David D. Burns
David D. Burns
David D. Burnsis an adjunct professor emeritus in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Stanford University School of Medicine and the author of the best-selling books Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy and The Feeling Good Handbook. Burns popularized Aaron T. Beck's cognitive behavioral therapywhen his book became a best seller during the 1980s...
ProfessionWriter
mistake guilt way
Guilt is not the best way to remedy your mistakes.
mistake people feelings
What is the point of abusing yourself with guilt in the first place? If you did make a mistake and act in a hurtful way, your guilt won't reverse your blunder in some magical manner. It won't speed your learning processes so as to reduce the chance you'll make the same mistake in the future. Other people won't love and respect you more because you are feeling guilty and putting yourself down in this manner. Nor will your guilt lead to productive living. So what's the point?
mistake views ideas
The biggest mistake you can make in trying to talk convincingly is to put your highest priority on expressing your ideas and feelings. What most people really want is to be listened to, respected, and understood. The moment people see that they are being understood, they become more motivated to understand your point of view.
mistake self glasses
A poor self-image is the magnifying glass that can transform a trivial mistake or an imperfection into an overwhelming symbol of personal defeat.
love mistake adventure
After all, this is how you learned how to walk. You didn't just jump up from your crib one day and waltz gracefully across the room. You stumbled and fell on your face and got up and tried again. At what age are you suddenly expected to know everything and never make any more mistakes? If you can love and respect yourself in failure, worlds of adventure and new experiences will open up before you, and your fears will vanish.
mistake hate two
Can you predict the future with absolute certainty? Your answer must be no. You have two options: You can either decide to accept yourself as an imperfect human being with limited knowledge and realize that you will at times make mistakes, or you can hate yourself for it.
mistake acceptance perfection
Assert your right to make a few mistakes. If people can't accept your imperfections, that's their fault.
powerful guilt behavior
Guilt serves a powerful social function in terms of policing our behavior.
personal-accountability forgiving guilt
Forgiving yourself, not guilt, increases personal accountability.
hard-work people leader
People who are prone to guilt tend to work harder and perform better than people who are not guilt-prone, and are perceived to be more capable leaders.
lying thinking opportunity
People who expect to feel guilty tend to be more sympathetic, to put themselves into other people's shoes, to think about the consequences of their behaviour before acting, and to treasure their morals. As a result they are less prone to lie, cheat or behave immorally when they conduct a business deal or spot an opportunity to make money, studies suggest. They are also likely to make better employees because people who think less about the future results of their actions are more likely to be late, to steal or to be rude to clients.
responsibility self views
Surprisingly, it's forgiveness, not guilt, that increases accountability. Researchers have found that taking a self-compassionate point of view on a personal failure makes people more likely to take personal responsibility for the failure than when they take a self-critical point of view. They also are more willing to receive feedback and advice from others, and more likely to learn from the experience.
attitude behavior-change self
More often than not, the belief that you are bad contributes to the "bad" behavior. Change and learning occur most readily when you (a) recognize that an error has occurred and (b) develop a strategy for correcting the problem. An attitude of self-love and relaxation facilitates this, whereas guilt often interferes.
guilt helping should
Guilt doesn't help. What should fill in for it? Remorse. Remorse is when you feel bad about what you did. Guilt is when you feel bad about who you are.