How to Feel Successful Despite Your Imperfections

“I don’t feel intelligent enough.” 😞

I once had a coaching client who started off our call with this. Let’s call him Nakita.

Nakita was a senior leader in a global company who was able to calmly and logically tell me that he knows that he is an intelligent person.

However, whenever he gets feedback that implies that he is stupid for making a mistake, Nakita goes into an emotional spiral of shame, and inner mental self-flagellation (i.e., excessive criticism of himself). 😞😞😞

As we talked, it became clearer to both of us that the specific feedback that led to feelings of unworthiness about his intelligence only happened 1–2 times a year from a specific person.

This was an a-ha moment for Nakita to realize that he was letting himself be blindsided by something that only happened 1–2 times a year, and that actually for the past 9 years, he has been actively working hard on not letting negative feedback derail him.

“I’m now only letting in the really shitty ones, not all of them, and that’s PROGRESS.” ➡️

🤔 Have you felt this way before? Where you focused so much on what’s still wrong with you that you forgot to look at how far you’ve come?

I definitely felt this way before. A recent example was when I was beating myself up over not being able to complete all the front squat reps that my personal trainer had planned for me. When I fatigued out, I became visibly upset and said to my trainer, “Urg, I hate that I’m so weak!”

And he had to remind me that a few months ago, I didn’t even know that front squats existed. And now, I’m punishing myself for not achieving all the reps instead of celebrating the progress of the number of reps and weight increases I’ve already accomplished to this point. 🏋🏻‍♀️

When we continue to focus on what we are still bad at, what we haven’t achieved yet, and what we still need to do to get further in life, we will continue to feel like shit, feel like a failure, and feel unworthy. 😞

But if instead we focus on our progress, focus on how far we’ve come, and focus on what we have learned, we can feel successful and worthy from the inside! 😊

And guess what, an actual synonym for “success” is “progress”! (Yes, I looked it up in the thesaurus.)

💡So, the next time you catch yourself beating yourself up for not living up to your own standards, take a moment to reflect on your PROGRESS. ➡️

Instead of thinking, “I can’t believe I haven’t completed all my to-do list for the day. I’m so slow and lazy,” ➡️ try asking yourself, “Ok, but what DID I accomplish today? Did I move the needle on that big project?”

Instead of thinking, “Why am I so dumb at learning to code in this language?” ➡️ try asking yourself, “Ok but how much more do I know now about this language compared to when I started a few months ago?”

Instead of thinking, “Why do I suck; I can’t even make the cut-off to run in the Boston Marathon,” ➡️ try asking yourself, “Ok, but how much time have I improved since I ran my first marathon?”

The good news is, whenever I challenge a client to think of their progress instead of what they were still missing, they could always come up with something, which is a testament to the fact that we’re usually further along or better than we give ourselves credit for!

You might be thinking, “Ok Pylin, but I barely made any progress. So focusing on that still makes me feel bad about myself. Why am I not further along?”

I’m here to remind you that barely making any progress is STILL making progress! And if you continue to spiral in the negative self-talk and negative emotions that come with that, you won’t have the energy needed to actually progress even more and get closer to where you want to be.

💡 The possibility of noticing your progress and leaning into its optimism is always within you, and you can focus on your progress at any point of your journey.

It’s a cultivated state of mind necessary to feel worthy and at peace with yourself at any stage you’re in. 🕊

It’s a thought “muscle” that has been lying dormant, because you haven’t been exercising it regularly. Maybe you were raised with very critical parents, or maybe, like all other humans, your brain is wired to focus more on the negative rather than the positive.

But, as long as you start exercising the “focus on progress” muscle, it will get stronger, and you will feel better! ➡️

If you’re committed to focusing on developing your PROGRESS muscle, drop me the 💪🏻 emoji below!

Originally published on www.drpylin.com/blog on March 28, 2021