I dropped a bowl of oatmeal this morning and broke it. I spilled its contents all over the floor. When something like this happens, my mind cycles between two thoughts:

  1. “It’s not worth thinking about what could have been – learn from this mistake and move on.”
  2. “This clearly could have been prevented. The bowl was hot. You should have used mitts instead of wiggling it around in your hands. Why did you do this? You need to keep analyzing and re-analyzing how this played out, or you’re not going to ‘learn from this mistake.’”

I tell myself not to worry about it, but then I go right back to worrying. I think that this is some sort of default loop in my mind. If I did something that I deem to be extremely bad, my subconscious seems to need to keep bringing up how to avoid this situation in the future.

In some ways, this seems like a useful neurological mechanism. If you’re constantly reminded of something bad that you did, then you’re going to be reminded of it when another hot-bowl-handling situation comes up, and you’ll be more inclined to use mitts. But the cost that you pay for this behavior is increased stress and anxiety at the time of the failure, as your subconscious is telling you to ridicule yourself so that you don’t make the same mistake in the future.

I doubt I’m alone in feeling this way. I’ve experienced this sort of thought pattern time and time again in the past – most recently while I was laying in the hospital bed after breaking my clavicle in a bike race. So I think that this thought pattern of consistent self-flagellation is mostly engrained into my mind, even if it isn’t the most effective mode for changing behavior.

The first thing a mindful practitioner might tell you to do is to try and let these thoughts go when you notice them arise into your consciousness. This would let you break the cycle between the thoughts of “just learn and accept the past” and “learn through insistent shaming.” It requires a lot of mindfulness practice and, even as someone who has been meditating for six years, I’m clearly still not good at it.

But are there any downsides to this approach? What if the self-flagellation mode is a better way at changing behavior? If I let go of all of these stressing thoughts, would I start making repeat mistakes because I didn’t drill into my mind how I messed up the previous time? It’s also likely that letting go of those thoughts will cause fewer of those thoughts to arise into conscious thought in the future. If I need to drill into my mind my mistake, is drilling less really desirable?

I don’t really think so. Sure, those stressful thoughts don’t have to be self-flagellating, but the constant reminder of “you did bad thing, do better” seems crucial to me to ensure that you’re reminded of your failure the next time a similar situation happens. So how can one reconcile a desire to remove the suffering caused by the stressors of these events, while recognizing that those stressors are inherently useful to ensure you don’t make the same mistake in the future?

I think that I’m conflating two aspects of this mode of thought and it’s useful to separate those aspects to define useful actions to take:

  1. Self-flagellating thoughts are not useful. You shouldn’t beat yourself up for previous behavior, and from a basic Pavlovian perspective, it doesn’t seem to me to be an effective way of changing behavior. The best course of action is to let these thoughts go when they arise into your consciousness. These things may naturally happen, but your goal should be to train your mind such that they happen less frequently so you don’t beat yourself up so much.
  2. Constant reminders of past failures can be useful to drill into your subconscious to change future behavior. Use mitts when holding hot things. Don’t get too close to other cyclists when in a race. The best course of action for these thoughts is to accept that they’re going to arise, but to not be as apprehensive towards them as you may be with self-flagellating thoughts. It’s okay if these thoughts arise, and you fighting them is only going to make you suffer more.

You don’t need to suffer to change your behavior. But to get a subconscious change in behavior, it seems to me that you do need constant reminders.