Don't be nice to yourself. Do this instead.
You’ve probably heard the advice…
“Be nicer to yourself.”
“Be kinder to yourself.”
“Give yourself more grace.”
Let me tell you a secret 🤫
That advice…has never really resonated with me.
I know. It sounds like a terrible thing to say. 🫣
Who’s opposed to niceness? Who says they don’t want to be kind?
But here’s why I’ve struggled to make this advice resonate for myself (and I think you might have too).
To my brain, “Be nicer to yourself” sounds awfully close to “Let yourself do bad work. Let standards slip without consequences.”
And I don’t want to let my standards slip…
So I guess that means I can’t be nice to myself!
Let me give you a different way to think about it.
Don’t be nice to yourself.
Instead, take yourself in good faith.
Here’s what I mean.
I want you to imagine that you have a rockstar analyst on your team 🌟
Whatever work you give them to do, they crush it.
They’re reliable. They’re proactive. They’re whip-smart. They always go above and beyond. You freaking love them.
And then, suddenly, one day…
They don’t turn in the work they said they’d turn in.
You’d asked them to build a financial model and they just…don’t do it.
“Being nice to them” would look like…
“Awww, it’s okay! You don’t have to make the model. Let’s just remove it from the project scope.”
You probably wouldn’t do that.
You asked for the model for a reason, and you don’t want to move forward without it!
At the same time, you probably wouldn’t berate and yell at your rockstar analyst to get them to build the model.
They’re your rockstar analyst, after all! They normally do great work and this is a weird one-off.
So you would take them in good faith.
“Taking them in good faith” would look like…
“Hey, what’s up?
That’s weird, that you didn’t do the work like you normally do.
What’s going on?”
You would assume they had a good reason for suddenly not working.
You’d figure out what it is.
And then you’d decide how to move forward, given that reason.
If their reason was, “I just had a massive family tragedy and that’s why I couldn’t work on the model”…
You’d probably say, “Okay, let’s give you some time to recover and deal with that. I totally understand. I’ll see if someone else can work on the model or if we can just delay it for a bit.”
If their reason was, “Actually, I think there’s some key information we need to get before we start building it”…
You’d probably say, “Great, let’s hear your idea!” and likely take it on board and adjust your plan.
You’d react totally differently based on the reason they gave you.
But the most important thing is that you’d believe ahead of time that they have a good reason for suddenly flaking…
And you’d ask them what’s up and listen to them in good faith.
This is what I want you to do instead of being nice to yourself.
You don’t have a rockstar analyst — you have a rockstar brain 🧠
And when it suddenly doesn’t want to do something that you wanted to do…
When it suddenly wants to procrastinate or avoid something or panic or cancel your plans or back away from a big opportunity…
Don’t berate it.
Don’t “be nice to it” in that “lower your standards without consequences” kind of way.
Instead, take it in good faith.
Believe that it has a good reason for doing what it’s doing — even if you don’t know what that reason is yet.
Ask it what its reason is and listen to the answer.
And then take that answer on board and see what you want to do next.
It is weirdly hard to do this in your own head.
It feels like it should be easy.
I mean, you and your brain are like…right there, next to each other.
You can’t get away from each other.
And yet, it’s very hard for you guys to talk to each other.
When it’s all in your head, the conversation goes too fast, jumps around too much, and it can be hard to get anywhere.
It’s much easier to do this in conversation with another person.
Talking to someone else forces your brain to slow down.
It forces your brain to actually articulate what its thinking rather than give you vague feelings.
It gives you the chance to respond to one thing at a time and give new ideas to your brain.
And when you do this with a coach, the coach can use their expertise to help direct the conversation too.
I’ve spent a LOT of time helping clients have this conversation with themselves.
I know a lot of tips and tricks to make it faster and more efficient.
I know how to avoid the pitfalls and rabbit holes.
I know how to get things jumpstarted when you get stuck.
And I know how to help you find the destination you’re looking for — which is ALIGNMENT.
That feeling when all the parts of you are back in harmony once again.
When all the wheels on your car are turning in the same direction.
And you can just get back to doing your best work and being the version of you that you most enjoy being.
Come get a sample of coaching with FREE anonymous public coaching.
Or come talk to me about working together and making the relationship between you and your rockstar brain the best relationship in your life 🤝
What my clients have to say…
“Even in our first consultation, Pooja will hear me go on and on about various topics and then she’ll be able to, in one sentence, say something that gets me unstuck or feels like it is the crux of the whole cobweb of stuff that's in my head. I think that’s very rare and very special.”
—Jenny Xia Spradling | Founder & Co-CEO, FreeWill
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