Welcome to the Stop Sabotaging Your Success Podcast, episode thirty-four. I’m your host, Cindy Esliger. This is the podcast focusing on what we can do today to take control of our careers and overcome the inevitable barriers to success that we encounter along the way. 

We share stories with one another to build connection. One way of giving meaning to what we experience is to make up these stories we tell ourselves. We then make it make sense by reshuffling things, leaving things out, emphasizing certain things and skimming over others. We then begin to hold onto these stories we’ve created really tightly. They become pretty rigid in our minds. Sometimes we’re convinced that they are the truth. 

In this episode, we look at these stories we tell ourselves because sometimes we forget that it’s just our version of events and not necessarily the truth. It’s our interpretation and it may not be anybody else’s reality. Sometimes we’re not actually that open to different perspectives or another way of seeing these events or circumstances. It’s real to us. But we can sometimes get stuck in a dysfunctional story, while it could be much more helpful to shift that into a more constructive space. 

In creating these stories, we have to remember that things are never as simple or as black and white as we make it. There’s always more to the story, more options or alternatives to consider. It’s a good time to recognize where we’re making assumptions, to be curious about other perspectives, because most likely there’s other information that exists that could change the story one way or another. 

The stories we are telling ourselves may encourage a victim mentality or create more anxiety than we already have. Consider the possibility that there’s a more empowering version of that story where we are the hero rather than the victim. It’s not about waiting to be rescued. 

Maybe you’ve heard the saying, “Action is the antidote to anxiety”. It’s about doing something rather than deciding that you have no choice in the matter. It’s time to take responsibility for your results and recognize that there’s so much you do have control over. 

We tend to remember our past in an idealized way where everything was great, but I hate to be the one to burst your bubble, they were not the good old days. Going back to the way things were is not the answer. When the ending looks just like the beginning, it means there was no growth, no learning, no innovation, and no development. There’s no going back. It’s water under the bridge now. 

There’s a lot we can learn from our past. I’m sure we all have things that have happened that we wish would’ve gone differently. Recognize that and learn and grow from it. Develop a more future-focused outlook. It might be a good time to explore the adversity we faced and decide what we are meant to learn from it. 

There are six ways to make the stories we tell ourselves more constructive. 

1. add complexity
2. invite curiosity 
3. do something
4. take responsibility
5. design a better future
6. develop resilience

Now going back to number one, add complexity. Pay attention to all the things that you already know about the situation but haven’t featured in your story. Things that got lost along the way, but they are still there somewhere. You can still access them. This is the information that can fill in the gaps in your story without having to make those assumptions that we all make so readily. 

We tend to over generalize. We want to understand what happened and how we got to this place. It’s about reflecting on the events that transpired and how that made you feel. We tend not to include much about what we’ve done, the choices we’ve made, or the replies we’ve given. 

I’m not saying that we created the problem, but there’s always a lot more going on and I’m sure we’ve contributed to the situation in some way. Maybe there were different choices that we could have made. It’s about looking in all the nooks and crannies of our story and collecting more information.

What this more complex version of events gives us is more choices in how we respond. But choices are hard. It’s much easier if we have someone who comes in and sorts everything out for us and we just sit around thinking, poor me, the helpless victim of whatever is happening around me. Someone else then has the responsibility of dealing with it. 

But if we can acknowledge complexity, it opens up our choices. And then, if we are brave enough to make a choice, we become empowered. This gives us the capacity to learn, grow, and develop. Even if the outcome isn’t great, and even if the choices are limited, at least we can feel like we made the decision. 

Number two, invite curiosity. When we increase the complexity of our story, it tends to move us from a sense of certainty, to being much more uncertain of exactly what happened. The story is no longer as simple and straightforward. We recognize that there were a lot of other things going on, and that can then make us second guess some of our assumptions. 

When you’re certain you’re in the right, that you are the good guy and they are the bad guy, it feels good. We don’t want to let go of that. We’re sure that we did the right thing, the only thing that we could do in that situation, but maybe it’s time to question that. How could I have contributed to this in some way? 

We thought it was so clear, but maybe now it’s not so straightforward. This can be quite disconcerting. We may begin to realize that our story of the events isn’t the whole story of what happened. It’s about encouraging this uncertainty, not to make us feel bad or create worry, but to encourage curiosity about the many other perspectives, about what else we might not know that might be useful to consider in this situation. 

It’s time to get inspired to ask ourselves some questions. To gather more information in recognizing that there might still be things we didn’t consider. All of a sudden the story might become different from what we thought it was, or sometimes the issue we thought was there disappears altogether. Maybe we were just on different wavelengths and maybe there was actually no conflict here at all. 

Certainty is a really dangerous place to be. 

When you recognize some unknown, ask yourself what difference it would’ve made if you knew more about that or if you knew for sure. It’s not about adopting someone else’s perspective, but simply being open to understanding that there might be a different way of looking at the issue. 

Ask yourself what other information might exist that you don’t know about. Even if you can’t name something, which you probably can’t without further investigation, it makes you realize that there could be more out there, that the other person might have some very important information that you don’t know that could absolutely change things. 

Number three, do something. Now is the time to go from being a passive observer to being an active participant. Those who tend to be passive are often rewarded because if you don’t do anything, you can’t do anything wrong. But being passive actually works against you in the long run. It can create a situation of learned helplessness if it goes on for too long. 

We can all find examples of where we’ve made choices in the past. Often it doesn’t feel like we made a choice, but if you responded in some way, you actually did make a choice. Maybe it was to bite your tongue and not say that snarky remark that popped into your head. While it may not have felt like a choice at the time, but it is what you really wanted to say, but felt you couldn’t say, you get to reframe that as a choice. Now, I’m not saying that in hindsight there might have been an even better choice, but at the time you made a smart choice. 

Doing nothing is a choice. You chose not to escalate the situation, so now you can look for opportunities to act. What things could you do to improve the situation for yourself, to take some sort of action? While it might not be enough to resolve the situation, it could be a step in the right direction.

It’s an important shift from feeling powerless to feeling like you have some control over what’s going on and what will happen next. Lots of people will tell you what you should do, but it has to be your choice in order to reclaim your sense of power. It’s that sense of confidence you need to build, that you have the skills to handle it yourself. You want to reinforce that sense of power. It’s recognizing that you already know what you need to do. 

And number four, take responsibility. It’s about learning from the experience, the good and the bad. And then using that to move forward. And use that information to do better in the future. How did your actions contribute to the outcome? What could you do differently next time to possibly avoid this situation altogether?

If the ending looks just like the beginning, then everything goes back to status quo, and then there’s no learning. What you do with what you’ve learned is up to you. No one’s coming to save you. You have to figure it out for yourself as best you can. It’s not going to be perfect, but you do have an opportunity to avoid making the same choice, to avoid putting yourself in that same situation. You have an opportunity to change the ending, to turn it into something better for yourself. 

If it’s too late to fix things or to manage things effectively, then the best you can do is learn from your mistakes. We tend to get stuck in that very simplistic, narrow version of events where we’re the helpless victim and someone else is the bad guy. It’s time to move into a version of events that’s more self-reflective and more open to possibilities because more than likely, there’s another version of those same events. 

See it as an opportunity to notice things that you weren’t paying attention to before. You just never know how all this other stuff might be really useful in you managing this situation better the next time. 

Number five, design a better future. We all have fantasies that our challenges would go away if people would just act in the way that we want them to, but we can’t go back to an idealized past either. So shift your focus from what went wrong, to what you can learn from it, to move forward. 

Be optimistic, not idealistic. It’s not about pretending that your pain can be completely alleviated. You’re not going to magically go to work and always have supportive colleagues who value your work and show you the respect you deserve. You’re never going to get along with everyone. There will still be moments that are unpleasant, so we need to learn and manage our thinking and what we’re making it mean about us. 

Completing the past is an essential part of designing a better future. It’s about harnessing the power of backward thinking for ourselves. We can’t complete the past until we acknowledge what we’ve already experienced, because an experience is not complete until it’s remembered. 

Backward thinking allows us to learn and grow. Whatever we have experienced over the last year or so must be addressed. Sometimes we live inside unhelpful stories we tell ourselves. We nurse grievances to justify our current actions. We feel undervalued because we were slighted or disregarded in some way. If we don’t get resolution, we end up dragging all of our unfinished business into the future. It will sabotage everything we’re trying to build going forward. 

Here’s a four-step process designed to help you deal with setbacks and frustrations. 

1. state what you wanted to happen
2. acknowledge what actually happened
3. identify what you wish you could have done more of
4. change your beliefs and adjust your behavior to get a different outcome

Thinking backward like this can help us learn from the past and build our futures in a more positive direction. Recognize that some of our greatest disappointments can lead to our greatest possibilities for what comes next.

And finally, number six, develop resilience. Start by recognizing our own triggers and our own typical responses. We can learn a lot about ourselves and how we interact with others through challenging situations. Build your resilience to bounce back more quickly when things don’t go as planned. 

Be ready to manage whatever comes your way in the future. By adopting a more constructive mindset toward conflict, difficult people, and potential roadblocks, you’ll recognize that there are multiple versions of any event, depending on your perspective. Be open to different, more creative ideas about how to manage and potentially resolve these issues. 

Be open to new information and accept that there are always unknowns. Embrace the uncertainty. Recognize the magic in inviting curiosity. Be willing to recognize your own contribution to the situation and that you have choices in how you respond.

Be willing to engage in conflict and manage it better knowing that you have the ability to potentially resolve it before it escalates into something bigger. Choose to take action that will improve the situation. Recognize that you are making choices along the way, even if they’re not always easy. Because making a choice is better than just sitting around waiting for someone else to make the decision for you or to save you.

Be willing to learn from your past experiences and be open to doing something differently the next time. 

And that’s it for this episode of Stop Sabotaging Your Success. Remember to download your Guide to How We Define Ourselves at cindyesliger.com/podcast, episode thirty-four.

Thank you to our producer, Alex Hochhausen and everyone at Astronomic Audio. Get in touch, I’m on Instagram @cindyesliger and my email address is info@cindyesliger.com. And if you liked this show, please tell a friend. Subscribe, rate, and review. 

Until next week, I’m Cindy Esliger. Thanks for joining me.