Whenever I think of writing a piece on certain topic, I freeze. Not that I can’t write about it. I can. It’s more about my own expectation of what that piece should look like when its finished and released. My imagination constructs a picture of me not delivering the depth and breadth of the topic, not doing a good enough job. The fear of failure rises from the ashes again and again, after the battle I though I’ve already won.
During one of my own coaching sessions, I’ve faced it, disguised as perfectionism, the reason I have spent hours and hours doing really unproductive tasks at work, at home, in business. Perfectionism ruined many good ideas, and not only mine – I’ve also seen my family members, friends, clients, perpetually planning something that could have been already released, could already be evolving creatively, or serving someone in need, or contributing to the greater cause. In that session, my coach challenged me to come up with a phrase that I could use to encourage myself in those gripping ‘it’s not yet perfect’ moments. The phrase I came up with after some deliberation was ‘I am enough’. Once I said it out loud, I felt an enormous release of energy and a weight lifting off my chest. This was certainly not what I expected!
‘I am enough’, a simple phrase, seemingly directly unrelated to any of it. If we dive beneath the surface, perfectionism and fear of failure are both different sides of the same coin, worldview stemming from a need to prove one’s worth. The experiences we have likely picked up and internalised along the way through our childhood and adolescence signalled to our own forming selves: ‘you have to prove you’re worth the love’, ‘you have to work hard to deserve nice things and good relationships’, ‘you must be perfect and not fail to be lovable, admirable, accepted’, ‘you are not enough as you are, you ought to do something about it’. For some of us acceptance wasn’t easy to come by, and unconditional love was not readily available. That, however, happens even when we are loved, but not the way we want or understand. We might have learned to ‘earn’ it, to survive in the environment we were in. Perhaps we have carried these coping strategies to this day, where they no longer work, where we sense that perhaps there is a better way to be.
There isn’t one way to change a belief, and it might not be straight forward, but if you are at your starting point, thank yourself for courage. Perhaps today you observe (with curiosity) how your perfectionism manifested itself in small everyday things, delayed projects, ideas that died unreleased, creative pursuits that never took shape. Perhaps today you thank your perfectionism for all the big achievements you can be proud of, because you did do more than it was required, you did perform better than it was expected, and that got you noticed, rewarded, it kept you going forward. Perhaps you do that and you feel like it is not enough, that there must be more to be done. Perhaps it’s time to come up with your own phrase to guide you during these moments! Before you do it, let me say: You are enough, and this is your starting point.
Letting go of deeply ingrained beliefs is simple, but it is not easy. When I sit down at the desk in front of an empty sheet, like I did this morning, and fear of failure pang in my solar plexus reminds me of all the possible ways this can fail. I breath in and breath out. ‘I am enough’ I say, to the empty room. I must see my mind as it is, observe it (with curiosity) creating its own suffering, and gently (with kindness) let go of an idea that anything I produce will be perfect. Instead, I can then think that perhaps this will help someone else become imperfect. Perhaps today someone has to read it to take a step forward on their own journey. If I can be a companion on this journey even for this one little step, it is enough.
A little story about how change will happen anyway
CHANGE IS SCARY
Why do people avoid doing the right thing for themselves, sometimes for months and even years? Change means scarcity for our limbic part of the brain, part that is responsible for survival. Something that matters to us is part of our identity and our personal story. The more it matters to us the bigger part it takes in that story. The bigger it is, the harder it will be to change it. But we have to, because our story develops and we grow, and our identity needs to grow with us.
In my clients’ lives, and in my own, regret today is the fear we haven’t conquered yesterday. We haven’t taken an opportunity to go on an adventure, or live abroad, or change careers, as fear of losing that part of ourselves was bigger than motivation to change it to something better.
Change is scary, result is not guaranteed, uncertainty is hard to deal with. When we stay where we are, already aware of an opportunity we had and perhaps even mincing some timid projections into the potential future, the What if scenario in our minds will soon go into an open loop, something we will have a hard time closing, possibly for years to come.
LIMITING BELIEFS
Limiting beliefs are a thing. We all have them as part of our own stories, weather we are aware of them or not. ‘I am not good / smart / young / old / prepared enough’, ‘I don’t deserve it’, ‘Who am I to do this’ stopped more people from change they wanted to have, than actual failures ever will.
Limiting beliefs are static statements about ourselves – but we are nothing but static, especially when we are growing intellectually or emotionally. Dragging ‘I am liked when I do what I’m told’ belief with us might make sense when we are learning social skills at school, but not much use of it when we’re negotiating our salary many years later.
We collect various beliefs as we go through life, often not quite questioning, often unwillingly, often unknowingly. A child doesn’t have critical thinking capacity and life experience to doubt the statements they hear from their care givers, but that’s when we get most of our life axioms. As for the rest of adult life…people often go on an autopilot, barely registering the conversations they have, let alone what is playing in the background or what they see on the billboard on the way to work.
Limiting beliefs can be tricky to pin down and change by ourselves and coaching has powerful tools to uncover them with the client. If you feel like this could be the right time to explore those yourself, start with this self-guided resource, join me in one of my workshops or book a session to see what it is all about.
WHY DO WE NEED TO DO THE SCARY THING?
Change is inevitable. By missing an opportunity to make a change towards the direction we care about, we leave it to chance. The circumstances we so tried to preserve eventually change on their own accord and then we must ‘deal with the change’. It will be harder doing it this time around, as secondary feelings will make it more complicated: we might be resentful about how the change is unfair, or too quick, or inconvenient, or we should have done it earlier in our lives, or there will be someone to blame, or someone depending on us to land the plane safely.
CHANGE IS ENERGY
When we change, because we want to, it comes with a different type of responsibility. Responsibility that is born out of love for this new scary thing throws you into the sea of energy which you eventually learn to swim. Responsibility that is born out of necessity to keep afloat when you’re pushed out of the way, is very very heavy. ‘I HAVE to change’ carries energy of a log – something that can stay afloat but takes no direction of its own.
THE MISSING LINK
So how DO we do the scary thing? Change potential is often instigated by the right amount of pain, the famous ‘that’s it, I have to do something about it’ moment. If we haven’t got enough pain, we can…increase it. And trust me, when I say, how uncomfortable I feel encouraging to increase pain! But hear me out please.
The missing link takes us back to the limiting beliefs. Once you identify them, one by one, in different areas of your life, answer yourself very frankly and briefly: ‘What does it cost you to hold on to this belief?’. Once you have the answer, ask the same question again and again several times until you hit the answer that causes pain. Because…it now matters too much to see and do nothing about. That’s your seed of change.
Feel the fear and do it anyway.
A little story about open loops and what they mean for our energy levels
OPEN LOOPS – WHAT ARE THEY?
I have been dreaming of building a business for over 10 years. Had a vague idea and lots of sweet moments fantasising about how good it will be when I get there. It was never an actual plan or a specific goal to work towards, but rather a blurry cloud of thoughts of this future me, idea that was changing shape with every new passion I discovered along the way or a skill I became good at during my ‘actual’ career.
Life went on and as the time passed, this idea never seemed to acquire enough power to pull me along, it almost became a habitual thought with a multitude of possible endings to swish around the head when my mind got a bit bored. Now, when look back at that structure my brain built to entertain itself, I can see it for what it is – a hole in a pocket that quietly and steadily dissipated my creative energy.
A dream that you carry around is an open loop. A job or degree you haven’t finished is an open loop; an email you haven’t responded, the book you haven’t read to the last page, the text someone didn’t send back when conversation wasn’t quite over yet; the job interview you went for and didn’t hear back from. All these things stay in our minds as loose strings of open loops, freely flapping in the flow of thoughts about what we eat, the cinema we want to see, which road to take to the shop, kids’ shoes that need washing, dry cleaning to pick up, big project deadline, weekends plans…
BRAIN LIKES CERTAINTY
Our brain does not deal with open loops very well – we, humans, need certainty for survival, a certain cycle of a beginning and an end before the new beginning. A cycle we can attach a meaning to and learn from, compartmentalise, and then stop actively thinking about. An open loop cannot integrate into the acquired learning fabric as an experience because it hasn’t fully happened yet. It hasn’t ended. Marketing gurus know this all too well by creating episodes that never have a definite ending, or the self-perpetuating social media feed that keep our eyes glued onto the screen for hours on end.
WHERE DOES THE ENERGY GO?
An open loop is an energy waster and, like a hole in a pocket, is very costly for your energy budget. Our solution-focused brain will go out of the way to ‘fix the hole’ to prevent this energy loss. These efforts can show up as justifications, fantasies (daydreaming), even feelings. We say to ourselves that he hasn’t called because he’s busy, or she wasn’t a good friend anyway, or the job wouldn’t be the best fit for you even if they did call back, it is not yet a good time for this dream to come true, but when it is, you will nail it…you name it. They do not quite close the loop though, because they have no meaning in your life story, they are just brain’s attempts to close the loop in order to focus on something else. How many times you came back to that unanswered text and found yet another justification for it, and then a few more possible explanations, sensing a growing feeling of annoyance, or fear, or sadness bubbling up? If you have many open loops at the same time, each of them with their multiple unresolved endings and secondary feelings that justifications create, you soon get overwhelmed and anxious, lose your focus and peace of mind.
Sounds tough! And it is – many people go through periods in their lives when they don’t know where their energy is disappearing, and do not have enough of it left to make a change.
SOLUTION IS SIMPLE… BUT NOT EASY
There isn’t one solution – and as a coach I wouldn’t be offering a one size-fits-all approach to begin with.
We know for sure, that your friend’s advice ‘Just forget it’ doesn’t work. But that aside, there are options: various forms of meditation, mindfulness, gratitude practices, martial arts to strengthen prefrontal cortex, journaling, talking therapies, counselling, coaching, a conversation with an attentive listener, these all let your brain to wilfully create a definite ending that has a meaning in your story, close the loop and let go of it.
They seem to be too simple to be true, almost disappointing. People often want something flashier and quicker: the newest superfood, or a nootropic cocktail, or a psilocybin séance in a weekend retreat. Understandably so – building a good personal mental health routine that works for years to come doesn’t happen overnight.
AND YES, YOU CAN TOO
My clients often come at a pain point when they want a definite answer – and soon discover that there is more joy is in the process of finding what works for their unique personalities, circumstances, and lives they lead. And yes, it takes some time to form a habit of mindfully closing the loops, but it starts paying off soon after with improved sleep, more clarity, better decisions, sense of fulfilment.
If you’re at that pain point in your life as you’re reading this, give one of these a go. Attach it to another routine, that already exists in your life, like right after brushing your teeth, or before the morning coffee, or after dinner – and stick with it for a week.
It could be this one thing that sets you off on a path to uncovering your own, personal renewable energy source. Once you notice how the reserves are filling back up, giving you enough energy to finally focus on that big, shiny dream of yours, this will feel like the biggest joy of all – a joy of a new beginning.