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How to Stop Catastrophizing–Managing Our Minds

by
Ben White Unsplash
“The sky has finally fallen. Always knew it would.”
-Eeyore, from Winnie the Pooh

Things have been tough in the last few years. Pandemic. Inflation. War.

Many are suffering mightily. Maybe you’ve been suffering too.

But are you complicit in your own suffering? Are you making things, as tough as they may be already, even worse?

One of the ways we do this is through “catastrophizing.”

Catastrophizing is a form of cognitive distortion, in which we assume the worst and blow things out of proportion. We imagine the worst possible outcome and generate an exceptionally negative expectation of future events.

When we’re catastrophizing, we see something concerning or bad and assume it’ll become a disaster. We believe our own horrendous forecast even when those thoughts have no basis in reality. Our catastrophizing brain becomes a breeding ground for stress and anxiety, starting a downward spiral.

When we’re catastrophizing, we’re also assuming that we won’t be able to cope with the predicted disaster when it materializes.

“One of the worst things anybody can do is assume. I think fools assume.
If people have really got it together, they never assume anything.
They believe, they work hard, and they prepare–but they don’t assume.“
-Mike Krzyzewski

Warning Assumptions Ahead

 

Examples of Catastrophizing

Here are examples of catastrophizing:

  • “If my partner leaves me, I’ll be alone and unhappy for the rest of my life.”
  • “I’m hurting today. It’s going to get worse, and I’ll never get better.”
  • “If I fail this test, I’ll have to drop out of school. I’ll devastate my parents and become a failure.”
  • “I’m having a hard time with this challenge. I’m worthless. I may as well quit.”

Though it sounds extreme, catastrophizing can be common. Many psychologists believe that we’ve all done it sometimes.

Catastrophizing is related to anxiety, but there’s an important difference: anxiety can benefit us by causing us to take preventing measures. By contrast, catastrophizing has no redeeming value. It only makes us feel worse about phantom probabilities.

Catastrophizing is a bit like taking a microscope to our worst fears and viewing them at a scale a hundred times their actual size. The proportions are way off. So it shuts us down.

Sometimes catastrophizing joins forces with other nefarious thinking traps, such as:

  • Rumination: obsessive thinking about our distress (as opposed to its solutions)
  • Helplessness: feeling powerless when facing a negative situation

 

Causes of Catastrophizing

Why do we do catastrophize? There are many causes.

For starters, when we’re in a state of fear and/or anxiety, we’re more prone to catastrophizing. (See my article, “Getting Good at Overcoming Fear.”)

Also, our catastrophizing is often worse when we place extra importance on someone or something. When we value something greatly, like our relationship with a partner or our position in a social hierarchy, we can develop a hyped-up fear of losing it.

In addition, ambiguity can amp up the catastrophizing quotient. If, for example, we get a message from our spouse or boss that reads, “We need to talk,” it may cause our catastrophe circuits to go haywire.

Take the Traps Test

We all fall into traps in life. Sometimes we’re not even aware of it, and we can’t get out of traps we don’t know we’re in. Evaluate yourself with our Traps Test.

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The Problem with Catastrophizing

“Anxiety’s like a rocking chair. It gives you something to do,
but it doesn’t get you very far.”
– Jodi Picoult

Jodi Picoult quote

There are big downsides to catastrophizing. At its worst, it can:

  • fill us with harmful (and unnecessary) emotions
  • take time and thought away from the actual situation we’re in (and its potential solutions)
  • amplify our self-doubt
  • lead to paralysis and inaction
  • give us the illusion that the worst case is our new normal
  • contribute to a victim mentality that gets us nowhere
  • prevent us from experiencing contentment and happiness
  • become a destructive lifelong habit unless we nip it in the bud
“Deal with your negative patterns before they become habits because habits are hard to break.”
-Germany Kent

 

12 Ways to Stop Catastrophizing

Thankfully, we don’t have to be passive victims of whatever thought-streams appear in our heads.

There are many things we can do to reduce or eliminate catastrophizing. Here are twelve of them:

  • acknowledge that bad things happen to all of us
  • recognize when we’re engaging in catastrophizing (mindfulness and meditation techniques can help make such awareness easier over time)
  • place our experiences into perspective
  • consider a range of possible outcomes—from positive to neutral to mildly negative ones and not just disasters
“Supposing a tree fell down, Pooh, when we were underneath it?”
“Supposing it didn’t,” said Pooh after careful thought.
Piglet was comforted by this.
-A.A. Milne, English poet and playwright
  • reframe thoughts from negative to positive ones (e.g., opportunities to learn and grow)
  • recall situations in which we’ve coped with and overcome negative events
  • lean on trusted relationships—and community—to provide support, encouragement, and perspective when needed
  • focus more on helping and serving others and less on how things are going for ourselves
  • think about the things we can control, letting go of things we can’t
“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.”
-the Serenity Prayer
  • command ourselves to stop catastrophizing (some people actually benefit from speaking the words out loud, e.g., “Stop catastrophizing!”)
  • use positive affirmations (constructive statements that we repeat to ourselves to condition our brain for clarity and success)
  • engage in regular self-care practices, such as eating well, maintaining good sleep routines, exercising often, taking frequent breaks throughout the day, breathing deeply, enjoying hobbies, and getting out into nature

In the end, we all experience bad things in life. The key is to avoid making them worse by magnifying our negative thinking about them. Instead, why not take productive action to avoid or address them?

serenity prayer

 

Reflection Questions

  1. Have you been catastrophizing?
  2. In what areas?
  3. What will you start doing to turn your thoughts into allies instead of enemies?

 

Tools for You

Quality of Life Assessment

Evaluate your quality of life in ten key areas by taking our assessment. Discover your strongest areas, and the areas that need work, then act accordingly.

Take the Assessment

 

Related Articles

 

Postscript: Quotations on Catastrophizing

  • “Believing in negative thoughts is the single greatest obstruction to success.” -Charles F. Glassman
  • “I define anxiety as experiencing failure in advance.” -Seth Godin
  • “Fear starts in the mind and it generates emotions. One fearful thought will lead to another if you let it. The way to keep that from happening is to not allow yourself to camp out in fear in your mind.” -Sadie Robertson, Live Fearless: A Call to Power, Passion, and Purpose

Gregg Vanourek’s Newsletter

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Gregg Vanourek is a writer, teacher, and TEDx speaker on personal development, life design, and leadership. He is co-author of three books, including LIFE Entrepreneurs: Ordinary People Creating Extraordinary Lives (a manifesto for integrating our life and work with purpose, passion, and contribution) and Triple Crown Leadership: Building Excellent, Ethical, and Enduring Organizations (a winner of the International Book Awards). Check out his Best Articles or get his monthly newsletter. If you found value in this article, please forward it to a friend. Every little bit helps!

How to Build Confidence in Yourself and Your Leadership

by
confidence leaning back unsplash

Confidence is an enigma for many of us. We know it can help us in many ways. And we hold it in high regard, knowing it can make a big difference.

Yet we tend to view it as something innate–something some people have and others don’t.

The truth is that, while some people have more of a disposition toward confidence than others, it’s something we can all build systematically.

And we should.

Why? When we’re confident, we have conviction that we can succeed.

Contrary to what many people believe, confidence isn’t a fixed trait. We’re not either born with it or missing it. We can acquire confidence and build it over time. As we improve and develop mastery, we build confidence.

Our confidence can go up and down, and we can have high confidence in some areas and low confidence in others.

 

The Good Kind of Confidence

Note that we don’t want confidence for its own sake–confidence without the merits that cause us to earn it. What we really want is a realistic appraisal of our abilities so that we have an appropriate measure of confidence to match our abilities. And we want to build our confidence over time by improving our abilities and performance.

Confidence isn’t the same as arrogance. Arrogance is an attitude of superiority. When we’re arrogant, we exaggerate our importance. And confidence is certainly not narcissism (when we’re so absorbed in our own life that we ignore the needs of others around us).

Many people struggle with low confidence, for many reasons, including tough life experiences, temperament, cultural background, and more.

When we have low confidence, we pay a price, including: missing out on new opportunities, not stepping into our true power, and lowering our chances for success.

 

The Benefits of Confidence

“Your success will be determined by your own confidence and fortitude.”
-Michelle Obama, attorney, author, and former First Lady

Michelle Obama quote

Confidence has all sorts of benefits. For example, confidence can:

  • help improve our health and wellbeing
  • boost happiness, joy, and peace of mind
  • increase our chance of success in work and/or school
  • reduce fear and anxiety
  • boost attractiveness
  • help us remain open to learning and growing
  • increase motivation to continue practicing in pursuit of goals
  • help us gain credibility
  • increase our ability to make a strong first impression, put others at ease, and influence others
  • help us be more open to trying new things
  • lead to healthier relationships
  • help us develop greater resilience and our ability to perform well under pressure
  • increase our leadership capacity and effectiveness as well as executive presence, since followers tend to respond better to confident leaders
  • boost creativity and increase our willingness to take creative chances

Of course, confidence isn’t enough to set us up for success. We also need preparation, skill, effort, experience, resources, creativity, strategy, creativity, persistence, and even good luck sometimes. But without confidence, we may decline to begin or try. In that sense, confidence is essential for success over the long haul.

Take the Traps Test

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How to Build Confidence

photo by sydney Rae on Unsplash

“Self-confidence can be learned, practiced, and mastered—just like any other skill.
Once you master it, everything in your life will change for the better.”
-Barrie Davenport, author

Now that we know confidence is pliable, not fixed, and that it comes with so many important benefits, the next question is: How do we build it?

There are many things we can do to build confidence, including:

  • focus more on areas of our capability and achievement, and less on areas of weakness and struggle
  • set and meet goals that lead to personal and professional accomplishments
  • switch off negative self-talk, self-criticism, and limiting beliefs
  • swap in positive thoughts for negative ones
  • face our fears and in the process build a sense of agency and capability
  • stop the unhealthy practice of comparing ourselves to others (and consider taking a break from social media, which tees up unrealistic comparisons)
  • continue learning, growing, developing, and building new capacities—working on areas where skills aren’t yet up to standards
  • engage in consistent self-care practices, since these give us grounding and energy
  • speak up for ourselves (self-advocacy)
  • stop thinking in terms of fixed traits (e.g., “I’ve always been bad at math” or “I’m not a confident person”) and start thinking in terms of different people with different interests, skills, and abilities—along with a growth mindset (noting that we can all develop our intelligence, abilities, and talents)
  • think about a time when we felt high confidence and ask how we’d act if we were feeling that way now

There are certainly other things we can do in addition to those noted above, and some of them vary by person or situation. For example, some people can use good posture and even “power poses” to boost confidence (see Amy Cuddy’s TED talk about this).

For others, it helps to dress in ways that can boost confidence, to visualize success, or to use affirmations about our dreams and capabilities. We’re wise to experiment and find out what works best for us.

“Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage.
If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it.
Go out and get busy.”
-Dale Carnegie

 

What Confident People Do

When we feel confident, we act differently, and that novel behavior can lead to dramatically different outcomes. For example, confident people tend to:

  • make decisions more quickly
  • maintain optimism
  • take risks
  • admit mistakes
  • accept responsibility for choices and actions
  • avoid the trap of blaming others
  • celebrate others’ successes
  • experience fewer instances of envy and jealousy
  • laugh at themselves without beating themselves up, which can be endearing
  • accept compliments, instead of awkwardly deflecting them

Quality of Life Assessment

Evaluate your quality of life in ten key areas by taking our assessment. Discover your strongest areas, and the areas that need work, then act accordingly.

Take the Assessment

 

On Leadership and Confidence and Self-Efficacy

Confidence can contribute significantly to leader effectiveness, but especially when we have realistic perceptions of our effectiveness. Self-awareness is essential.

Unfortunately, many leaders are overconfident about their leadership abilities. According to researchers (Leanne Atwater and Francis Yammarino), this leads to many problems, including: unrealistic optimism, dismissal of criticism, blindness to flaws, lack of effort made to overcome weaknesses, and even narcissism.

By contrast, when leaders have good self-awareness and agree with the ratings of their followers, they’re better candidates for promotion and less likely to struggle with leadership derailers.

According to research by Bandura (1997) and by Luthans and Avolio (2003), confident leaders are more likely to welcome a challenge, to persist when they encounter obstacles, and to succeed.

 

Final Thoughts

We’ve seen that confidence has many important benefits—and that we have much more agency over our confidence levels than most people think. So why not engage in regular practices that will boost our confidence while uplifting our mental state and our ability to succeed and make positive impacts in the world?

“With realization of one’s own potential and self-confidence
in one’s ability, one can build a better world.”
-The 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso

The Dalai Lama quote

Reflection Questions

  1. Do you currently feel confident about the areas that matter most to you now?
  2. In what areas would you like to build your confidence?
  3. What will you do, starting today, to build your confidence in certain areas?

Wishing you well with it, and let me know if I can help.

 

 

 

– Gregg Vanourek

 

Tools for You

 

Postscript: Inspirations on Confidence

  • “Man often becomes what he believes himself to be. If I keep on saying to myself that I cannot do a certain thing, it is possible that I may end by really becoming incapable of doing it. On the contrary, if I have the belief that I can do it, I shall surely acquire the capacity to do it even if I may not have it at the beginning.” -Mahatma Gandhi
  • “Self-confidence is the first requisite to great undertakings.” -Samuel Johnson
  • “Believe in yourself! Have faith in your abilities! Without a humble but reasonable confidence in your own powers you cannot be successful or happy.” -Norman Vincent Peale
  • “One important key to success is self-confidence. An important key to self-confidence is preparation.” -Arthur Ashe
  • “Confidence doesn’t come out of nowhere. It’s a result of something … hours and days and weeks and years of constant work and dedication.” -Roger Staubach, former professional football player
  • “With confidence, you have won before you have started.” -Marcus Garvey
  • “When you have confidence, you can have a lot of fun. And when you have fun, you can do amazing things.” -Joe Namath, legendary quarterback
  • “As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live.” -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
  • “People who ask confidently get more than those who are hesitant and uncertain. When you’ve figured out what you want to ask for, do it with certainty, boldness, and confidence.” -Jack Canfield
  • “If you hear a voice within you say ‘you cannot paint,’ then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.” -Vincent Van Gogh
  • “Argue for your limitations, and sure enough they’re yours.” -Richard Bach, writer
  • “If I have lost confidence in myself, I have the universe against me.” -Ralph Waldo Emerson
  • “If you have no confidence in self, you are twice defeated in the race of life. With confidence, you have won even before you have started.” -Cicero

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Gregg Vanourek is a writer, teacher, TEDx speaker, and coach on leadership and personal development. He is co-author of three books, including LIFE Entrepreneurs: Ordinary People Creating Extraordinary Lives (a manifesto for integrating our life and work with purpose, passion, and contribution) and Triple Crown Leadership: Building Excellent, Ethical, and Enduring Organizations (a winner of the International Book Awards). Check out his Best Articles or get his monthly newsletter. If you found value in this article, please forward it to a friend. Every little bit helps!

The Complacency Trap

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One of the most insidious traps we can fall into in life and work is that of complacency—a state of easy contentment, with a lack of concern about or awareness of problems or risks. Complacency can prevent us from recognizing risks, trying harder, and making improvements.

Examples abound. We can be complacent about our health—or the health of our loved ones. Or complacent about our relationships. About our work, team, leadership, or organization. Complacent about our democracy and planet.

How to know when we’ve fallen into the complacency trap?

 

11 Signs of Complacency

When we’re complacent, we:

  1. Take things for granted
  2. Have too much routine, making things feel monotonous
  3. Stick to what we know
  4. Are too comfortable too often
  5. Stay in our comfort zone
  6. Start to “phone it in”
  7. Stop learning and growing
  8. Begin losing our ambition
  9. Resist change
  10. Avoid risk
  11. Start taking the path of least resistance

Author Brendon Burchard warns us about “the comfortable life:

“…over time, in the comfortable life, something stirs within; maybe not a frustration but something in the sense of restlessness. That restlessness is a feeling or sense that maybe there is something more.”
-Brendon Burchard

 

The Problem with Complacency

There’s nothing wrong with comfort and satisfaction per se. These are good things, and we want them in our lives. The problem is when we have too much of them and lose our zest for life and our inner fire to go after our dreams.

Complacency can:

  • sap our motivation
  • lead to inaction when action is warranted
  • prevent us from making needed improvements
  • reduce our initiative and sense of hope
  • lead to mediocrity
  • rob us of future opportunities and benefits
  • derail our career
  • lead us to a “default life”

In their excellent new book, Who Do You Want to Be When You Grow Old? The Path of Purposeful Aging, Richard Leider and David Shapiro warn of living what they call a “default life”:

“Just floating along from one year to the next, accepting things as they present themselves without question or intention, is a surefire recipe for dissatisfaction and despair in later life. Living the default life is… living a life that isn’t really of our own choosing. It’s living a life that inevitably gives rise to questions like ‘Where did all the time go?’ ‘How did my life pass so quickly?’ and ‘Why did I squander my one precious opportunity for living?’”
-Richard Leider and David Shapiro

Quality of Life Assessment

Evaluate your quality of life in ten key areas by taking our assessment. Discover your strongest areas, and the areas that need work, then act accordingly.

Take the Assessment

 

What to Do About It

Fortunately, there are many things we can do to avoid or escape the complacency trap. Here’s a punch list:

Start acting with urgency. Like our time counts. Because it does.

Leverage deliberate agitation. Engage in what Tyler Hakes calls “deliberate agitation” (like shaking a snow globe). He writes:

“You let things settle into place just long enough and then shake them up. Watch to see if they fall into the same patterns or if something new and better emerges…. You deliberately and intentionally question things and change them before they become a problem. You remain vigilant in trying to improve so that way you don’t fall into the trap of complacency that leads to eventual failure.”
-Tyler Hakes

Dream big. We should think expansively about all we want to do in our lifetime in different areas—family, relationships, career, education, impact, travel, and more. When we do that, we feel the wondrous and mystical pull of our deepest aspirations.

Step out of our comfort zone. Too often, fear holds us back from venturing forth and risking ourselves. When we push ourselves, take risks, and dare to have adventures, our blood races and we start to feel awake and alive again.

Challenge ourselves to strive for a BHAG—a “big, hairy audacious goal.” This can be a life goal or a work goal, but a true BHAG should take our breath away with its audacity.

“…there is a difference between merely having a goal and becoming committed to a huge, daunting challenge—like a big mountain to climb…. Like the moon mission, a true BHAG is clear and compelling and serves as a unifying focal point of effort—often creating immense team spirit. It has a clear finish line, so the organization can know when it has achieved the goal; people like to shoot for finish lines. A BHAG engages people—it reaches out and grabs them in the gut.”
-Jim Collins and Jerry Porras in Built to Last

Calendarize time to work on the most important activities that will ensure we make progress on our top goals. That way, we can not only develop good and productive habits but also become the sort of person who consistently gets big stuff done.

Enlist an army of support. Consider recruiting an “accountability partner”—someone who can help keep us on track (such as a training buddy or someone willing to receive regular progress reports).

Identify and remove barriers to change. When we’re stuck, it’s easy to become complacent. We’re good at acclimatizing ourselves to a new situation. So get to work on identifying the major obstacles to progress and how to overcome them.

Notch short-term wins on meaningful work to build momentum. Draw on what researchers call the “progress principle”:

“…of all the positive events that influence inner work life, the single most powerful is progress in meaningful work; of all the negative events, the single most powerful is the opposite of progress—setbacks in the work. We consider this to be a fundamental management principle: facilitating progress is the most effective way for managers to influence inner work life. Even when progress happens in small steps, a person’s sense of steady forward movement toward an important goal can make all the difference between a great day and a terrible one.”
-Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer in The Progress Principle

Take full responsibility. Be what my co-author, Christopher Gergen, and I call a “life entrepreneur.” We thrive when we take ownership of our life and recognize our agency—when we take our life back. Life entrepreneurs create opportunities for themselves. They bring their dreams to life. They intentionally craft a good life with good work.

Get clear on our personal purpose, values, and vision:

  • Our purpose is why we’re here. It’s what gives us a sense of meaning and significance—often by connecting with and serving others.
  • Our values are what’s most important to us—our core beliefs and principles that guide our decisions and behavior.
  • And our vision is what we aspire to achieve in the future—and what success looks and feels like for us.

Personal Values Exercise

Complete this exercise to identify your personal values. It will help you develop self-awareness, including clarity about what’s most important to you in life and work, and serve as a safe harbor for you to return to when things are tough.

Take the Exercise

 

Build vitality. We feel better and achieve more when we develop physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health and wellness. When we’re intentional about productive and energizing habits, rituals, and routines.

Let go of limiting beliefs. Too often, we’re our own worst enemy. We’ve placed ourselves in a mental prison of judgment, negativity, and rumination. We have the power to upgrade our mental operating system, which will help us break the chains of complacency.

Set and maintain high standards. We tend to rise or fall to the standards we set. We often do better with deadlines, accountability, and high standards of personal and professional excellence.

 

Related Traps & Articles

The complacency trap is common, and it can be deeply damaging. It’s also accompanied by several associated traps:

Take the Traps Test

We all fall into traps in life. Sometimes we’re not even aware of it, and we can’t get out of traps we don’t know we’re in. Evaluate yourself with our Traps Test.

Take the Test

Final Thoughts

The complacency trap can rob us of quality time and experiences as well as passion and achievement. It can be tricky because we do want satisfaction and serenity, and not a life of frenetic striving and hair-on-fire busyness and hustle.

Somewhere in between, there’s a healthy place of commitment and urgency to live and work purposefully, achieve worthy things, serve others, and cherish our days, not squandering our time in a cool cloud of complacency.

 

Reflection Questions

  1. To what extent has complacency crept into some aspects of your life and work (or that of your friends, colleagues, or organization)?
  2. What will you do to regain the clarity, motivation, resolve, and urgency to get out of this trap?

Wishing you well with it—and let me know if I can help.
–Gregg Vanourek

 

Tools for You

 

Related Articles

Postscript: Quotations on Complacency

  • “Complacency keeps you living a comfortable life… not the life you desire. Challenge yourself to do something different. Then, notice the new charged quality of your life.” -Nina Amir, author
  • “The life you have left is a gift. Cherish it. Enjoy it now, to the fullest. Do what matters, now.” -Leo Babauta, author
  • “Never be passive about your life… ever, ever.” -Robert Egger, from our LIFE Entrepreneurs book interview
  • “The tragedy of life is often not in our failure, but rather in our complacency; not in our doing too much, but rather in our doing too little; not in our living above our ability, but rather in our living below our capacities.” -Benjamin E. Mays
  • “I really try to put myself in uncomfortable situations. Complacency is my enemy.” -Trent Reznor
  • “Complacency is a blight that saps energy, dulls attitudes, and causes a drain in the brain. The first symptom is satisfaction with things as they are. The second is rejection of things it as they might be. ’Good enough’ becomes days today’s watchword and tomorrow’s standard.” -Alex and Brett Harris
  • “History and experience tell us that moral progress comes not in comfortable and complacent times, but out of trial and confusion.” -Gerald R. Ford
  • “Without a sense of urgency, desire loses its value.” -Jim Rohn, author
  • “There is no passion to be found playing small—in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living.” -Nelson Mandela
  • “So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservatism, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more dangerous to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man’s living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun.” -Jon Krakauer, Into the Wild
  • “Our best enemy is the one who challenges us, and so doing, teaches us to set out to discover our potentials, while our worst friend is the one who is numbing us and lulling us into complacency, always being consenting or acquiescent.” -Erik Pevernagie
  • “Success is not guaranteed, it’s temporary.” -Frank Sonnenberg, author
  • “As you move outside of your comfort zone, what was once the unknown and frightening becomes your new normal.” -Robin Sharma
  • “By far the biggest mistake people make when trying to change organizations is to plunge ahead without establishing a high enough sense of urgency in fellow managers and employees.” -John Kotter, expert on leadership and organizational change

Gregg Vanourek’s Newsletter

Join our rapidly growing community. Sign up now and get monthly inspirations (new articles, opportunities, and resources). Welcome!

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++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Gregg Vanourek is a writer, teacher, TEDx speaker, and coach on personal development and leadership. He is co-author of three books, including LIFE Entrepreneurs: Ordinary People Creating Extraordinary Lives (a manifesto for living with purpose and passion) and Triple Crown Leadership: Building Excellent, Ethical, and Enduring Organizations (a winner of the International Book Awards). Check out his Best Articles or get his monthly newsletter. If you found value in this article, please forward it to a friend. Every little bit helps!

The Trap of Blaming Others

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When things aren’t going your way, it may be tempting to deflect attention from your own role in things and blame others. Perhaps you’re blaming your spouse. Or boss. Perhaps you’re blaming a friend or colleague. Or the economy or inflation—or politicians, the media, or a rival political party. Your parents, or your circumstances.

Blaming may give you a feeling of satisfaction as you look outside for responsibility and wallow in the unfairness of it all. But that feeling is fleeting. In the meantime, you haven’t moved forward at all. In fact, you’ve moved backward.

“No good comes from blame.”
-Kate Summers

 

Signs of Blaming

How to tell if you’re blaming others? When blaming, you’re likely:

  • holding others responsible for your own frustrations and problems
  • expecting others to change to suit your needs
  • showing defensiveness
  • causing emotional escalation with the person and issue at hand
“It is far more useful to be aware of a single shortcoming in ourselves
than it is to be aware of a thousand in somebody else.”
-Dalai Lama

Quality of Life Assessment

Evaluate your quality of life in ten key areas by taking our assessment. Discover your strongest areas, and the areas that need work, then act accordingly.

Take the Assessment

 

The Problem with Blaming Others

kids blaming each other

“Wherever you find a problem, you will usually find the finger-pointing of blame.
Society is addicted to playing the victim.”
-Stephen R. Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

Though it may feel good in the moment, blaming comes with many problems:

  • Most importantly, it doesn’t work. You don’t move forward in any way, shape, or form when you’re blaming. (“The blame game is a waste of time. Any time you’re busy fixing blame, you’re wasting energy and not fixing the problem.” -Rick Warren)
  • It often backfires, making things worse.
  • Blaming robs you of your own agency.
  • It makes people defensive.
  • Blaming damages relationships. (People don’t like it at all when they’re the target of blaming.)
  • It reduces your productivity and effectiveness.
  • Blaming often entails lying—bending the truth to minimize or eliminate your own responsibility while exaggerating the fault of others. As such, it harms your credibility.
  • You suffer the most, not the person you’re blaming.
  • Blaming leads to escalation into bigger issues—especially when it’s unfair blame or blame that misses important contextual factors because you don’t have all the information you need.
  • You don’t learn from mistakes since you’re focused on the fault of others.
  • Blaming can lead to other negative emotions—such as anger, resentment, or even hatred or rage—which are even worse.
  • It can rob you of your potential influence on others.
  • Apparently, blaming can be contagious, leading others to fall into this trap as well in a downward spiral.
“Blame is fascinating—it shapes our lives. It can be a benign way of positioning ourselves, a gentle joust or banter, or it can be poisonous, hurtful, or devastating for its victims. It can tear apart marriages and fracture work relationships; it can disable major social programs; it can inflict damage on powerful corporations; it can bring down governments; it can start wars and justify genocides.”
-Stephen Fineman, The Blame Business

 

Take the Traps Test

We all fall into traps in life. Sometimes we’re not even aware of it, and we can’t get out of traps we don’t know we’re in. Evaluate yourself with our Traps Test.

Take the Test

 

Why You Blame

It’s natural and common to play the blame game. But that doesn’t mean it will serve you well. Your brain my subconsciously leap to blaming by default. What’s going on here?

Blaming is an odd combination of defense mechanism and attack strategy. You’re defending your precious ego by attacking another person with the assignment of fault. It’s a way to avoid or release negative emotions.

Blaming preserves your self-esteem by helping you avoid responsibility for mistakes. You want to be right and win the argument to protect your fragile ego. By blaming others, you feel like you can escape guilt and responsibility.

Blaming is also a form of social comparison, allowing you to feel superior and gifted with greater social status, at least in the situation at hand.

Also, blaming can come with perfectionism, giving us a way to maintain our illusion of perfection as we find fault in others instead of ourselves.

 

How to Avoid the Blame Game

So far in this article, you’ve seen what blaming is, the signs of blaming in action, the many problems with it, and why we do it so much.

But you can’t stop there. You need to know what to do about it—and what to do instead. Here are six top tips for avoiding the blame game:

  1. Stop ruminating on the problems at hand and turn your attention instead toward something more positive.
  2. Practice empathy and try to understand the context, motivations, and feelings of the other person. Work to account for the other person’s perspective. Ask questions and explore their perspective.
  3. Focus on finding a solution, not a scapegoat. In the end, that’s most important.
  4. Instead of assigning all the blame to another person, try a “50-50” split instead: assume equal responsibility for the problem, or at least joint responsibility. Ultimately, the allocation of blame matter much less than resolving the issues well.
  5. Focus on collaboration, not blame. Consider ways in which teaming up to address the issues may benefit you both and avoid unnecessary emotional potholes.
  6. Take full responsibility for your life, choices, behaviors, and outcomes, even if there are outside factors present (as there always are). It’s a powerful practice that will serve you well.

 

Final Thoughts

Though blaming is common and natural, don’t trade in it. It’s a trap. Blaming gets you nowhere fast and will even take you backward and cause damage. By avoiding the tram of blaming, you can improve your mental state, quality of life, relationships, leadership, and effectiveness.

“It’s always easy to blame others. You can spend your entire life blaming the world,
but your successes or failures are entirely your own responsibility.”
-Paolo Coelho, Brazilian novelist

 

Reflection Questions

  1. Are you playing the blame game?
  2. Is it serve you well—or harming you?
  3. Which of the top tips for avoiding blame will you try, starting today?

Wishing you well with it.

 

 

 

–Gregg Vanourek

 

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Postscript: Inspirations on Avoiding the Blame Trap

  • “When we blame, we give away our power.” -Greg Anderson
  • “To grow up is to stop putting blame on parents.” -Maya Angelou
  • “One of the most important ways to manifest integrity is to be loyal to those who are not present. In doing so, we build the trust of those who are present.” -Stephen R. Covey
  • “You become a victim when you blame yourself or others for some problem or error.” -Jay Fiset, Reframe Your Blame
  • “A loss is not a failure until you make an excuse.” -Michael Jordan
  • “Blame is the demonstrated lack of self-respect choosing to deposit one’s negative actions onto others to reinforce one’s view of being of good, fair, and approved.” -Byron R. Pulsifer
  • “Stop the blame game. Stop! Stop looking out the window and look in the mirror!” -Eric Thomas
  • “Blame means shifting the responsibility for where you are onto someone or something else, rather than accepting responsibility for your role in the experience.” -Iyanla Vanzant

 

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Gregg Vanourek is a writer, teacher, and TEDx speaker on personal development and leadership. He is co-author of three books, including LIFE Entrepreneurs: Ordinary People Creating Extraordinary Lives (a manifesto for living with purpose and passion) and Triple Crown Leadership: Building Excellent, Ethical, and Enduring Organizations (a winner of the International Book Awards). Check out his Best Articles or get his monthly newsletter. If you found value in this article, please forward it to a friend. Every little bit helps!

The Benefits of Systematic Personal Development

by

Personal development entails efforts to improve yourself—to develop your potential and capabilities. With systematic personal development, you can improve nearly all aspects of your life.

“Personal development refers to activities that improve self-knowledge and identity, develop talents and potential, build human capital and employability, enhance quality of life, and contribute to the realization of dreams and aspirations.”
-Bob Aubrey, Managing Your Aspirations

You can also leverage personal development to address challenges in your life, such as:

  • dullness and monotony in your days
  • unfulfilled dreams and ambitions
  • feeling stuck or uncertain about what’s next

Personal development involves both inner and outer work. And it can have mental, physical, emotional, social, and spiritual dimensions. It can involve learning and growing from various sources, including reading, courses, workshops, assessments, tools, and actions taken, perhaps with coaching and feedback. Ideally, it’s a lifelong practice. We’re never done learning, growing, and developing.

 

Benefits of Personal Development

When done well, personal development has many benefits. Through systematic personal development, you can:

  1. increase self-awareness
  2. get more clarity about who you are and what you want to do
“There are so many people who don’t know what they want. And I think that, in this world, that’s the only thing you have to know—exactly what you want.… Doing what you were born to do … That’s the way to be happy.”
-Agnes Martin, painter
  1. improve health and wellness
  2. build confidence
  3. develop knowledge and skills (e.g., communication, interpersonal, and time management skills)
  4. discover your purpose, values, and passions
  5. determine and develop your strengths (see my Strengths Search tool)
  6. clarify and pursue your dreams and aspirations

  1. develop a growth mindset
  2. advance in your career
  3. increase your earnings and build wealth
  4. feel a sense of accomplishment as you grow in your capacities
  5. realize more of your potential and achieve more of your goals
  6. develop perseverance, resilience, and capacity to navigate change and uncertainty
  7. reduce stress and anxiety
  8. increase emotional intelligence
  9. improve relationships
  10. build your personal power (your ability to influence people and events)
  11. improve your leadership or prepare to launch an entrepreneurial venture
  12. increase your happiness, wellbeing, quality of life, and likelihood of success
  13. deepen your spirituality, if you’re so inclined
  14. be truer to yourself despite social pressures or external expectations

Strengths Search

We all have core strengths–the things in which we most excel. Take this self-assessment to determine your core strengths so you can integrate them more into your life and work.

Find Your Strengths

 

Personal Development Practices

Though it can vary widely by person and context, personal development practices often include:

  • identifying areas of your life you’d like to improve
  • analyzing what’s going well and not (which requires brutal honesty with yourself)
  • developing goals, strategies, and tactics
  • planning your time (i.e., your day, your week, your year: “Either you run the day or the day runs you.” -Jim Rohn)
  • prioritizing and focusing on the most important things
  • developing good habits and practices (e.g., a “golden hour rule” or a “morning miracle” in which you start your day early and invest the first hour in yourself, such as with reading, meditation, prayer, exercise, affirmations, and/or journaling).
  • creating and employing personal development plans and/or life design approaches
  • using timelines, deadlines, and action plans
  • assessing and measuring progress and adjusting as you go
  • working with an accountability partner
  • spending time with people who challenge you and make you better

 

Final Thoughts

Done right, personal development isn’t a solo endeavor. It works much better when you engage with others (e.g., a coach, mentor, accountability partner, counselor, teacher, guide, manager, or small group).

Recall that personal development includes both inner work (reflection) and outer work (action). You often learn, grow, and develop the most when you’re out there trying things and making mistakes. You’ll do much better when you’re action-oriented.

If you’re thinking that you’re already busy and that all this seems like a lot of work, a few thoughts:

First, note that it can begin with small and simple steps. Then, with progress, you gain momentum and start turning the flywheel.

Second, consider all you’re losing and missing by not investing in your development.

Third, when done right, it’s rewarding, energizing, and fun.

Reach out if I can help. Wishing you well with it.

 

 

 

 

 

Reflection Questions

  1. Are you investing enough time and resources in systematic personal development?
  2. What more will you do, starting today?

 

Tools for You

Take the Traps Test

We all fall into traps in life. Sometimes we’re not even aware of it, and we can’t get out of traps we don’t know we’re in. Evaluate yourself with our Traps Test.

Take the Test

 

Related Concepts

 

Postscript: Inspirations on Personal Development

  • “Your level of success will seldom exceed your level of personal development, because success is something you attract by the person you become.” -Jim Rohn, entrepreneur and author
  • “Growth is the great separator between those who succeed and those who do not. When I see a person beginning to separate themselves from the pack, it’s almost always due to personal growth.” -John Maxwell, leadership author
  • “Taking charge of your own learning is a part of taking charge of your life, which is the sine qua non in becoming an integrated person.” -Warren Bennis, leadership author
  • “Everyone seems to have a clear idea of how other people should lead their lives, but none about his or her own.” -Paolo Coelho, Brazilian novelist
  • “…your life gets better only after you get better.” -Hal Elrod, writer
  • “Your action, what you do, depends on who you are. The quality of your action depends on the quality of your being…. So there is a link between doing and being. If you don’t succeed in being, you can’t succeed in doing.” -Thich Nhat Hanh, Vietnamese Buddhist monk, peace activist, author, and teacher
  • “You will never change your life until you change something you do daily. The secret of your success is in your daily routine.” -John Maxwell, leadership author
  • “Look closely at the present you are constructing. It should look like the future you are dreaming.” -Alice Walker
  • “As you become more clear about who you really are, you’ll be better able to decide what is best for you—the first time around.” -Oprah Winfrey, media entrepreneur, philanthropist, and author
  • “You can’t go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.” -C.S. Lewis, British scholar, writer, and lay theologian

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Gregg Vanourek is a writer, teacher, TEDx speaker, and coach on leadership and personal development. He is co-author of three books, including LIFE Entrepreneurs: Ordinary People Creating Extraordinary Lives (a manifesto for integrating our life and work with purpose, passion, and contribution) and Triple Crown Leadership: Building Excellent, Ethical, and Enduring Organizations (a winner of the International Book Awards). Check out his Best Articles or get his monthly newsletter. If you found value in this article, please forward it to a friend. Every little bit helps!

Ten Keys to Self-Leadership

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We face a barrage of challenges these days: rapid change, a barrage of demands on our attention, tension between work and home, and more. There’s one meta-skill that shapes how we respond to all these challenges: self-leadership.

Without it, we cannot sustain ourselves for long.

Leading self may be obvious, but it’s far from easy. We neglect it at our peril.

The task of leading self is the task of a lifetime. Here are ten keys to self-leadership:

 

1. Healthy Habits. 

When we are leading self well, we develop an energizing rhythm of self-care. It includes the “fundamentals” that many of us take for granted: good nutrition, vigorous exercise, consistently good sleep, breaks during the day, and regular check-ins to take stock of the big picture. Too often we protest that we don’t have time for such things. That is shortsighted. It’s when times are tough that we need these habits the most. Without them, we unravel and develop bad habits.


2. Inner Life.

Today, we are so consumed with daily obligations and distractions that we can lose ourselves in them. Our inner voice is drowned out by noise and shuffle. John W. Gardner once wrote, “By midlife, most of us are accomplished fugitives from ourselves.” We numb ourselves with compulsive smartphone use and binge-watching. In the process, we are rewiring our brains and sabotaging our ability to engage in deep reflection and work. Knowing ourselves means discovering our:

  • Purpose: our reason for being (or what infuses our life with meaning and significance)—including a sense of why we do what we do, and why we want to lead
  • Values: what we value most in life (and the behaviors that manifest those things)
  • Strengths: what we are good at
  • Passions: what we get lost in, or what fills us with energy
  • Vision of the good life

Often, it takes time to discover these foundational elements. They become clearer over time if we “listen to our life,” as Parker Palmer encourages. We must build these essentials into our life and work. It helps to share them with loved ones about for input, support, connection, and follow-through.

“All you have to do is to pay attention; lessons always arrive when you are ready, and if you can read the signs,
you will learn everything you need to know in order to take the next step.”
-Paulo Coelho, Brazilian novelist

 

3. Authentic Integrity.

When we act with integrity, we are not only honest, truthful, and trustworthy; we are also whole. In today’s world, it is easy to live what Parker Palmer calls a “divided life,” with a chasm between how we live and who we really are.

“One man cannot do right in one department of life whilst he is occupied in doing wrong in another department.
Life is one indivisible whole.” 
-Mahatma Gandhi, Indian lawyer and transformational leader

Instead of dividing ourselves, we must integrate all aspects of our self into one coherent whole. In doing so, we must be who we really are, not a projection of something crafted to please or impress others.  In our book, LIFE Entrepreneurs, Christopher Gergen and I called this “authentic integrity”: integration of all aspects of our lives in a way that coheres with our true nature. When we live this way, we develop what Palmer calls a “hidden wholeness.” 

“Wholeness does not mean perfection; it means embracing brokenness as an integral part of life.” 
-Parker Palmer, author and educator

Take the Traps Test

We all fall into traps in life. Sometimes we’re not even aware of it, and we can’t get out of traps we don’t know we’re in. Evaluate yourself with our Traps Test.

Take the Test

 

4. Brutal Honesty. 

Our brains are wondrous creations, with incredible capacity for sensing, thinking, remembering, learning, calculating, pattern-spotting, imagining, creating, associating, dreaming, and regenerating cells, all while subconsciously regulating our internal bodily functions and sleep.

But our brains are prone to subconscious shortcuts and biases and we are exceptionally good at rationalizing our behavior, whether good or bad. In short, we are masterful at deceiving ourselves and explaining hard truths away.

Are we needy for recognition or approval? Desperate to impress? Losing ourselves in work? Hiding our brokenness? None of us is perfect, but without brutal honesty, we will not be able to break out of unproductive patterns that cause pain for us and others.

“If you want to be successful, you must respect one rule: never lie to yourself.”
-Paulo Coelho, Brazilian novelist

 

5. Inspiration. 

There is much to be concerned about in the world today. Just look at the headlines. Sometimes we should switch off the frenzied feeds of doom and gloom and turn our gaze elsewhere: What fills us with life? What makes us crackle with energy? What lifts us up? Inspiration can come from different sources: Love. Dreams. Connection. Adventure. Opportunity. Awe and wonder. The coming of spring. The hope of healing. The sense of having helped.

What inspires you? Have you lost touch with it?


6. Courage. 

We tend to put courage on a pedestal. Typically, we think of people suddenly reinventing their lives or leaping into the line of fire. We think of fearlessness. In truth, courage does not come without fear. We show courage when we act even though we are afraid.

“Feel the fear and do it anyway.” 
-Susan Jeffers, psychologist and author

Courage is a prerequisite for everything that is necessary and valuable in life. What use is a good idea not launched into the world? A conviction not defended? A precious relationship not fiercely guarded? A talent that stays backstage? A manuscript that never ships?

It is not enough to have convictions: we must act on them, even when–especially when—they are hard. Courage is not always about acts of heroism. It is much more often the day-to-day hard work of showing up, getting started, putting ourselves out there, doing our best, and persisting. It requires mucking through the swamp of uncertainty.

Quality of Life Assessment

Evaluate your quality of life in ten key areas by taking our assessment. Discover your strongest areas, and the areas that need work, then act accordingly.

Take the Assessment

 

7. Wholeheartedness. 

Too often, we live and lead just from our head. We think, reason, assess. Pros and cons. Cost/benefit. We avoid the mysterious territory of the heart. Brené Brown reminds us that we fall into the trap of trying to impress others, with fear and shame driving that fool’s errand.

The alternative, she says, is vulnerability, and embracing what she calls the “gifts of imperfection,” which can lead to connection, joy, and wholeheartedness.

“Connection is why we’re here…. Courage starts with showing up and letting ourselves be seen….
True belonging only happens when we present our authentic, imperfect selves to the world.” 
-Brené Brown, researcher and author

 

8. Significance.

Jeff Spadafora talks about achieving a level of success in his life with a family, prestige, and a big home in the mountains—and yet feeling surprisingly unsettled. Over time—with an increasing disconnect between his life and his values, driven by his focus on ego and accumulation—that feeling grew into what he calls “smoldering discontent.”

In his book, HalfTime, Bob Buford wrote about the struggle that can occupy much of our lives for those fortunate enough not to be consumed with survival matters like disease, hunger, and poverty. If we are fortunate, perhaps we can transform that struggle into success. Too many people stop there, as if wealth and status were the point of life. Buford points instead to a longer journey: from struggle, to success, to significance. Significance ensures that our success matters, that we have a legacy beyond self-aggrandizement and accumulation. A legacy of service and impact.


9. Serenity.

Many people today exist in a precarious state, from the cumulative effects of stress, poor sleep, and burnout. For starters, we need to build renewal into our days. Despite our willpower and ambitions, there are limits to our energy. Without exception, we need good habits of rest and renewal.

“In life itself, there is a time to seek inner peace, a time to rid oneself of tension and anxiety. The moment comes when the striving must let up, when wisdom says, ‘Be quiet.’ You’ll be surprised how the world keeps on revolving without your pushing it. And you’ll be surprised how much stronger you are the next time you decide to push.” 
-John W. Gardner, public official and political reformer

At a deeper level, we need “sanctuary” in our lives: places and practices of peace that restore our hearts. Places of quiet and tranquility. Together, renewal and sanctuary can lead to serenity. Beyond the striving, beyond the chase, beyond the willfulness, there is an acceptance, a yielding, a comfort with the present moment and a willingness to see things for what they are and ride with the flow of life. The serenity beyond the stress and struggle.


10. Soulfulness.

Leading self ultimately takes us beyond the self. We must look to the “far horizon,” as Dag Hammarskjöld urged, not just at the place where we are walking. We must tame our egos and find a deep and abiding humility about the vastness of our universe and a shuddering gratitude for our place in it. This is the place of soulfulness.

“You don’t have a soul, Doctor. You are a soul.” 
-Walter M. Miller Jr., A Canticle for Leibowitz

This is the place where we pause and get quiet, and instead of pushing and fighting, we sit and listen. Sometimes, with grace, we open up a space in our lives where we can begin to make out a call—quiet but steady—that had been sounding all along. Wrapped up in our own struggles and dramas, we were too preoccupied to notice, too consumed to hear.

If we stay with it, really listening, we can begin to fathom its depth.

In the vast well of soulfulness, we come to realize that our lives are not about us alone. Our lives are vessels of connection—a precious, sacred, and mysterious gift.

 

Tools for You

 

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Gregg Vanourek’s Newsletter

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++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Gregg Vanourek is a writer, teacher, TEDx speaker, and coach on personal development and leadership. He is co-author of three books, including LIFE Entrepreneurs: Ordinary People Creating Extraordinary Lives (a manifesto for living with purpose and passion) and Triple Crown Leadership: Building Excellent, Ethical, and Enduring Organizations (a winner of the International Book Awards). Check out his Best Articles or get his monthly newsletter. If you found value in this article, please forward it to a friend. Every little bit helps!

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