https://mindingourway.com/replacing-guilt/
Series of Rationalist blog posts by Nate Soares about Non-coercive productivity.
Q. What counter-intuitive claim does Nate Soares make about rest states?
A. Most people think that rest, inaction, is a default state they get to return to when they finish their obligations; he says that no, one should model one’s life so that the default, restful state is one where you’re moving along the streams of your life at some sustainable clip. Rest in motion
Q. What are the three tools of guilt refinement that Nate Soares introduces?
A. refinement, internalization, realism
Q. What is Nate Soares’s refinement tool for shifting guilt?
A. Seeking a very specific alternative action instead of the one you took. e.g. If you feel you should’ve been studying instead of playing video games, articulate concretely which book and chapter, and make sure you find the answer believable.
Q. What is Nate Soares’s internalization tool for shifting guilt?
A. Ask what would happen if you dropped the obligation, then address the concrete concerns, expressed in terms of your own desires.
Q. What is Nate Soares’s realism tool for shifting guilt?
A. Asking yourself whether a guilt’s demands are realistic given your sustainable pace.
Q. What does Nate Soares see as the goal of shifting guilts (rather than just dropping them)?
A. Rephrasing them in terms of a pattern of behavior which acts against your own will. It’s the pattern that you can actually address.
Nate Soares: If you find yourself regularly experiencing guilt, then {you’re using guilt incorrectly} i.e. because {guilt is costly and demotivating; it’s useful as a threat, not an everyday action}
Q. Rather than feeling guilty when you act against your own will, what does Nate Soares recommend?
A. Use science to alter the pattern of behavior; use failures as data points.
Nate Soares: If you worry that, by removing guilt, you will lose your ability to update when you mess up, then I say: {update on the suckerpunch}.
Q. What’s the significance of Nate Soares’s phrase “update on the sucker punch”?
A. No need to feel any kind of lingering regret from a mistake if you fully update from the immediate feeling you get when you realize you failed.
Q. What key strategy does Nate Soares offer for self-compassion?
A. Imagine that you have a child who found themselves in your situation. How would you feel towards your child in this scenario? Can you feel that way towards yourself?
The {litany of Gendlin}: {What is true is already so.} / {Owning up to it doesn’t make it worse.} / {Not being open about it doesn’t make it go away.} / {And because it’s true, it is what is there to be interacted with.} / {Anything untrue isn’t there to be lived.} / {People can stand what is true, for they are already enduring it.}
Q. What does Nate Soares mean by “tolerification”?
A. The reflexive response to tell yourself lies about some aspect of the world that is unacceptable.
Q. What does Nate Soares suggest one should do about tolerification?
A. Stare the unacceptable reality in the face; use it as drive.