3 minute read
IGNITE November 2021
Rewire your brain for self-compassion
Let your creative mind loose to transform where you live
As leaders, we get negative feedback, face criticism and experience failure. Intellectually, we know the path to success in any field — be it entrepreneurship or corporate leadership — is littered with setbacks like these. But they still feel rotten.
As a recovering perfectionist and people-pleaser, I know how awful it feels when things go wrong. I used to beat myself up for making mistakes, missing the mark or disappointing someone.
My inner monologue was vicious.
Why It Happens
What we say to ourselves in response to negative feedback, criticism or failure reflects our most practiced thought. The brain loves repetition because it doesn’t require critical thinking. The brain doesn’t have to work to challenge assumptions. Instead, it gets to rely on default settings, conserving its energy for something else.
Because I’d been hard on myself for making mistakes in the past, my brain’s default setting was to keep being hard on me. I knew this setting needed to change. This habit loop would continue unless I actively worked to break it.
Here’s how I did that.
Breaking the Loop
Ending the cycle of negative self-talk meant recognizing my predominant thoughts, challenging them, entertaining possibilities for new thoughts and installing new ones.
Let’s break that down.
Step 1: Recognize
The next time I faced criticism, negative feedback or failure, I paid close attention to which thought my brain offered up. I formed the thought into a complete sentence and wrote it down. I got specific with my words. I read them out loud. Was it fun? No. Was it a necessary step in re-calibrating my inner monologue? Yes.
To illustrate how this process worked, let’s say my knee-jerk reaction to criticism was the thought, “I never get it right.” Instead of accepting that notion, I pressed my brain for details. How exactly was I wrong? What would have been the right thing to do or say?
Step 2: Challenge
After the initial rush of feelings had
passed, I listed all the ways that my default thought might’ve been wrong. I didn’t have to be sure the thought wasn’t true; I just needed to cast a shadow of a doubt.
I asked myself how the statement, “I never get it right,” can be false. Am I really wrong all the time? Have I never gotten anything right in my life?
I looked for evidence to prove this notion wrong. I mean, even a broken clock is right twice a day!
Step 3: Possibility
By now, you’ve probably recognized that my brain’s negative default thought was not rooted entirely in fact. Even though it felt real to me, I began to poke holes in the argument by challenging its truthfulness.
From this vantage point, I could begin to plant the seeds of more productive, compassionate thoughts. But rather than staring in the mirror shouting positive affirmations at myself (which many people, including me, find ineffective), I used It’s Possible statements instead.
In this step, the thought “I never get it right” became “It’s possible that I made the best choice I could with the tools I had at the time.”
Step 4: Pathway
Once I’d practiced those “It’s possible” statements for a while, my brain began to relax. With its armor down, I could start paving the way for genuinely productive thoughts to become my brain’s new default response to criticism.
When I mess up, I want to give myself grace. I want to show myself compassion. I want to learn from my mistakes. Ultimately, I replaced “I never get it right” with “I get it wrong sometimes, and that’s okay. I’m human.”
Practicing thought work has brought me peace and self-compassion. If your inner monologue is hard on you, I invite you to try this method yourself.
Katelyn Gray is a life + business coach in Rockford and a member of IGNITE Rockford.
The views expressed are those of Gray’s and do not necessarily represent those of the Rockford Chamber of Commerce.
