EPISODE 304: The Success Trap: When Striving for More Becomes Your Biggest Weakness

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Welcome to the Full Frontal Living Podcast. I'm Lisa Carpenter, master life Coach, two driven, ambitious humans who want more out of life without having to sacrifice themselves to achieve it. I'll share how it's possible to slow down, take better care of yourself, find more peace and ease, pressure to sustainable energy, stop procrastination and overwhelm and fall in love with your life, your business, and your body.

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This podcast is for you. If you're ready to learn what it takes to thrive as a high performer, do less but achieve more. Make you and your well-being a top priority and create your extraordinaire free life. I'm so glad you're here.

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Well, hey, hey. And thanks for joining us. Thanks for joining me for another episode of the Full Frontal Living podcast. Seems I've forgotten that I don't have a guest today. It's just yours truly here for this episode. And today we're talking about a topic that really hits close to home for me. So I wanted to share this with you and I wanted to break it down for you because I think there's some misconceptions around this.

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So the title of today's episode is The Success Trap When striving for more becomes your biggest weakness. And I know this firsthand because I lived from this place. So what we're going to be talking about today on this episode is the difference between being hard on yourself versus using self assessment for growth. And there is a massive difference between the two, but you may not realize that you're trapped in one versus the other, but you're telling yourself that you're not being hard on yourself.

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So let's dive in. This has been a story that people have been telling me for my entire life. You're too hard on yourself, so you're too hard on yourself. And as a high performer, somebody who is always, you know, looking to perform, I'm always looking to perform at my best. I've really had to look at when it's true, when I'm being hard on myself versus when it's not.

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So I'm going to share some stories throughout this episode about times when this happened and right off the bat, I can remember when I started competing back in the day and this was when fitness was actually bouncing around doing like high impact routines, which I was really, really amazing at. But, you know, it didn't matter how much praise or accolades I got from anybody watching my performance, I never watched them back because I always thought I could have done better.

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It was never good enough. And that is a perfect example of, you know, I saw I saw that as as I didn't see myself as being hard on myself. I thought I was chasing excellence and why wouldn't I? But in this episode, I'm going to review exactly why I was being hard on myself there versus being in this place of positive, positive growth or positive self reflection or a high performance debrief we can call it.

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So it's not about I want you to be able to listen to this episode and discern whether or not you are in this place of perfectionism, self judgment versus measuring your performance. And if you are growing because there's a difference between the two. And I want you to be able to know that for yourself, but also know that when somebody says something to you and this is something I think that this is the root of this episode is oftentimes I feel like I've been judged by people as being too hard on myself, yet they don't know the work I've done behind the scenes and they do not know my internal self-talk.

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So again, I will share more examples of this as we go through the episode. So first, let's start with the core distinction here around self-assessment or this high performance debrief, so to speak, of mindset versus being hard on yourself. So being hard on yourself is very judgment based. It means that there is a lot of self-criticism. It's basically rooted in I'm not good enough thinking, which I'm not good enough equals.

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I feel shame. So that's what the I'm not good enough story is. It is completely rooted in shame. It focuses on your mistakes and your shortcomings and completely ignores where you've excelled. So if I go back to my routines, they were so amazing. Like I had amazing routines, I had an amazing coach, but all I looked at was the things that I didn't do right, how I could do better.

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I never looked at, Well, you did great in this part. Listen, this part was amazing. And wow, not everybody can do that thing that you do. There was no celebrating anything. It was just all critical, critical, critical. So it uses harsh inner dialog when you're being hard on yourself. That was terrible. Versus how can I improve for next time?

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And it often leads to places of rumination, burnout, avoidance. And you know, avoidance really looks like perfectionism a lot of time. So that's when you kind of know you're being hard on yourself versus being in this place of a high performing, high performer debriefing their performance. So let's look into the self-assessment for growth. So this is what it looks like because it's improvement based.

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It's not criticism based, it's improvement based. So it comes from a place of curiosity and not judgment. It looks at both your strengths and your weaknesses objectively, so one doesn't get more attention than the other. So to speak, and it uses neutral or positive language. What can I improve versus That was awful. And that's the play. I look back now on my younger self and I'm like, I just want to wrap my arms around me because I was so incredibly like wickedly hard on myself.

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Nothing was ever good enough. And I'm going to talk about why we do this to ourselves. So this self assessment for growth, you can think of it as like the post-game analysis. That's how many athletes look at it, or a self review or I kind of like high performance debrief because that's what I'm doing. I'm debriefing my performance from a neutral place, and that is the key to not being you're hard on yourself.

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You have to view it from a neutral place. You it's about taking out the self-criticism, taking out the judgment, looking at it through a lens of curiosity. So over the past five years, I think I've said this a million times now, you guys must be so tired of hearing this. But over the past five years, my brain went through a lot.

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So when we have, you know, we'll call little T trauma things going on in your life, it really does impact your nervous system. So it can put you in this place of, you know, fight or flight freeze fun. And as a high performer, most of my life I've spent in this place of functional freeze. We can talk about that on another episode.

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However, when your nervous system goes offline, your body is not your body does not care about how well you can put your thoughts together. It cares about your survival, and it believes that your life is being threatened, even if it's not, even if it's an imaginary thing. This is what it does to your body. So in my mentors program, we do coaching every week.

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We lead groups of hundreds to thousands where I am sitting with people on a hot seat with a roomful of people watching me. And my job is to get in there, get under what they're saying, just like I do with my own 1 to 1 clients and get them a powerful shift in that session when they're with me.

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And what I noticed in 20, I don't know, probably 20, 22, 2021, my brain just wasn't as sharp. It was probably 2022. I was having a really hard time recalling things. I had a very hard time listening. So as I was listening to somebody, I'd have to be writing down what they were saying because two sentences in I forgot what they said already.

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So it was so incredibly challenging for me and this is still something I'm working through. I'm coming back into trusting myself, my words and my thoughts. But it was really challenging because I would get on calls and I would get off the call and I would so clearly be able to measure my performance on that day versus how I was able to perform the year before in terms of my sharpness and how quickly I got to the root of things.

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I really, really noticed this and so I was in a call with my mentor and a roomful of coaches as we were, you know, taking apart our coaching calls because this is how you grow. My mentor takes apart my coaches, my coaching calls to help me improve so I can become a better coach. It's amazing. Like what an absolute gift that I get that and I also hate it, but because it's about staying in that neutral place of taking feedback and not making it mean anything about me personally.

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So there's been a lot of growth for me just in that ring. But I remember I was sharing with everybody in that meeting what I had been noticing about myself and how I was struggling. Now to anybody watching my coaching from the outside, they did not see a dip in my performance. Fair enough. They're not they're not in my head.

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They don't they don't know like, only I can measure my performance against myself. So although I appreciate their feedback, I also have to do a self assessment and listen, there's nobody listening to this podcast, you know, You know, when you're not performing at your best, you know, when you're like, Oh, I've done this before and last time was better.

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And sometimes this happens even in the gym. There are some workouts that I'm like, Wow, I crushed at that time. And this time I'm like, What's like where did my strength go? Okay, So I know when my performance is not at a level that it's normally at. That is not me being hard on myself. That is me just doing a self assessment.

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So what happened in that moment is one of the other coaches spoke up and she said, Lisa, you're being so hard on yourself, you did an excellent job. And I remember I was so angry in that moment because I felt misunderstood. I felt like I wasn't heard. And what I was saying was not acknowledged because it wasn't about me being hard on myself.

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I was giving an honest self-reflection. I was coming at it from a place of compassion for myself. I wasn't beating myself up. There was no critical thinking. It was simply, this is what I'm noticing. And this feels hard for me. This is what I'm noticing. This feels hard for me. So when I was told you're being hard on yourself, I felt angry.

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And then I also felt shame, like I had done something wrong. Yet I knew I hadn't done anything wrong. I was simply in this place of expressing how I was feeling and looking for feedback. I don't always want people to high five me, especially when I know my performance isn't up to where I would love for it to be.

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Okay, so it was. It's not about punishment. So this self assessment, this ability to assess ourselves, it's not about punishment, it's about stepping into self-mastery. So what can I do to support myself in helping my brain come back online? So it was just really, really hard in that moment. But that is an example of somebody saying to me, You're being so hard on yourself, which they had no idea.

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I was not up in my head being critical. I was simply assessing where I was versus where I used to be and knowing how my brain used to turn things over super, super quickly. Okay, So let's talk about self-criticism and why we use it and why so many of my clients have used it as a strategy for a lifetime.

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And listen, this is where that line is, because I can cross into being hard on myself where I am being critical versus staying in this place of high performance debrief neutrality. So most of us, at least most of the men and women that come to work with me, they believe that being tough on themselves, they've been taught that being tough on themselves is how they move themselves forward.

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They have not been taught that using compassion is how you get ahead. They have literally learned their entire life that the harder they are on themselves, that equals discipline, that equals results. And we're often rewarded for that high performance. Do a lot of things in this world, and we have just learned like to go, go, go. But nobody taught us the healthy way to self-assess.

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So what I want you to know and what is really, really important for you to know is that research actually shows that self-compassion leads to higher performance outcomes. Say that again, Louder for the people in the back. Self-compassion leads to higher performance. Well, self judgment and criticism leads to a stress response. So that fight fight frees fun, which means you're going to perform way under where you can.

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And this was the place that I was at, right? I wasn't it wasn't the self judgment that had led to this stress response in my body. It was circumstances happening in my life, but it still impacted my nervous system in a way that I was not able to perform at my best. And I knew that. And I was trying to assess that.

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It wasn't about being hard on myself. So again, compassion, staying in that place of compassion, recognizing for me it was recognizing this thing is happening for me. I don't like it, I'm noticing it. And what do I need to do to support myself in moving forward so I can get back to being as sharp as a tack. So when this stressor spots kicks in, especially from this like self judgment place, we actually perceive failure as a threat.

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Now, when I say threat, obviously, unless your job is something that puts your life in danger, most of us are not going to die if we don't hit our goals, so to speak. But so many of us have have been taught that that failure is just not an option and that our I talk about this a lot love, safety and belonging being at risk.

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So when we see if our low performance was if our low performance was was seen as a failure, we could see that as a threat to our love, safety and belonging. And I know it might sound crazy as you're listening to this, but those are the underlying beliefs that drive everything. And fear is always attached to those things.

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So think about how you view failure. Failure when you were young. If you failed, how was that received by your parents, by your family? You may have learned to be hard on yourself from your family. You may have learned to be hard on yourself from your coaches. You may have learned to be hard on yourself from your peers, or you maybe have just always been hard on yourself.

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And you don't know where that self-criticism came from, but it's always been there. It really matters little. It's about how we're going to move forward. So it really limits your ability to accomplish and achieve the things, the big things you want in this world. If you're constantly working at a place of I'm not good enough judgment over what you're doing versus being able to sink into compassion for yourself and, you know, loving yourself through the process of achieving more in your life, even when things don't go your way.

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That is actually the key is can you show up for yourself? Can you meet yourself with compassion in those moments? And then so many people who are in this being hard on themselves, The pattern that shows up is perfectionism. So everything has to be just a certain way, which then put you into this loop of hesitation and avoidance.

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So in trying to be perfect to avoid the threat and being hard on yourself, you actually achieve nothing. So in trying to be perfect, you do nothing. So we wrap ourselves in this blanket of protection of perfectionism to try and protect us, but ultimately is going to limit any amount of success you can have in this world. Because perfectionism I mean, how do you even measure that?

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When is it good enough? And this is something in my own life that I've really had to work through because I used to be such a perfectionist at everything. I could show you old videos that I shot when I first moved my business online. You would think I was a robot and now my commitment is to show up and do it.

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Messy because I've realized that if I get into perfectionism, that's about me. It's not about the people I'm here to serve. So I love to show up messy and be real and stay true to who I am. And sometimes that makes me wildly uncomfortable. But here's the thing. You know, I will give you an example of little Miss Perfectionist Lisa back in the day.

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And it's funny because this is another stage story I just find as an athlete, I learned so much being in the gym, being on stage. There's such great metaphors that I can then bring into my regular life. So being an athlete always offers me opportunities for growth. And this is probably one of the first times that I realized how much I was getting stuck in perfectionism.

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I was doing one of my first big shows in Toronto. It was a national show and it was a big deal. Like I remember the girls backstage were the girls on the cover of the magazines back then Shape and Oxygen and and they were going up on stage and I was competing with them. I was competing against them.

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And I had been practicing my routine for months and months and months. And I was so ready to nail it and I was so excited and I was so hyped up. And I went out on stage and my brain went blank. Oh my God. Have you ever had a moment like that where your brain just goes blank? And I just it registered all over my face that I forgot my routine and I picked it right back up again.

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But the devastation like I had prepared for this show for months and months and months. And if you know anything about fitness competitions, oh, my God, the amount of weight training, dieting and now practicing a high energy, I think they were 92nd routines that by the end of it, you wanted to die. So it was like a one shot deal, get out on a stage, crush it.

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And I was crushed. I was so crushed I came off stage. I was so in this place of I wouldn't have named it shame back then. But I can now see I was totally in shame. Like I failed. That was awful. I wasted all that time and energy getting ready. I walked off stage, grabbed my girlfriend who I was competing with and I'm like, We're going.

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Like, I didn't want to go back on stage. We get halfway down the escalator and they call my name to go back out on stage as a competitor. Meanwhile, I'm halfway down the escalator crying my eyes out. So then I felt even more shame because I didn't know I'd have to go back out on stage again to be recognized as an athlete.

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It was awful. Now, the best thing that that came out of that and in fact, this is why I've never forgotten this lesson, because I believe it's in those moments where we fall flat on our faces, where things don't go as they're meant to. If we can meet ourself with compassion. And in this case, I was not meeting myself with compassion.

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I was being very, very hard on myself. I learned so much. I learned about the focus it takes. So don't get myself too hyped up before I got on stage and that nothing is a big deal unless I make it a big deal. And ironically, when the video showed up months later and I was terrified to watch it because I was like, Oh my God, I'm so embarrassed when I watched it.

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If I didn't know where I'd made the mistake. And other than the look on my face, nobody would have known. I was just like, it was such a face power moment for me. Nobody would have known I'd made a mistake, but I registered it across the board with all the judges, everything, which is a real shame. But I learned so much from that, right?

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Like, don't make everything such a big deal, Lisa. You do not need to be hard on yourself. Like, I could have walked off and been like, You know what? 99% of that routine was bad ass. And that 1%, that's what I need to work on. I also didn't have to, like, just be so hard on myself, like, you're failure.

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I walked off that stage feeling like I was a failure. That's what it looks like to be hard on yourself. So I have learned in every moment everything that happens, whether it's in my business or on the stage or in the gym, that the biggest gift I can give myself is to reflect, to learn, not to attach anything to my own personal self worth of eyelashes going in my eye.

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Okay. And we carry on. So let's talk about the science of self-compassion session and peak performance, because it actually is a science and my eyelashes just fell off. So if you're watching the video, let me just just hold, please. Well, that was awkward. Anyways, we are back. I said I just keep it real here. I don't I don't have time to get into criticism about anything, but this is why I'm I'm recording this episode.

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Like, just keep going. So the science is self-compassion and peak performance. So there's a research out from Dr. Kristin Neff, and she actually states that self-compassion isn't self-indulgent. It is a performance strategy. So think about that firm for a minute. Compassion is a performance strategy. So just right there, I had a whole flub eyelash fall off, had to pause the recording.

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I don't care. I'm not beating myself up about it. So that means I can just come back and drop right back into the flow of this episode and keep going. That is a performance strategy where if any of you were caught in perfectionism, you would have had to start at the beginning. The whole thing was a waste of time, yada yada yada.

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I'm sure I don't have to tell you this because I know that you can hear the voices in your head. I don't have to point them out to you. So it's about learning without shame. It's about staying out of that. I'm not good enough place and allowing yourself to be in a place of learning. Of course I'm learning.

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Of course there's going to be mistakes. Of course I'm going to do some things great. And of course some things are going to need improvement, but I don't need to be critical about it. I can be compassionate with myself, so high achievers, high performers, whatever you call yourself, we benefit from structured reflection, not self judgment. I mean, think about if you've got children, right?

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If you're constantly judging them, are they going to feel good about themselves? But if you give them positive reinforcement, if you ask them, how are you feeling proud of yourself, or if you tell them that you're feeling proud of them, their little chest puffed up and they they just like it's like they grow an inch. So you think about the impact that the conversation you're having with yourself, being hard on yourself all the time, how that's impacting your confidence, how that's impacting your self-worth.

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Because the words you say to yourself day in and day out, create your reality. So if you see the impact of being critical on a child, what it does to them and you are, what am I? What's the word I want to say? If you aren't being honest about realizing that it has the same impact on you. So when you are critical of yourself, it has the same impact on you as it would to somebody else.

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Like you're not immune from criticism Just because it's your own your own criticism is the worst criticism. And I would even argue to say, is that critical voice in your head that's being so hard on you? Is that your voice or is it the voice of your mom, your dad, a coach, a teacher? Consider that for a minute.

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Have you ever stopped to think whose voice is this? Because that can change everything. So elite athletes, CEOs and creatives use neutral self review rather than harsh self-talk. And this is the place I'm at in my life. And this is why I get so annoyed when people tell me I'm being hard on myself because again, they don't know the level that I'm working at.

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And this self assessment is actually is what is allowing me to grow my business faster, to step into bigger opportunities because that doesn't happen when you're being critical of yourself all the time. So it creates greater success here that. So I want you to really check in with yourself. Now let's just pause here and check in with yourself.

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Would you consider yourself to be self-critical and hard on yourself, or are you seeing yourself as being in this positive, healthy, neutral place of being able to debrief your performance, whether it's at home, work, school, athletic fields, whatever it may be? Truly consider that for a moment. So I want to give you I want to just pause here, because I want to give you a framework that I use that I learned from a coach years ago about how to have a healthy assessment, how to help, how to be in a place of healthy, reflect, open about your performance so you can stay out of that critical thinking and work it, work at it from a

00:26:15:25 - 00:26:40:18
more positive perspective. So the way that I look at this is, okay, Lisa, what worked? What didn't work? What can I celebrate? Because listen, if you want to be a high performer who achieves peak levels of success, you got to be able to celebrate yourself. And if you're not willing to look at what you did amazingly well, give yourself a high five.

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Celebrate those wins you're going to be constantly chasing. Not good enough. Still, a big part of coming into this neutral space is is being able to celebrate those wins. And a lot of my clients really struggle to celebrate their wins because they are working from this judgmental or critical place. So what worked, What didn't work? What can I celebrate and feel proud of myself for?

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So you can do this daily, You can do this weekly, you can do this monthly. I personally like a self-assessment, you know, every couple of days I'm always assessing. Now, I don't necessarily need to sit down and formally go through it. You know, at the end of the day, I just kind of self-reflect on I ask myself those questions and I look for what I can improve on, but I also look for what I can celebrate and win with.

00:27:26:13 - 00:27:47:09
So you can also come at this from like, What did I do well, which that acknowledges your strengths, right? What worked? What are you you want to acknowledge as strengths? What could I improve? So when we look at it as like what didn't work or what can I improve? This frames challenges as a learning opportunities instead of I got it wrong.

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I'm a failure. It's what can I learn from this so I can improve? And then what is my next step? So I say like, what can you celebrate and feel proud of? But this is actually the third step is like, what is the next step? How do I move forward from here? What can I take from this? So if I go back to that story I was telling you about coaching in the group where I felt like I couldn't find my words, what I had to keep coming back to time and time again is, Lisa.

00:28:14:17 - 00:28:40:26
You can trust yourself. And even if you are not working at 100%, my 90% is still better than most people's 100%. As a coach. That's just that's just the reality. I and I know that and I had to just come back to that because the longer I kept measuring myself against where I used to be versus where I am today and being critical about that, the more I just kept stuck, stuck in this loop.

00:28:40:28 - 00:29:07:22
And that was probably the first time in a long time where I, I was really waffling back and forth, being in this place of like constructively assessing and also straddling this line of being critical. But for that specific story, when I was sharing that, I wasn't being critical. I was in a place of self-reflection and looking to be heard and acknowledged, and I was met with, You're being too hard on yourself, which did not feel good.

00:29:07:24 - 00:29:29:18
Okay, So, so this is a framework that I use. And I mean, it happens all the time. We threw a masterclass a couple of weeks ago. We didn't really get any sign ups for it. Other than the people who are already inside my reclamation program, because you may not know inside Reclamation, which is my hybrid group, 1 to 1 container every month I do.

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I teach a class on something and we sell it to the public. But this time we didn't have anybody sign up, so they beat myself up. I didn't beat my team up. We just looked at what's working, what's not working, how do we want to change things? And then, okay, we're moving forward with it. I still thought I did a great job teaching the class.

00:29:45:15 - 00:30:14:08
The content was amazing. Too bad you missed it. You can catch the replay though. I'll put the link down below if you're if you're interested in it. And then we've got a new master class coming up that you might be interested in as well. Right? So we just move forward. Nothing bad happened. All right. So I wanted to also give you some real world examples of kind of growth oriented reflection and these are people that, you know, are top level in their field.

00:30:14:08 - 00:30:38:09
So if you look at Serena Williams, she has learned how to reset herself mentally after mistakes instead of obsessing over them. If she obsessed about mistakes, she wouldn't be obsessing about the things that she she's doing super, super well. Obviously, she's a world class athlete. Michael Jordan, He didn't see failure as a personal weakness. Right. Say you miss 100% of the shots you don't take.

00:30:38:09 - 00:31:06:15
So he took a lot of shots and he missed a lot of shots. But for him, it was just data for improvement. And I think that that is such an important point when we start to remove our emotions from things and we look at things as data points, how can we learn and grow from this so powerful? And then of course, Brené Brown, who's one of my personal favorites, she talks about how shame kills performance, literally shame kills performance stocks that I'm not good enough story.

00:31:06:17 - 00:31:33:02
Well, self awareness builds it. So although it can feel frustrating some days to have such a high level of self-awareness, I'm like, How can I use this for tool as a tool for good versus a weapon against myself? Because like I said, I'm not saying I do this perfectly. There are some times where I'm critical of myself and I have to switch myself back into that place of self assessment of positively debriefing.

00:31:33:02 - 00:32:03:07
What's going on. So let's go into self-criticism, to growth oriented reflection and how you can change this for yourself. So again, when you catch yourself in self-criticism or being hard on yourself and you want to move into this like growth oriented perspective, here's some of the internal language that you can look at changing. So instead of saying, I should have done better, you can ask yourself, What can I learn from this?

00:32:03:09 - 00:32:22:21
Because in everything there's something to be learned. I am so grateful that I made that minor mistake on stage because it taught me so much about performance and focus and what I needed to do to get myself in the zone and that you know, most of the time we're making big deals about things that just aren't a big deal.

00:32:22:25 - 00:32:50:16
And if you're always going for perfect, you're always going to fail. So focusing on weekly check ins, both on the things that you've done really well, your successes, your wins and things you've improved and detaching from the other stuff. And in fact, if you want a really powerful tool over the dinner table, instead of asking your kids like, Oh, you know, tell me about your day, ask them what was the worst part of your day to day?

00:32:50:24 - 00:33:09:00
What did you fail at today? What really sucked for you today because of what you're teaching them? Then, is that they can be neutral about those things. They can have conversations about them and be self-reflective and you can guide them back through this conversation around, okay, well, what can we learn from that? Like, don't tell me about all the good things you did all the time.

00:33:09:06 - 00:33:33:18
That's amazing. Like, let's celebrate those two, but let's also celebrate the things that you really sucked at and felt hard that maybe, you know, somebody else was seemed like they were doing better and you were up in your head about it. Have the deeper conversations because this is what neutralizes it. And if we can neutralize the level of criticism and judgment for future generations, oh my gosh, how powerful will they be?

00:33:33:20 - 00:34:01:09
So another another tip that you can use is review yourself as if you were listening to your best friend. And if your best friend if you wouldn't let your best friend be shitting all over herself, then what would cause you to to be open or tolerate that within yourself? That's a great perspective to come at it from. Like if I wouldn't sit and listen to somebody else be this harsh on themselves, then what's causing me to be that harsh with myself?

00:34:01:09 - 00:34:24:07
And what do I hope to win from that? Like, what do you hope what do you hope to gain from being so hard on yourself? If that's the pattern you you've used all your life, At some point these are the patterns that will deter you from that next level of success that you want. Coming back to what I said, self-compassion leads to higher levels of performance.

00:34:24:07 - 00:34:48:13
Self-criticism does not. So as much as you've told yourself, being critical of yourself will move you forward. Maybe you did till now, but things only work until they don't, because the next level of success requires you to be the next version of yourself. Okay, Normalize your mistakes, their data, etc. That's all it is, right? Feelings are not facts.

00:34:48:15 - 00:35:05:29
So watch that. You're not going down the rabbit hole of your emotions. And I'm not saying like don't acknowledge what you're feeling. You know, I'm I'm all here for feeling our feelings. But I've also had to learn that feelings are not facts. And I need to look at things, specific things as data so that I can zoom out and feel neutral about it.

00:35:05:29 - 00:35:26:02
And when we can feel neutral about things, we have way more power to make decisions over them or to assess them in a different way and shift from this fear of feeling What if I feel, well, what if that thing that didn't go the way you wanted it to go is ultimately the thing that leads you to the success that you want.

00:35:26:04 - 00:35:49:25
Like fall in love with the journey of learning. Fall in love with falling on your face. Because I guarantee you the hardest times, the all of the moments when I look at that were the hardest for me or had the big the biggest like, you know, quote unquote failures. None of them were failures. They were the things that were the catapult to the next level of my career.

00:35:49:27 - 00:36:23:10
I've had this happen both personally and super powerful. So that's what I wanted to leave you with. You know, it's it's 99% of the time. Okay, let's 95% of the time. Okay. 90% of the time I am in a place of self-assessment versus being hard on myself and I think that that is so powerful. And I don't ever expect myself to be at 100% because I'm not aiming for perfect.

00:36:23:10 - 00:36:52:22
I'm I'm always aiming for better than I was before even 1%. So even if you could get yourself to a place of that getting out of judgment and into this place of like wild curiosity for assessing yourself, you are going to be so much more powerful. And I've done this over and over and over again. And let me tell you, being in the fire with my mentor, like I said, every week, he would take my coaching call and he would break it down.

00:36:52:27 - 00:37:15:00
He would go through each hotseat. You missed this and you miss this. And this is where we need to tighten this up. And I hated it. I hated it. I would get off those calls and I would be like, Why did I miss this? How could I be better? But I took his feedback and I learned from it and I applied it and I would immediately go out on the next call and then put into action the things that he had shared with me.

00:37:15:02 - 00:37:34:08
And I went from this place of being so judgmental to now in a place of I have learned so much from that. And let go of the criticism because of course I had to, because those calls were killing me. So I had to move into a place of like, Lisa, can you just stay compassionate like this is not personal.

00:37:34:08 - 00:37:56:00
He's not personally attacking you. He's telling you you're doing a great job and he's teaching you how you can do a better job. So when I let go of the self criticism and I stepped into this is about me learning how to be a better coach, that's exactly what happened. And now I can be on those calls in a relatively neutral space I still don't love.

00:37:56:02 - 00:38:16:16
This is still an edge for me and there's other layers to this. But you know, for the most part I can remain in a neutral place, take take feedback, which now, you know, most of the feedback I get is you did an amazing job, which feels awesome, but I don't even need him to tell me that because when I get off calls, I self-assess and I'm like, You know what?

00:38:16:16 - 00:38:43:17
You did a great job. So even if the next call, he's like, You missed this or you missed that, I still stay in the pocket of overall, I did a great, great job. So we'll leave it at that. So clothing, clothing, my goodness, not clothing, clothes. In closing thoughts and takeaways for you, being self-reflective is the opposite of being self-destructive.

00:38:43:20 - 00:39:08:16
Okay. So being self-reflective is going to allow you to grow. And when you are being critical, you are being self-destructive. You are being abusive to yourself, and you will stunt your success. So that next level you want to go to, it's not going to happen for you if you keep picking up the stick and beating yourself up. Improvement requires honesty, not cruelty.

00:39:08:18 - 00:39:26:03
So again, you know, if you wouldn't speak to your kid in the way you're speaking to yourself, if you wouldn't speak to your best friend in that way, what is causing you to tolerate that in yourself? What makes it okay for you to do that to you? If you would lose your noodle, if you heard your kid talking to themselves in that way?

00:39:26:05 - 00:39:46:11
Listen, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but if you are being self-critical all the time, you are teaching your kids how to be critical. So if you are telling them how amazing and awesome they are, well, at the same time you're criticizing yourself, so you're doing one thing but saying another and you're incongruent between your words and your actions.

00:39:46:14 - 00:40:07:11
Your kids will pick up on that and it doesn't matter what you say to them. They will hear how you're talking to yourself and they will model that. So if you can't do better for yourself, consider what it is you're doing to the next generation. I'll just like put that knife in and twist it a little bit. Your performance will grow when you replace judgment with insight.

00:40:07:11 - 00:40:32:20
So again, curiosity for the win, compassion as a business growth strategy so, so powerful. So the goal isn't about lowering your standards, it's optimizing how you meet them. So I hope that that lands with you. I would love for you to you know, in listening to this episode, I'd love for you to assess your own self-talk. I've given you lots of tools how to do that.

00:40:32:22 - 00:40:55:18
Are you truly reviewing your performance or are you actually punishing yourself and being hard on yourself? So I hope now you can really see the difference between the two and you can see where maybe sometimes you are and sometimes you aren't. What is your percentage? Are you 90% critical of yourself and being hard on yourself and only 10% in that place of compassionate self-reflection?

00:40:55:24 - 00:41:23:23
And can you swing it the other way slowly? Where can you start to release perfectionism? Because you see now that that is a mask that you wear to cover up these critical thoughts like perfectionism and being hard on yourself. They like go hand in hand, they go hand in hand. And I would love for you to just look at one one just one area of your life where you can shift from self judgment into self-awareness.

00:41:23:26 - 00:41:47:00
So you have to look at every area of your life. Let's not you know, let's not overdo it here. Let's set your let's set you up to win. Pick one area of your life where you can start to slowly shift from self judgment to self-awareness. And if you constantly stay in self judgment, I want you to really ask yourself, what is the best part of being so judgmental of myself all the time?

00:41:47:05 - 00:42:07:11
Because we do not do anything unless we benefit from it. And before you say, Well, I don't get a benefit from it, you do. And this is part of the work is slowing yourself down, really sitting with that question. And it's usually the things you get to avoid doing that cause you to hang on to a behavior. So I'll leave you with that.

00:42:07:13 - 00:42:29:17
We will put some links in the show notes. We have another master class coming up in April. It's called the Success Paradox, and it's about diving into all the patterns of behavior that got you to where you are. But now are inhibiting your success at the next level. And that is, man, when we can knock those bricks down, the the heights that you can climb to are amazing.

00:42:29:20 - 00:43:00:23
If this podcast resonated with you, please share it. And if you haven't left a review, I would so love if you would do that. Reviews are like podcast currency. It helps other people find my podcast and we are in a season of growth. It's all Lisa all the time. How far reaching can this work go? So if you resonate with me and you believe someone else would, I would so, so greatly appreciate it if you could leave that reading and review even if you left your review once upon a time, go back and leave another one.

00:43:00:25 - 00:43:25:08
I mean, we've grown a lot over 300 episodes. And then lastly, the last thing I will tell you about is I am accepting our clients in April, mid April. So if that is something that you are interested in, head to. Lisa Carpenter, Dot K forward slash WW and you can fill out an application. We've got programs like Reclamation, you can check those out on the website and I've got high level 1 to 1 coaching packages.

00:43:25:08 - 00:43:52:02
So we have different containers or opportunities of coaching with me that you may not have yet explored and it's probably time. So let's get you to that next level of success. Let's get you to that next level of fulfillment and ease and feeling good about yourself, feeling great about your life, feeling like you are actually in control of you and your circumstances.

00:43:52:05 - 00:44:16:19
That is what I want for you. So until next time, have a fantastic week. I am off to Fiji. I will probably be recording an episode from there and I may also just lie on the beach and read books for two weeks and enjoy myself. But I do love to travel, I do love adventure, and as soon as my environment changes, I often have these like radically wild downloads that I can't wait to share with you.

00:44:16:19 - 00:44:28:10
So until the next episode, thank you for listening. Thank you for being here. Thank you so much in advance for sharing. I appreciate you so much and I will catch you on the next episode.

00:44:28:10 - 00:44:49:15
Hey. Hey. Before you go, I'd like to ask you something. How much longer are you willing to put yourself last to keep pushing through, hoping things will magically change while feeling exhausted, overwhelmed, and disconnected from the life you truly want. Tell me if this sounds like you. From the outside. Most people think you have it all figured out.

00:44:49:20 - 00:45:10:13
But the truth is that on most days you feel like you're barely holding it together. Your life is full of responsibilities and there's a high demand on your time and energy. You know you can't drop the ball yet. You're terrified it's going to happen. And worst of all, you're already taking the hit because you often end up at the bottom of your to do list.

00:45:10:15 - 00:45:43:20
You've achieved so much, yet deep down, what you want most is more ease, more fulfillment, more joy, more you. And that is exactly what reclamation is all about. This isn't just another program. It's your opportunity to finally break free from the patterns that are keeping you stuck and step into a life that feels aligned, intentional and fulfilling. It's a safe space to have conversations that matter with women who get you and share your complicated relationship with vulnerability.

00:45:43:22 - 00:46:10:09
Imagine having the support, the tools and the accountability to create real, lasting change where you're no longer just surviving, but thriving. So if you're done with feeling stuck, overwhelmed, and constantly running on empty, it's time to take that first step. Head to Lisa Carpenter, dot K forward slash reclamation and say yes to yourself, yes to the life you know you're meant for.

00:46:10:09 - 00:46:17:29
Because if nothing changes, nothing changes. As I'll see you on the inside.