How to Build Self-Trust Without Self-Punishment
When you were a kid, did you look forward to being punished?
Did you draw on the walls and think, “I can’t wait for mom to see this and start shrieking at me!”
No? I didn’t think so—because you don’t look forward to pain.
“Wow, Alicia, you’re really blowing my mind today.”
I know, I know. I’m getting to the point:
Pain isn’t a productive or healthy motivator.
Using the avoidance of pain as a motivating factor comes from a place of fear.
“I won’t draw on the walls because I’m afraid I might get yelled at.”
“I won’t be late to work because my boss will fire me.”
“I’ll study for this test because I don’t want to get a failing grade.”
What happens in situations like this is NOT that you lose the desire to draw on the walls, but that you try to avoid punishment.
You internalize this avoidance as:
“In order to shape my behavior, I need to feel threatened to produce the result I want.”
You then create your own internal drill sergeant who screams obscenities at you when you don’t act in a certain way.
You’re supposed to be watching your weight, but in a restaurant you order that chocolate lava cake and eat the whole thing. Your drill sergeant says, “You fatty! No wonder you can’t lose weight. You have no self-control. Get it together. You disgust me!”
With an internal dialogue like that, I wouldn’t expect you to make progress either. The fear of failure, anxiety, and poor self-image fuel even more overeating.
Unfortunately, you’d be surprised by how many students come to me asking to be cracked with a whip. Which, as you might guess, I don’t do, because I know punishment and negative criticism aren’t effective motivators.
Instead, I help them transform their self-talk, discover powerful positive motivation, and take committed action.
That’s not to say criticism doesn’t have a place. My students and I consistently discuss what can be improved. But if you get stuck on what you do badly, you’re probably used to feeling frustrated and demoralized.
So, what’s the best strategy for improving your habits without getting caught in a self-sabotage spiral?
Building Self-Discipline from a Place of Self-Love
You can still use self-discipline in order to build up your self-trust, but rather than it coming from a place of loathing or punishment, you can cultivate that discipline from a place of love.
Love is a feeling, but it is one that is reflective of a repeated action: sacrifice of comfort for the sake of care.
Love, for others or self, is a practice of caring that manifests in your thoughts, words, and actions. Love isn’t automatic or a temporary feeling. Love is dynamic, and grown. Love expands or diminishes with your thoughts, words, and actions.
Here are three reasons why self-love is so effective at building lasting self-discipline and self-trust:
Self-love is not about creature comforts.
Self-love is often equated with ephemeral pleasure: bath bombs, manicures, massages, and so on. But love is not about a temporary increase in happiness. It’s about long-lasting fulfillment, which, rather than increasing your comfort, typically decreases it, at least in the short-term.
Self-love means exercising discipline so that you can fulfill your goals—saying no to foods you want to eat, exercising when you don’t feel like it, working on challenging projects, having the courage to try new things.
Self-love means sacrificing your comfort for the sake of living with integrity: setting boundaries, saying no when appropriate, having difficult conversations.
None of these are comfortable. But they are an expression of how much you care for—and love—yourself.
2. Self-love is not about being easy on yourself.
Self-love does not mean you have free reign to laze on the couch all day, eating your favorite snacks (pass the Terra chips, please), and shirking your responsibilities. Nor does it mean giving yourself a free pass when you behave badly.
If you love someone, you want the best for them. You want to see them striving for their potential, which is going to involve hard work, failure, and perseverance. You want to see them pushing themselves and achieving goals. Same goes for self-love.
3. Self-love won’t make you soft.
Contrary to popular belief, using self-compassion when you slip up actually increases your resilience. Punishment, as we discussed earlier, doesn’t make a good motivator because it sends us into negative spirals and often leads to self-sabotage, but we are motivated by positive outcomes.
If you want to learn how to take control of your behaviors, especially those around food, our Food Body Self® program has specific exercises for cultivating self-discipline from a place of self-love so that you can break the cycle of self-sabotage and learn how to trust yourself again.
My coaches and I can help you rewire your thoughts in order to feel better about yourself and in your own skin.
Self-trust grows when you display care—not the looming threat of punishment—for yourself, over and over again.