A Self-Compassion Series: Me is We (pt. 2)
Being human isn’t easy – we all know this. If you’re not willing to allow yourself to show up imperfectly, are you really going to be able to allow others to do so? I don’t claim to know it all, but from where I sit and what I observe, it appears that a lot of the world (or maybe just my world) is divided in their thoughts and beliefs about what is and what should be. There seems to be more of a need to “be right” than to actually understand perspectives and experiences… In understanding and caring for your own human experience, we learn how to better show up for others in theirs. We were never meant to be perfect; we were meant to be people.
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Building Resilience: Bend Don’t Break
Adversity and struggle are never easy, but it is important to recognize that it’s not a matter of if, rather when, it will show up. These 4 strategies are not an effortless solution, but they are guides that can help adversity become more manageable and productive when it arrives. The 4 strategies include: Be Comfortable Being Uncomfortable, Evaluate and Revise, Notice Progress, and Decide the Direction. The key to effectively building resilience is learning how to become more psychologically flexible in our approach to anything and everything; if we can learn how to be flexible, we will BEND instead of break.
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Pressure: Thriving vs. Surviving
It’s no rarity that at some point, we have all experienced pressure - in some moments we have thrived in it, rising to the top, in others, we have struggled to survive and maybe even crumbled within it. It’s a normal experience, but we don’t have to leave our performance to chance. Feelings of pressure tend to activate both physiological and psychological responses. The physiological responses may include things like elevated heart rate, quickened breath rate, butterflies in the stomach, shakiness, and more perspiration than normal. Psychological responses typically revolve around conflicted focus - struggling to stay present, battling thoughts of fear, and managing the inner critic in your head going through every “What if…” scenario. So how do we gain control? The breath is the key.
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Confidence: Constructed Not Confined
Is confidence is more of a thought or a feeling? …confidence may be include elements of both, but really confidence is action. Yes, you read that correctly; confidence is ACTION. We don’t just want to think confident or feel confident, rather we want to BE confident. Confidence is found, developed, and maintained by being purposeful and selective in our action. If our confidence is built on the fickle nature of outcomes and reliance on inconsistent emotional responses, we become confined to a state of helplessness. Instead, allow the choice to take action serve as your stable, constructed foundation of confidence because it is one of the limited aspects of performance that lies within your control.
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A Self-Compassion Series: Me vs. We (pt. 1)
Kindness is not about being soft or removing accountability. In fact, I think kindness is the exact opposite. Being kind to yourself and to others is sometimes quite challenging; becoming angry, judgmental, and unforgiving – that’s the easy road! Kindness is easy when things are going your way, but when the unexpected happens or adversity makes a surprise visit, that’s when kindness gets shoved into the back corner even though that’s when we need it most! …All of this to say, we can train ourselves to interact with ourselves in a more kind, productive way. In order for these changes to be effective and lasting, the key is to be realistic and authentic; kindness is not always positive, but it should always be sincere and intentional.
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Consistency: The Power of Little Giants
Imagine a ship sitting in water. Now imagine you needed to move the ship. Do you think the ship will be more successfully moved by one grander push? Or do you think the boat will move further with a lot of little consistent efforts over time? The answer becomes pretty apparent that the ship will be better directed and redirected with the smaller consistent efforts and the same is true for finding effective processes in performance whether that be on the field, court, floor, office, or classroom.
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The Crux: Pursuing Performance Excellence
Performance excellence is about consistently performing your best when you need it most. In any performance, I believe people will be able to produce more quality and receive more from their performance AKA perform better when they are in alignment with who they want to be. Understand that this process is much more difficult than it appears because identifying and clarifying the values that define you requires heightened awareness and willingness to approach any incongruence with what you want your values to be and what they actually are.
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Power of the Pack
Nobody operates independently of others. Therefore, it is critical to understand the roles they play in your life and the way you contribute to theirs. I like to think of it is as tailoring a system to be most productive, not only for you, but all involved. Willingness to work together, unlimited patience, and continuous curiosity are the 3 most significant components I have identified in contributing to the powerful nature of an effective wolf pack. What these 3 components offer boils down to inspiration.
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Mission POSSIBLE
I think it does a better job of accurately depicting what the actual process is like, therefore increasing engagement and productivity when developing the target to aim for and the need for contingency plans for the inevitable and unforeseen obstacles that will show up along the way; it acknowledges that the pursuit will be imperfect and will likely change, but it also implies there is still a call to action to accomplish objectives and complete the Mission.
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Self-Compassion: Achilles Heel or the Key to Resilience?
The whole idea behind self-compassion is that if we can be more accepting -not complacent, more understanding-not dismissive, and more present-not ignorant of the past or future, we can be more resilient in our experience with hardship and failure because we are able to acknowledge the realities of our experience while still maintaining an ability to adjust and move forward.
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