Self-Love

By

The Real Reason You Aren’t Hitting Your Metrics

Have you ever had a vision for personal growth that really excited you? Did you love thinking about it, imagining this idealized version of yourself finally becoming real? But then, much to your chagrin, when it came time to take action you just couldn’t or wouldn’t do what was needed to bring the vision to life?

When we delight in visioning, but avoid or procrastinate taking action, we need to look within ourselves for this thing called shame. Shame is the feeling that we are not good enough. No one wants to talk about it, even though we all have it. Shame is often buried deep. We know it is present when we think these kinds of thoughts:

  • I will look like a fool if I do this.
  • I know this is going to fail, so why bother trying.
  • I’m not really clear about what to do, so I’ll fill my time with something else instead.
  • Doing this new things sucks. It’s hard. It doesn’t feel good. I’m not doing it anymore.
  • I can’t do this. I don’t have enough time, budget, connections, etc.
  • Yesterday these ideas felt powerful. Today they seem stupid, ineffective and wrong.
  • I’m wasting my time trying this. It’s better to stick to what I know.
  • I will take action when I have it all figured out in my mind. (Perfectionism.)
  • I can’t stop thinking about that one time I made a mistake. I failed. I was embarrassed. What if that happens again?

High performers get great results because they consistently take action toward their goals. Consistently taking action toward your goals creates measurable results. Not taking action, procrastinating action or taking wrong action keeps us from accomplishing our goals. When we aren’t reaching our metrics or when we can’t take action, we need to ask ourselves whether shame is the hidden culprit.

Shame thrives in secrecy. When we can speak our shame to a trusted confidante, an amazing thing happens. Its grip on us begins to lift. What felt dark and murky suddenly feels clear again. What felt impossible to accomplish suddenly feels worth trying again. When shame is brought to light, a path between vision and action reappears.

By

Improvement Versus Growth. Is It All Semantics?

Are your words diminishing your impact on your team? Let’s explore two employee evaluation conversations side by side, one from an improvement perspective and one from a growth perspective:

Here are some examples of evaluation statements using the word improve:

  • John, I would like you to improve the number of sales calls you make.
  • Tyrese, your ability to get projects done on time needs some improvement.
  • Sue, you need to improve your participation in staff meetings.

Here are some examples of evaluation statements using the word growth:

  • John, I would like you to grow the number of sales calls you make.
  • Tyrese, I want you to grow your time management skills this year and get more projects done on time.
  • Sue, I would love to see your involvement in our staff meetings grow.

How do you think the employees feel after the improvement conversation? Do you hear how the word improvement reflects the idea, “not good enough?” Hearing these kinds of statements can be very demotivating. When we feel not good enough, the mental chatter inside our head increases as does our resistance to change. Our focus is on self-justification and self-defense, rather than taking the action needed to make the situation better.

How do you think the employees feel after the growth conversation? Do you hear how the word growth is empowering, allowing someone to grow from their current abilities and performance, without implying that those abilities and performance are “not good enough?” Growth statements strengthen our inner desire to grow. We feel more positive and encouraged to try new things because we are also allowed to feel good about our past performance. We are more willing to stretch beyond our comfort zone. We are prepared to take action because we believe in ourselves and our abilities.

The words we use to lead do impacts our results. Word choice is more than semantics. Word choice reflects our level of emotional intelligence. By ditching the word improvement and using the word growth, you communicate to your staff that you believe in their ability to do more and be more. That belief turns into action which turns into results.

 

By

How To Surprise Yourself With Your Own Success: Cultivate a Growth Mindset

If we accept the fact that self-improvement stems from a lack of self-love and that it limits our results, the next question logically becomes, what do we do instead? The answer is to cultivate a growth mindset. A growth mindset stems from the roots of self-love and self-belief. It facilitates an expansion of one’s self, one’s capabilities and results.

This is what I love most about the work I do. I thrive on empowering others to accomplish results. When I initially meet someone, they are often hesitant to believe in their ability to change long-held habits. When those changes do inevitably happen, I often get a very excited phone call that starts with, “you won’t believe what happened.” I am never surprised by these phone calls. I easily “believe it” because I know the very reason the client has gotten shockingly positive results is because he has learned to believe in himself. He has cultivated a growth mindset.

When you have a growth mindset, you get results better than you thought possible because you are able to do the following three things:

  1. You embrace discomfort. You are willing take smart risks and make mistakes.
  2. You use the VAM (Vision-Action-Metrics) model to grow beyond your comfort zone.
  3. You bring your vision to life by completing your action steps within the planned timeline, which in turn increases your metrics.

When your thoughts are in alignment with self-love, it is a million times easier to take the necessary action steps to create the change you want. You let go of old habits. You stop worrying that making a mistake means you’re not good enough. When you do inevitably make a mistake or fail, you don’t get bogged down with feelings of failure and concerns regarding what others think of you.

A growth mindset starts with loving yourself exactly as you are and believing anything is possible. When you love yourself and believe anything is possible, you take the action steps to get what you want out of life. You are willing to take risks. If you don’t get the outcome you anticipated, you easily and swiftly try again. When you take this type of ballsy action consistently over time, it creates results that will surprise you. I guarantee it.

 

By

What if Self-Improvement Has Gotten You Good Results?

When I tell clients that self-love is the foundation for self-growth and maximizing their capabilities, I can almost read their mind in response. “Yeah, sure it is, Amie. It’s great that you can sit around cross-legged, reveling in self-love, but I have things to get done!  Goals to hit! Business to grow! Self-improvement might be bad for me, but it has gotten me good results.”

I understand where those thoughts originate. I work daily with clients who cling to the idea of beating themselves up to get good results because that is all they have ever known. I, too, used to be unable to separate my desire to be my best self from using self-punishing techniques to accomplish my goals.

I am sharing one of my own painful stories today to help you understand why self-improvement is actually keeping you from being your best. I want you to know, I get it. I get the desire to cling to self-punishment when you believe it has gotten you results.

In September 2009, I embarked on a food detox, bad-habit purging and spiritual fasting where I took practically everything away from myself, except the air I was breathing, in order to further my career and my life.

Here are the kinds of goals I wrote for myself:

  • You will wake up each day determined to take advantage of all the opportunities that particular day has to offer.
  • You will make a list of things you want to accomplish the next day and face them head on.
  • You will create a life map of places to go and things to accomplish. You will think about your ultimate destination and take the steps to get there.

Maybe that list doesn’t look so bad to you. Maybe you have a similar list. Read the list again and look for these things:

  • A dictatorial tone of what you will do.
  • A lack of belief that you will do these things. (If you really believed you were going to do these things, you wouldn’t have to write them down for yourself. They would naturally happen.)
  • Sentences written in future tense. (When we don’t love ourselves and don’t truly believe we’ll do something, we often write in future tense. We do this because we like the idea of the action step, but aren’t ready to do the work.)

Guess what results I accomplished? None! (Unless depression is a desirable result.) Before my detox, purging and fasting, I already had a good reputation in the community. I was already the top sales person at my company. Friends would have said I was a great wife and mother. I was already successful, but I couldn’t see that my beliefs and self-improvement techniques weren’t expanding my success, they were limiting it.

Fast forward to January 2016. Self-love is now the daily foundation for myself and my work. My results now are shockingly different from my past. I make more money. I work fewer hours. I influence top leaders across the country. I am happier. Way happier. I am present in my home life. I know that I can and will accomplish my goals, because I am working from a foundation of love and I truly believe in my ability to accomplish the goals I set.

I bet the same is true for you too. I bet you are already successful at work and in life. But, ask yourself, are you punishing yourself to get those results? Because if you are, you are not operating at your fullest capabilities. You too can do more. And it can hurt a lot less. While self-improvement may get you results, those results are nowhere near your true capabilities.

 

By

This year, Resolve to Ditch Self-Improvement. It is a Dangerous Habit.

Did you write a list of New Year’s Resolutions this year? If so, grab them now, wad them up in a big ball and throw them in the trash. You’ll thank me by the end of this article.

You want this year to be different, right? There are some things about yourself, your bad habits for example, that you really are ready to change? Right? Well, here is the one piece of behavioral change wisdom that no one has ever told you. Self-improvement has never helped anyone. Self-improvement is self-hatred in disguise.

Self-improvement starts with the thought process “I am not good enough.” When we feel not good enough we punish ourselves into being a better person. We attach ourselves to the sum of our bad habits and decide in order to prove our worth, we must let all of those bad habits go, all at once:

  • If we are good, we will make it the gym at 5 a.m.
  • If we are good, we will respond to all e-mails within one hour.
  • If we are good, we won’t lose our temper and yell at our children.
  • If we are good, we will make time daily to connect with our spouse.
  • If we are good, we won’t use television, wine and candy as a coping mechanism.

So, what happens when:

  • We wake up late and miss our morning work-out.
  • We have a day full of meetings where we cannot respond to e-mails within an hour.
  • We feel stressed so we come home and yell at our children.
  • We give our spouse a look that communicates clearly that connection time is not happening.
  • We lose ourselves in a television show while eating a box of hot tamales and drinking a glass of wine. (This is all theoretical, of course.)

When we don’t live up to the daunting task of “improving ourselves,” we give up. We cannot sustain the effort, because every mistake reinforces the very idea that prompted the journey; we are not good enough. This is why when people write a punishing list of self-improving New Year’s Resolutions, they give up by February 1. As humans, we can only sustain punishment so long before we give in. After all, this is why torture is used as a interrogation tactic.

In order to grow as a person and reach your maximum potential, you must learn to let go of the idea and practice of self-improvement. If you want different outcomes in your life, self-love is the only foundation that will get you there. When we believe that we are enough, exactly as we are, we have the energy and persistence to sustain the necessary effort for growth. We don’t attach ourselves to the outcome, because we already believe we are good enough. In other words, we can allow ourselves to make a mistake (like missing a workout) without feeling like a bad person.