Stop Feeling Guilty About Your Indulgences to Get the Most Out of Them.
We all have little favors that we shouldn’t take part in. A concert we shouldn’t have spent money on, ice cream that breaks our diet. It’s okay to want to break these habits, but if you indulge a little, don’t feel guilty about it.
As personal finance writer Tavkan explains, experiencing guilty pleasure is not the same as forming a bad habit. Guilty pleasure is a temporary breakdown of a good self-indulgence habit. A bad habit is when these treats are the norm instead of the good. However, if you really feel guilty, forget about guilt. All you do is destroy the psychological benefits of pleasure by beating yourself up for it:
So when you eat this delicious ice cream cheesecake on the side and tell yourself that you are experiencing some kind of guilty pleasure, you are telling your subconscious mind that you are eating guilt. Consciously you may feel good, but subconsciously, you make yourself feel worse and worse.
Instead of spending more than two hours watching a movie in the theater, having a good time and not being distracted, you tell your subconscious mind that you are watching with guilt and are missing out on all the different tasks you are doing. Must do. You feel guilty for spending money on a movie ticket, and you feel guilty for not managing your time rationally.
This is a delicate path because justifying too much bad behavior can very quickly turn into a bad habit. However, if you are making informed decisions about how to waste your time or break your rules, make those decisions with conviction. Don’t just buy on the urge to buy a movie ticket and then get upset about wasting money the entire time you are in the theater. Buy it, enjoy the movie, and return to your responsible life refreshed.
Guilty pleasure | Tawcan via Rockstar Finance