so they too will benefit from your experience. Whether it's your children, your partner, friends or others you meet along the way, your experience can add tremendous value in making a difference in someone else's life.

Use the situation that drew you into feeling guilt and turn them into a positive outcome.

Look out tomorrow for Tip #3.

Guilt - 3 Tips on Using Prevention to Overcoming Psychological Effects of Guilt - Tip #1

Guilt can affect us on many different levels and areas of our lives. The behaviour of guilt can mentally inhibit us from being free from past mistakes so we're unable to move forward onto living a fully enriched life and achieve our goals. Using prevention as a tool to psychologically overcome the mental effects of guilt can empower you to take control of your mind and disempower guilty feelings.

Tip #1 - Quickly identify situations that contribute to stress or depression

When you are feeling stressed or depressed you are more vulnerable to negative feelings. These feelings open the door for and attract other negatives into your mind. As you develop the habit of quickly identifying situations that contribute to stress or depression, you could prepare yourself mentally to handle these situations differently so that guilt does not creep in and hold you in its clutches.

For example, if you are feeling stressed or depressed about a current situation, memories of things that you had done or neglected to do that contributed to the situation may come rushing in. As you think about what you've done or not done, you may start feeling guilty over the whole thing putting you further into depression.

Look out tomorrow for Tip #2.

4 tips to overcoming psychological effects of guilt

Getting my body back - Day 99

Have you ever felt guilty when you made a decision to achieve a goal and you fell off track? Perhaps you decided to quit smoking, was doing well for some time, then you became stressed out and lit up again. Or you loved the way you felt and looked at 120 lbs and decided to set that as your ideal weight goal but you got depressed and began to eat foods that did not contribute to your success.

As a result of falling off track you felt guilty which led to more stress, more depression which increased the urge to smoke or eat the wrong type of foods that set you back from gaining the results you initially set out to achieve.

Here are some tips to avoid the psychological effects of guilt:

1) Prevention is better than cure.

By identifying situations that contribute to stress or depression, you could prepare yourself mentally to handle these situations differently. When you see these patterns occurring prepare to change your perspective on the situation or physically move from the event. When you have prepared yourself for any encounter you are better capable of handling it more effectively.

2) Quickly bounce back

If you are overcome by stress or depression, recognize the feeling and quickly shift your mental thinking to invite peace of mind to eliminate stress and joy to replace depression. Whenever I feel feelings of depression trying to descend on me like a heavy weight on my shoulders, instead of waiting for it to flood my emotions, I immediately look within to the joy that lies in my inner being. Other times I ask the Spirit to lift me up if I feel I am becoming overwhelmed and unable to bounce back quickly. Know that you have help every step of the way.

3) Encourage yourself

Okay, you know what? I have fallen off track here, but as long as I have life and breath I can get back on track and keep going. I can do this. Being your own cheer leader gives you the extra boost necessary to keep moving forward. I messed up here, but I can learn from this and use it to my advantage. Shifting from guilt to encouragement empowers you to rise up again with renewed strength and vigour.

4) Set new strategies for yourself

Use the feelings of guilt to your advantage. Okay, you fell off track. Use the opportunity to learn about you. Face the guilt, be honest with yourself about the deeper issues you are facing, analyze yourself (What was it that made me do what I did? What other feelings contributed to this?) and rethink your strategy to getting you through to achieving your goal.

These 4 steps are some strategies you can use to help you overcome the psychological effects of guilt.

Fuelling words: I prepare my mind to keep me on track and if I mess up, I quickly bounce back knowing that I can accomplish whatever I set my mind and heart to achieve.

Workout: walking, weight lifting