I wonder if you have noticed this phenomenon:
If you allow conditioned mind to beat you up for doing something you didn’t want to do (or for not doing something you did want to do), then that pretty much guarantees that you will do the thing again as soon as you have another opportunity.
Why is this? This is because the fundamental reason we do the things we do that are unhealthy, counterproductive, self-defeating, and so on, is so that we can feel bad about doing them. Said another way, we do these things in order to prove to ourselves that we are the wrong person that we believe ourselves to be.
On the other hand, if you will accept in conscious awareness and without judgment that you have done something that you did not want to do (or have failed to do something that you did want to do), then an opening is created, a possibility, that you will have enough freedom of choice to refuse to do the thing you don’t want to do the next time an occasion arises to do it.
Why is this? This is because loving, compassionate acceptance is the antidote to the self-hating function within conditioned mind. If we can love ourselves even when we have failed in some way, then that love will teach us how not to fail.
Let us love ourselves unconditionally, friends, in every circumstance, no matter how thoroughly we have failed to be who we know that we are, no matter whether or not we have met our own expectations. We cannot grow and learn without love; we cannot find our way to the realization of our authentic nature unless we have accepted who we otherwise can be..
In peace,
David