#2: Showing up (again, and again... even when it's hard)
On practicing identifying myself as a resilient person.
Moved by Jesse Choi’s medium article on resilience, it reminded me that what defines us as a person isn’t the failures itself, rather, it’s how we respond to them.
Today’s one of those tough work days where things just kept not going my way. But at least I’m glad I still kept going; and trying.
As a self-proclaimed expert in overthinking and self-criticism, it’s so easy (and almost natural!) for me to respond by judging myself on all the (even, small) things that didn’t go well.
“You’re such a failure for making those Excel mistakes at work. Now look, your manager has to step in to fix it - you’re such a burden to the team, you’re slowing the team down! You are never going to be able to work in future high-stakes and high-pressure tasks if you can’t even do this one properly!”
These voices from my inner critic, were LOUD as I was pushing and struggling to finish some Excel work for an upcoming big presentation.
These small thoughts started to creep in and bother me daily that I could no longer ignore it. It made me feel constantly disappointed at myself and I had to put in a lot of effort to ensure that I don’t unintentionally project negativity to the people around me. So a few months ago, my company offered free bi-weekly at work 30-min therapy sessions with an expert. I needed to get out of my head and ask a professional on how to deal with this.
With the help of my therapist, we were able to dig that the root cause of all this is my innate belief that I am just not good enough. She noted that perhaps this mindset isn’t all that bad - perhaps this was what helped me become the person I am today; always feeling that there is still something I can work on and improve myself, having XYZ goals to achieve. But (with a capital B)! as an adult, this mindset isn’t the most sustainable to live a happy life.
She said to shift the way I speak to myself - not to do so from a place of judgement, but, almost like from a place of curious compassion instead. Whenever I feel anxious, scared, sad, angry, etc - my mind can creatively come up with the harshest and meanest self-judgemental comments that I wouldn’t say to anyone else but myself. The catch is that these are not based on any rational, concrete, evidence or proof. So she says to question those judgemental comments and ask “Do you have the evidence for that?”
Fast forward to today, the inner dialogue now sounded like:
“You’re such a failure for making those Excel mistakes at work. Now look, your manager has to step in to fix it - you’re such a burden to the team, you’re slowing the team down! You are never going to be able to work in future high-stakes and high-pressure tasks if you can’t even do this one properly!”
“Hey Hanifa, do you have the evidence for that?”
“Oh. No I don’t. My manager never once explicitly said or even implied in any way that I was a burden. No words uttered were close to that. The whole time he was actually helping and being very professional, nice and patient about it. After all, it is part of the manager’s job description to help me. And as for the future? I clearly have no proof as we are now talking about today. In the future, I will definitely be more experienced in handling even more difficult situations. So yeah, I can still do this and keep going.”
In just that one 30-min tear-provoking-mid-working-day-in-office therapy session, this therapist has left me with one of my most useful mindset tools ever. Remembering to question the evidence was what helped prevent me today from going on hours long of unproductive worrying to just a quick few mins of breathing and shedding 3 necessary teardrops in the bathroom to let out (not supress!) that moment of exhaustion and come back stronger, calmer and more composed to keep trying to solve the issue at hand.
I have to remember (again) to stop translating “I made a mistake” to “I am a mistake”. At the end of the day, I just need to keep trying, keep going and keep showing up… even when it’s hard and when I don’t want to—be it because of the task at hand or because of resisting all temptations to escape.
This mindset is indeed applicable to all areas in life and with that, here’s to me showing up again on substack…..
After all, this is a work in progress ;)