Episode 105: Are you Worried About Losing your Edge?

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Dr. Melissa Smith 0:00
Are you worried about losing your edge? Are you worried about going soft if you’re too easy on yourself? Well, you’re not alone, but I have some skills that can help you sharpen your edge and stay on top of your game.

Dr. Melissa Smith 0:34
Hi, I’m Dr Melissa Smith. Welcome to the Pursue What Matters podcast where we focus on what it takes to thrive in love and work. So I can’t tell you how many times I have heard this concern from people that they are worried about losing their edge when it comes to success, achievement, work, and so they do the exact thing that will guarantee that they lose their edge, which is they push, push to burn out. They don’t take care of themselves. They don’t learn how to consistently use coping skills. Well today, let’s make sure that that doesn’t happen to you. So a question that I get a lot is some version of this. I worry that if I’m too easy on myself, I will lose my motivation to achieve, and I will no longer be successful. Will I lose my edge if I start taking better care of myself?

Dr. Melissa Smith 1:29
So this is a really common concern, and underneath this concern, really, we can see some roots of perfectionism, and we can see, really, what I see in this is a lot of fear, right? And for many people, the way that they, quote, unquote, achieve is by pushing themselves relentlessly. And here’s what’s true about that. In our society, people get rewarded for perfectionistic behavior, for being busy all the time, and so it’s a very common fear that a lot of high achievers have, a lot of leaders have, especially if you’re perfectionistic, because folks who struggle with perfectionism tend to use self criticism and fear mongering to motivate themselves, which is really what is happening with this question. But here’s what we know, and that is that fear based motivation is very ineffective, so it’ll work a little bit, but it’s way less effective than other forms of motivation, say, self compassion and self love.

Dr. Melissa Smith 2:37
So there is a lot of research that supports this fact, and yet, Old habits die hard, right? So just one quick example from the research. There was some research conducted on smokers that included health education that really prioritized fear based motivation, in which these health educators tried to scare the participants into quitting smoking by sharing all the health consequences of smoking. And we know, right, like from ads and everything else, it really doesn’t work. So you think it might work, but it didn’t. It did not work. And what they actually found with this research is it actually increased their smoking. So why was that, right? So there, I mean, there’s two interesting things here. First of all, okay, it didn’t, it didn’t reduce their smoking, but it actually increased their smoking. What is going on here? So this is what they found because of the scare tactic tactics, right? It increased the participants fear and anxiety. And what might you ask, did they do to cope with fear and anxiety they smoked. So talk about a backfire there. That is not great. So fear as a motivator does not work, and the same goes for criticism. When we try to motivate via criticism, it actually backfires because it increases our anxiety, which makes it harder to concentrate and perform at our best. Anyone who’s had a really hard high school coach knows this very true, very, very deeply, right that, and it’s like so miserable. It’s so miserable. And so this has been shown time and time again with athletes and students and leaders in every field imaginable. So you know, I always like to think about how you would teach a child to walk right and think about any kiddos that you have helped or seen learn to walk. How do you help them? It’s encouragement and love and positive talk. You have everyone in the room cheering them on.

Dr. Melissa Smith 4:36
You would never berate the child. You don’t scold the child. You don’t shame the child like every every approximation of a step is wildly celebrated by all within sight. And so we know this intuitively, and yet we tend to criticize ourselves and believe it will work, or that it’s what we need in order to be successful. And that’s. Really the insidious part, right? Like that, we really fall for this mistaken belief that we need to be hard on ourselves in order to be successful. And it’s not true. So you will not lose your edge if you, you know, start to take better care of yourself, or you engage some coping skills. Today, I’m going to talk to you about some leadership survival skills that are, you know, really help, designed to help you build a strong foundation of well being. And these survival skills, just like any effective coping skill, are designed to sharpen your edge right. So what happens when we push, push push is that we push ourselves to burn out, right?

Dr. Melissa Smith 5:40
So we any sort of foundation of health or well being or balance that we had has been eroded destroyed by pushing to the brink. And so when we think about the survival skills I’m going to introduce to you today, they are consistent with the research on self on self compassion, which has proven to be a much more effective motivator than self criticism. And so when we think about self compassion, it’s really, you know, people are able to set actually more challenging goals for themselves, and they’re more likely to accomplish their biggest goals. They’re also higher achieving than those who rely on self criticism as our primary motivator. So really, you don’t have to look any further than the research on self compassion to know that it is a much more effective motivator than is self criticism. And so when we think about three core components of self compassion, they include self kindness, right? We can be kind and gentle to ourselves a recognition of common humanity, that you’re not alone in your struggle, and other others can relate, and you don’t have to feel totally alone in that. And third is mindfulness, where we can hold our experience in balanced awareness, rather than ignoring our pain or exaggerating it.

Dr. Melissa Smith 7:00
So we stay away from those extremes. And so again, self compassion is a much better approach to helping us to set our biggest goals. And so, you know, a related question that I want to talk about before I introduce the leadership survival skills is, and this is a very common concern as well, is I don’t have any time like I’m barely surviving. How can you expect me to add more to my plate? So how am I going to make time for these leadership survival skills? How am I going to make time for coping? And then can you kind of hear the panic, right? The panic ensues at that point. So this is another paradox related to coping skills. I’m not going to tell you that they don’t take time, because definitely they do. They do take an investment of time on the front end. But here’s the thing, they pay very big dividends on the back end, and so, you know, it will take some trust to invest time for yourself, and it really is an investment. But you know, what do you have to lose? So you could choose burnout and misery, or you could invest some time in yourself and see that they might help. Of course, the alternative is to keep pushing hard, and, you know, barely holding on, which isn’t sustainable long term, right? It’s a very hard way to live it. We accumulate a lot of health consequences when we do that. And so this is the other thing. As you engage consistent coping skills, right? You build this strong foundation, your use of time becomes more efficient and more effective. You learn to manage your energy rather than trying to manage your time. And so while it feels like it’s a big time investment on the front end, what you will find is that you become more efficient and more effective, and that things you used to spend your time, you know a lot of time on will fall away. And you know things that you used to, that used to capture your attention, they’ll, they’ll just fall away in importance, because you’ll have greater clarity about what helps you and what hurts you. And so as you start to see the dividends of this investment, it becomes so much easier to prioritize your leadership, survival skills, your coping skills. And what is true is that we prioritize what we value. And so over time, you find that your priorities shift. You become more efficient because you have more focus and energy. You don’t spend your time on things that are unnecessary. You gain clarity about what matters, and so how you spend your time, shifts. And so these coping skills don’t necessarily take huge swaths of extra time. And so that is the good news. I think that’s always helpful, especially when talking to busy professionals, because the last thing you have more of is. Time, and so the invitation is to be more intentional with your time, to prioritize what really matters, and this includes these basic coping skills, and to focus in on these priorities. The good news is you can do this socially.

Dr. Melissa Smith 10:15
You can do this with others and not that’s a better bang for your buck, and as you, as you do, you’ll notice the fluff in your life falls away pretty quickly. So I hope you will consider how spending some time and energy on coping effectively can be really helpful for you. So before I jump into the leadership survival skills, right? One of the one of the questions that we’ve looked at over the past two podcasts is, are you thriving, or are you just surviving? And so I just want to talk briefly about some signs that maybe you are not thriving. Okay, so the first is a feeling of never good enough. And so right? We can strive for achievement as a way to compensate for not feeling good enough, which is really that’s a hard way to live when you feel you are barely holding it together, you’re more likely to perform pretend and perfect in order to manage that vulnerability and uncertainty.

Dr. Melissa Smith 11:18
Okay, so that’s the first sign a second sign that you’re not thriving is a focus on image management. So you maybe are afraid to let others see the real you, and so your focus becomes invested in image management. And I think we all know people like that where it’s like, wow, like if you’d spend half the energy on, you know, taking better care of yourself, and as far as rest and sleep and good connections, like maybe, maybe this other stuff could fall away. And so maybe you worry that everyone seems to have life balance figured out, and somehow you missed the memo. And I’m telling you you didn’t miss the memo. It’s challenging. But where we focus our priorities and our efforts really makes a difference. And then the third sign that maybe you’re not thriving is comparison. So you get trapped in comparison. Maybe you compare yourself to others, and you always come up short. Maybe you rely on caffeine to power through the day only to numb at night with whatever you might have on hand, right? So, Netflix, wine, ice cream, Pinterest, whatever it may be. And right, like when we’re binge watching on television or reality television or in a scroll hole, right? It’s so easy to compare yourself to other people, and you never you never add up, right? Especially if we think about glossy Instagram photos.

Dr. Melissa Smith 12:48
And the last sign that I want to talk about today that maybe you’re not thriving is imposter syndrome. So you feel less than you you’re struggling with confidence. You don’t feel competent, even in areas where maybe you’ve really thrived before. So you know you could be doing better. You know you could feel better. And you know, unfortunately, maybe you’re pretty hard on yourself as well. And so if you’re in this place, first of all, I’m sorry. Second of all, you’re not alone. There are things that you can do to help yourself and and that’s what we’re going to be talking about over the next couple of podcasts. But when we’re just in survival mode, right? We we pay a high price in the form of stress, poor help, high anxiety and loss of connection and spark, and so, you know that’s that’s very painful, but the the other side of that is you can feel selfish to even consider doing something for yourself, and I hope you don’t. I hope that you recognize just how important it is to take good care of yourself. And so the I’m gonna cover seven leadership survival skills. These are skills that we would consider foundational. We would not think about adding any other coping skills until we’re really dialed in with these, and the seven can really take your attention, right? And so don’t overwhelm yourself.

Dr. Melissa Smith 14:23
Maybe you just focus on one for now, but we don’t even look at any other ones outside of these seven until we’re pretty dialed in with these, because these are foundational, right? And then we can build other coping skills on top of those, but your consistent use of these foundational skills will help you to gain greater clarity about what matters and your role. It can help you to have greater sanity, right, so you can think more clearly. You have some goal directed behavior. You have goals. Yes, you have priorities, and third, it can help you have greater balance, so that you’re not constantly running on empty. And so that’s what we want to you know that that’s the prize as we think about these foundational skills. And so I just want to wrap up the podcast podcast today by sharing the seven leadership survival skills, and then join me in upcoming podcasts where we’re going to do a deep dive into each one.

Dr. Melissa Smith 15:30
So the first survival skill, they all start with us. So I try to be helpful with that. The first one is to simplify, simplify everything we can. Second is support. No one’s meant to lead alone. And third is self care. And I’m going to talk about specific regulating resources designed to really help with nervous system regulation. So that’s a really key skill that is part of helping us to thrive. And so three is self care, and then four are stories. So we all have stories in our head, and a lot of times our stories do not serve us. And so we’ll kind of help you get some clarity about some of your stories and how they may be serving them serving you, and how they may be undermining you. So that’s our fourth one, and then our fifth survival skill is to slow down. This one might be the hardest for busy leaders, busy achievers, because the message your whole life, or the belief has been you’ve got to push harder, harder, harder, and it’s not true. So learning to slow down, it can be harder than it sounds, but so helpful. And then six is sleep, right? We could put sleep at the top of the list, because if we are neglecting sleep, everything suffers everything, and we won’t stay alive much longer, that’s for sure. So six is sleep, and I’m going to talk about, you know, some specifics around sleep habits and sleep hygiene that can be helpful. And then seven is spirituality, right? Man does not live by bread alone.

Dr. Melissa Smith 17:06
So we think about connection to a higher purpose, connection to common humanity, connection to faith and religion. These these experiences bring us a profound sense of meaning and help us to be resilient in the face of life’s challenges. And so those are the seven leadership survival skills. Please join me in upcoming podcasts, and we’re going to do a deep dive on all of these and really help you understand them. And really, you know, the invitation is for you to consider maybe even just one or two that you would like to strengthen.

Dr. Melissa Smith 17:43
So head on over to my website to check out the show notes with the resources for this episode at www.drmelissasmith.com/260-losingyouredge. So one more time that’s www.drmelissasmith.com/260-losingyouredge I’d love to have you join my email list. You can do that at www.drmelissasmith.com I promise not to harass you once a week. I’ll let you know about podcasts and leadership thoughts that hopefully can be helpful for you in your leadership journey. I’d also love to have you join me on Instagram @dr.melissasmith where I always have more resources. And then I’d love if you subscribe and follow the show and give it a great review. That’s how more people find the show. In the meantime, I’m Dr Melissa Smith. Remember love and work, work and love. That’s all there is. Until next time. Take good care.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai