DO YOU MATTER?
Being an only child, I have a need to be included. There's a deep loneliness in me that I cannot fix, but I didn't learn that until much later in life. Earlier in my career, that meant I overworked myself because I used to think that being stressed meant I was important, or rather, needed.
Adding that I was ambitious and a perfectionist, I felt that work was my way to feel seen and valued.
We humans often do that because being part of a community is essential to both our survival and our thriving. The FOMO (fear of missing out) gets to us, and we say yes to more meetings than we can handle, or we add another assignment or project without taking something off the list. We keep working into the night because we have too much to do, yet we want to keep climbing, so we keep saying yes. Now there's nothing wrong with the ambition to climb, but doing good work and worrying about doing good work, is not the same thing. One mindset is focused on what we are doing, and the other is focused on what we are not doing or getting done, and that's the kind of stress that wears us out. What we worry about is also what we care about. So when we try to let go of worry at the end of the day, it can feel like we have to stop caring, which can trigger a feeling of letting go of control, which then may trigger us to worry more. Maybe you can relate.
These days the boundaries between work and life have blended and blurred because the physical space of work has moved to our devices and into our homes; however, the mental and emotional boundaries are the issue, not time and space. It's the worry we need to learn to work with.
MAKING FRIENDS WITH WORRY
We don't stop worrying about work just because the day is over. Learning to detach and let be is very uncomfortable, but it's essential to work-life freedom. Finding relief from stress is not about having less on our plate and less to do; it's about feeling that we are in control of getting it done and having agency over how it's done.
We don't burn out from working too much; we burn out from worrying too much and feeling that we don't matter.
I learned that my manager was an important part of this mindset. When my manager was supportive of my growth and encouraged me to think about how to best solve the problems, I had fun being busy, and I didn't want to stop. But when my manager was looking for ways to catch me in doing something wrong, I was anxious. All the time.
To make friends with worry, we need to recognize what triggers worry and reclaim agency over what we do about it. It's the dance between the inner critic and the inner coach.
THE C IN THE CARE FRAMEWORK IS COMMUNICATION
More specifically, self-communication, which leads to approaching your work and your worry with curiosity, courage, and care. Is your inner dialogue focused on what you are not doing and what you are not able to do, like an inner critical manager who is constantly telling you that you are not measuring up? Or is your inner dialogue like a supportive manager who shows you that you and your perspective matter and asks you what you need so that you can get your work done?
We all have some version of the inner critic, don’t we? It mainly shows up as the “I should have...” “I could have...” and “I would have...” thoughts we have after a long day when we are rehashing what went wrong, and we start blaming ourselves for not being on top of things.
As a result, we overdo, overwork, and over-perform, and we keep doing all of these things over and over again without rest. The inner dialogue is consistently beating us up as we go through our days on the “more, more, more” rollercoaster of the inner critic hoping that one day we will be enough, we will be perfect, we will belong, and we will be someone others care about. Maybe you know this inner dialogue too?
There are two sides to this. First, we need to recognize when the inner critic is in charge. Second, we need to recognize that we will never be enough to others if we don’t feel enough within ourselves. After all, it’s who we are that makes us great. And instead of having judgment of ourselves, we need some healthy self-compassion.
There’s a very big difference between the inner critic saying, “I am not good enough,” and our self-caring, self-compassionate self saying, “I don’t feel good enough right now.” Pause on that a bit and say these two sentences to yourself: “I am not good enough” and “I don’t feel good enough right now.” Does it feel different to you and in your body? Do you feel the energy change? Do you feel lighter?
When we say, “I feel that I’m not good enough right now,” we can start to be more curious about ourselves and the circumstances we are in. We can ask questions like, “What do you need so you can feel more confident?”
TURN YOUR INNER CRITIC INTO YOUR INNER COACH
Inside each of us, we have an inner critic and an inner coach. Which one we listen to is a decision we must constantly make, and it’s essential that we do so with care. To begin to transform our inner critic into our inner coach, we can use a 3-step process:
Pause and take a couple of breaths while bringing your attention into your belly as you inhale, and as you let go of the breath, focus on the exhale to ground and center yourself in your body.
Listen to yourself to notice where your mind is at. Is your inner narrator being critical or curious? Are you asking “why not” questions? Are you being hard on yourself? Be honest with yourself even if you are trying to convince yourself it’s for your own good.
Ask yourself: “What would my inner coach say to help me align with my current why this matters?” Remember, we are not looking for the big purpose here, just the little ones that get you through the day as a whole human.
Many of us feel like we need to fix ourselves. But in fact, we are not broken, so there’s nothing to fix. What we need is to discover ourselves. The new language we develop when we change our inner critic to our inner coach is key as it allows us to create change by making new choices that work better for us so we can get to where we want to go.
OF COURSE YOU MATTER!
It's a shift from feeling that we don't matter and that we just have to work harder to get things done and instead recognizing that it's how we think and solve problems that make us do good work.
Just being told what to do might help when we are stuck in a problem and cannot gain clarity to see our way through it, but to feel that we matter and are valued is an essential part of thriving, which means we need to learn how to think better, not just do more.
