Forgive yourself for slip-ups as you would a friend. Don’t let a lapse turn into a collapse.

Controlling your weight is a daily struggle. It’s a struggle you will sometimes lose. You’ve read about all the threats and you know how hard it is for a person in our modern toxic environment to stay on a diet. You will slip-up. It’s human nature to make mistakes. It’s an inevitable part of life. What matters is what you do about a mistake.

What should you do about a mistake? Forgive yourself. Don’t let a mistake throw you off your diet into an eating binge. Don’t let a lapse become a collapse. Forgive yourself like you would forgive a friend. We are often hardest on ourselves. We show ourselves less love and understanding than we would to our worst enemy. You may end up giving up if you can’t see it in your heart to forgive yourself.

Forgiving yourself is called self-compassion. Self-compassion is the ability to treat yourself with kindness when things go badly. It’s the secret of why some people successfully roll with life’s punches, face failure with grace, and eventually overcome their problems. Without self-compassion you end up dwelling on failures, making your problems bigger than they really are, and criticizing yourself into a downward a spiral of self-loathing. Life is tough enough without fueling the fire of your own anger and depression.

Self-compassion has three parts: self-kindness, common humanity, and mindful acceptance. Self-kindness is being kind and understanding toward yourself rather than taking the easy road of being self-critical. Common humanity is seeing your negative experiences as a normal part of life. Stuff happens and it sometimes happens to you. You can deal with it. Humans are incredibly tough. Mindful acceptance is being able to let things go rather than dwelling on them. If, like most of us, you need help on this one, please take a look at the Lifeguarding strategy.

Your emotions won’t burn out of control when you practice self-compassion. You’ll react more appropriately to events in your life. You’ll be able to accept responsibility for your actions without feeling horrible for a long time. And your image of yourself will become less about the bad thing or even the good things in your life. All of these changes help you keep you control your weight because you are much more likely to let your weight spin out of control when you are out of control.

Think of every problem as a learning opportunity and not just another piece of evidence of how screwed up you are. If all you do is get down on yourself then you are missing an opportunity to improve your life. Use your problems as inputs into The Designer Way so you can help yourself avoid the same problems in the future.

 All that matters is that you are continually learning and getting better. Time will take care of the rest.