Many years ago, I had a practice I did as I laid in bed before sleep.
I would ask myself three questions:
What did I do well today?
What am I grateful for?
What could I have done better?
Or maybe that last question was even harsher: What didn’t I do well today?
I remember telling a friend about this ritual. She’s a therapist and does a lot of work in the area of self-compassion.
“Ouch,” she said.
What a hard thing to do right before bed, she pointed out, to end the day reviewing where I could have done better, where I hadn’t gotten it right.
At the time, I don’t think I fully understood her reaction. The practice seemed responsible to me. Reflective, even. How else do we grow if we don’t look back at what we did wrong and figure out how to do it better next time?
I see some version of this all the time in my nutrition practice.
Recently, I was talking with a client who had spent most of his summer on the road. He helped two of his kids move to college. He helped another child move across the country. He had basically spent the summer living out of a car, eating differently, moving differently, with very little resemblance to his usual routine.
When he returned home, he had gained some weight.
I asked him how he was feeling about it.
“Frustrated,” he said. “I wish I would have done things differently.”
His frustration wasn’t only about the weight he had gained. It was also about his belief that he should have handled the summer differently.
