Another Failure

Or is it day 2?

Yes, I’ve already dropped the ball and forgotten to make the second posting on the second day.

Fail.

I recently learned that I’m not responsible enough to manage a virtual farm on FarmVille (a Zanga game available on Facebook). Sometimes my crops would wither in the fields.

But, I’m still not giving up. Let’s plow this crap under and plant again.

The manager of the homeless shelter where I recently stayed for three months was really big on reminding people not to let past failures negatively affect their future decisions. Even if you fail, you must not consider yourself a failure.

There is a difference between guilt and shame.

Guilt is a feeling of regret for a behavior.

Shame is a feeling about yourself directly.

Guilt is about something you did or did not do.

Shame is taking a look at yourself and finding yourself lacking.

So, I feel guilty that I dropped the ball on the second day of the challenge, but I refuse to shame myself as a loser or a failure because of it.

See the difference?

Let’s say you make a mistake at work and it cost the company some money. Ok, you made a mistake — you saw the mistake, you admitted the mistake, you apologized for the mistake. You’re not psycho, you feel guilty about the mistake. It’s a mistake to call yourself stupid. You are shaming yourself — defining yourself as “stupid” because of a mistake.

We all need to be careful about how we say things to other people in this regard as well because shame can be passed on to others.

For instance, people commonly pass shame to their children and they don’t even know it. They’re just not careful about how they pick their words. Perhaps they’re repeating things the same way their parents said them. Shame passes down the generations this way.

Let’s say your little kid won’t stop doing something annoying. You could say, “I get so annoyed when you do that. I do not like it when you do that. Please do something else.” Please don’t say, “You are a bad girl. Stop annoying me.” If you make it about the child’s behavior then it’s about something they can change. If you tell the child she is bad, she can’t change that — you’ve defined her.

How about with a teenager? Let’s say your 16 year old son forgot to take out the trash again. You could say, “I really need you to keep up with the trash. It’s one of the few things I ask you to do around here.” Please don’t say, “You are so irresponsible! I can’t trust you to do what you say you’ll do. You’ll never amount to anything, you lazy little bastard! Oh, that’s right! You’re a bastard! Tom is not your father!!! Emo little loser baby!!!”

Ok, that was just wrong.

If you try to always discuss someone’s behavior by starting with mentioning how you feel, then perhaps you won’t pass on any shame.

“It makes me feel like you don’t respect me when you won’t keep up with the trash. I know you respect your allowance, so let’s just skip it this week and see how next week goes with the trash.”

“I recently learned that I’m not responsible enough…” This is just wrong. I should have said, “I have recently learned how difficult it is to…” See, instead of saying that I failed at that responsibility, I said that I am not responsible… I defined myself as irresponsible. Why would I try and take on any new responsibility??

Shame is bad, bad stuff, folks.

Be very careful about what you say to yourself and others in this regard.