Welcome to Visionary Pursuit, a podcast where we explore what it takes to turn your bold and inspiring ideas into reality. I'm Carolina Zuleta. I'm a life and a business coach, and your host for this podcast. I'm thrilled to have you here
Hi, everyone. Welcome back. This is episode 95 of The Visionary's Pursuit podcast. As I'm recording this episode, we are about to start Consult Week, and I've already seen some new names that I have never met coming into my calendar, which I'm very excited to meet each of you.
We opened a couple more spots, so if you haven't grabbed your spot yet, go ahead and do it. The link is in the description, and I'm really looking forward to listening to you, bringing my tools, the research I know to help you overcome an obstacle or maybe focus on your vision and your desires, what you want to achieve.
So don't wait any longer. It's just this week. We do it twice a year. The link is in the description. Go grab a free spot, and I am looking forward to meeting you.
So as you probably can hear in my voice right now, I have a little bit of a cold. And when I have a cold or when I'm not feeling well, and I cannot be performing at my best, I tend to be pretty hard on myself.
In fact, if I look throughout life, being hard on myself, you know, kind of beating myself up at times for many years was the way that I would keep moving forward. so today, I want us to talk about a topic that we rarely hear about when we're discussing business, entrepreneurship, or leadership, and yet I think it's so important. One of the beautiful gifts that coaching has given me is to be able to see the inner life or the behind-the-scenes life of people that I admire and I respect.
Clients who, if you look at their social media, the news coverage, you look at their businesses, you will feel inspired by. It will almost seem like they have figured it out, and they are super successful. And yes, that is true, and also they are humans. And because they are humans, I get to see the moments where they're doubting themselves, when they're feeling down because something didn't go the way they expected it to go or they wanted it to go, when the days they give 110% to their projects and businesses, and the days where they fall short.
One of the things that I think my clients and I, we have in common, is that for many years, we've learned that the way to get ourselves motivated to keep going is by being hard on ourselves, by criticizing ourselves, by flagellating ourselves when we make a mistake or when we fall short.
And what I often tell them, and we have deep conversations about this, is that that way of being, hurting ourselves, being critical of ourselves can push us some amount. And listen, it's true. As human beings, we do get motivated by what psychologists call the stick, right? We're scared of being embarrassed, of looking like a failure, of disappointing other people, that we criticize ourselves, and that gives us some fuel to keep going.
But I also believe that that type of fuel in the long term hurts us. Because that inner critic, when it becomes louder and louder and louder, it becomes debilitating. It creates shame within ourselves.
It takes away from us our joy and our pleasure and a sense of fulfillment. And when that starts to happen, we start losing energy, we stop believing in ourselves, we stop diminishing our capacity to dream bigger, to risk more. One way my clients describe this is that they're scared of taking a bigger risk or setting a bigger goal.
And when we look at it, yes, they might be scared of failure, they might be scared of the financial risk. But underneath all of that, what they're scared the most is of that voice that is gonna create so much shame within themselves that they do things unconsciously to avoid getting to those places where they're gonna hurt themselves. I wanna talk about the antidote to that inner critic, and that is self-compassion. And if you're hearing this word and you're thinking about self-compassion as a very light term or language that people who meditate talk about, I don't want you to think about self-compassion in that way. I want you to think about self-compassion as a real strategy of your own business
If you learn how to hold yourself with self-compassion when you fail, when you're embarrassed, when things don't go the way you wanted them to go, when you fall short, if you can have your back under those very difficult circumstances, you are going to be more willing to take bigger risks, to take up more space, to go for bigger dreams, to have tougher conversations, To stand up more for what you believe in.
So I want you to think about this episode in two ways. One, I'm going to teach you the elements of self-compassion, so it can become a day-to-day practice, and then you can get stronger and more resilient within yourself, so you can take bigger risks. And also an episode to come back for those days that you fall short and you're being harsh on yourself, so you can listen and remember the importance of having self-compassion.
Kristin Neff is a researcher. She runs the Center for Mindful Self-Compassion, where she studies how we develop and how we practice self-compassion. I first learned about her from the book Atlas of the Heart from Brené Brown. So I'm gonna be reading a couple of paragraphs from this book to be able to illustrate what self-compassion really is.
So what Neff has found in her research is that self-compassion has three different elements: self-kindness, common humanity, and mindfulness. So let's talk about each. I want you to think about self-kindness as the opposite of self-judgment.
And this is what Brené Brown writes in her book: "Self-compassion entails being warm and understanding toward ourselves when we suffer, fail, or feel inadequate, rather than ignoring our pain or flagellating ourselves with self-criticism.
Self-compassionate people recognize that being imperfect, failing, and experiencing life difficulties are inevitable, so they tend to be gentle with themselves when confronted with painful experiences rather than getting angry when life falls short of set ideals.
This idea of, of self-kindness reminds me of a concept that I learned many years ago with my husband, Andrew, that's called soft landings. What we learned is that many times when you're in a relationship and one of us makes a mistake, we book the tickets for the wrong date, we made a financial transaction to the wrong bank account and we might be losing some money. Those things create real stress within a relationship.
And our normal tendency, I would say, is to get mad at the other one. "Why did you make that mistake? You weren't thinking. We're now gonna lose money," or, "Now we have the wrong tickets And we're now gonna have to pay change fees."
And we make it even harder for the other person. A soft landing is when someone makes a mistake, you hold them with love and tenderness. "Oh, man, you booked the tickets for the wrong date. I am so sorry. That sucks, and I'm here with you. Let's figure it out together." In fact, this happened to me. I was transferring, some money for when we were buying our house, and I made a mistake in the wire transfer.
And because of that mistake, we were at risk of losing a lot of money. And Andrew created a soft landing for me. Instead of being hard with me or getting really upset with me, because I was already doing that with myself. I was already feeling shame.
I was already beating myself up. He was so kind and gentle, and he hugged me and he said, "We're gonna figure this out together." And he was the one who got on the phone with the bank and started talking with them and figuring it out. And thank goodness we were able to resolve it without losing any money, which was amazing.
And I still remember his reaction. And then first of all, like, I felt so loved and cared for and in partnership with him, which is amazing. And also it got me out of my absolute fear and shame, and I was able to think more creatively, come up with ideas on how we can solve it. And I think we worked better as a team because of the soft landing he created.
And the question I want us all to ask ourselves is, what would happen if we created soft landings for ourselves? What would happen if every time we fell, we made a mistake, we reacted in a way that we are not proud of?
And instead of being harsh with ourselves, we hold ourselves accountable. Of course, we're gonna take responsibility for our mistake, but what if we do it lovingly? What if we have our own back no matter what? What opportunities can we create from that place?
Thinking about this has made me reflect on why are we actually hard on ourselves. And it almost feels like we have to or we should because we made a mistake and that's the normal consequence, right? Like we're a little kid, you made a mistake, you get punished for it.
But if we are adults who care about our business, who care about the people we work with, that we lead, who care about the outcomes we're creating, we're still gonna take responsibility. There's no need to beat ourselves up. There's no need to be... There's no need to speak to ourselves with so much anger, sometimes even hatred.
Instead of creating soft landings, being kind to ourselves, warm, and knowing that we're gonna figure it out and that the faster we get to that self-kindness, the faster we can get out of shame or flight-fight-freeze response and access our prefrontal cortex so we can think strategically about how to solve whatever we need to solve in that moment.
The second element of self-compassion is common humanity versus isolation. Let me read from the book again. "Self-compassion involves recognizing that suffering and personal inadequacy is part of the shared human experience, something that we all go through rather than being something that happened to me alone."
Often when we make a mistake or we fall short or we're failing at something, we think we are the only ones facing a situation like that one. But it does help to remember that all human beings fall short, that we all fail at times, that we are not alone in this experience of feeling inadequate or failing.
I'll go back to the gift coaching has given me of having those moments where I'm connecting with people that I admire deeply and seeing them struggle because they remind me that their struggle is my struggle, and it's all of our struggle, and that's what connects us. In fact, throughout the years, what I have learned is that connection, real connection between two human beings happens through our cracks, through our vulnerability, through the places where we're not perfect, Where we don't have it all together . Remembering that as human beings we are flawed and that that's something we all shared make us feel less alone.
Often we feel when we're struggling that we are the only ones who are struggling, that we are the only ones who would make a mistake this bad, that every other business is succeeding and we are the only ones that are failing. When in fact, each story is different, but in some way we all share a journey of struggles and difficulties.
And I think it's beautiful and powerful to remember that we are not alone in these hard moments. And the third element of self-compassion is mindfulness versus over-identification.
Going back to the book. "Mindfulness is a non-judgmental, receptive mind state in which one observes thoughts and feelings as they are without trying to suppress or deny them. We cannot ignore our pain and feel compassion for it at the same time. At the same time, mindfulness requires that we not be over-identified with thoughts and feelings so that we are caught up and swept away by negative reactivity." Many years ago when I first was learning about meditation and how my brain works and all that, I remember sitting in a big theater with Deepak And he told us to close our eyes and notice our thoughts, to pay attention to what we were thinking in that moment. And then he said, "Now focus on the part of you that can pay attention to the thoughts, to the observer, to the part of your brain that is not thinking but it's noticing, witnessing, observing the thoughts and the experiences you're having."
That is the basic principle of mindfulness, to know that there is a part of our brain that is not engaged in the day-to-day chatter that doesn't have a perspective or doesn't believe life should be a certain way or shouldn't be a certain way.
In some meditation traditions, they call it your awareness. In others, they talk about equanimity. But it's the ability we have as human beings to notice what's happening inside our brain. I also remember my first class of my coaching certification. The first certification I got in coaching is from a school that's called Co-Active Coaching, and it starts with a weekend that's called Fundamentals.
And in that weekend, we talked a lot about our inner critic, that voice that is so hard on us. And what they explained to us that, maybe you've already heard this, but for me, it was revolutionary back then, and it was that our inner critic was not who we were,
That our inner critic is a part of us. It's a series of thought patterns, but it's not who we are. And being able to separate ourselves from the shameful thoughts, from the blaming thoughts, being able to notice how our brain wants to think the worst of us, but that's not who we are, I think it's life-changing.
So the third component of self-compassion is to learn to do that, to practice being in your awareness, to practice being able to witness what's happening in your thoughts, in your experience, without attaching to the belief that that's who you are. "I made a mistake" versus "There's something wrong with me." "I fell short" versus "I'll never be able to do it." " I gave 70% of my energy today" versus "I am a lazy person."
I believe that these three practices of self-compassion, which are mindfulness, common humanity, and self-kindness, are a powerful strategy for your business.
Because when we are attacking ourselves, we go into survival mode, and in survival mode, we cannot make the best decisions for our business, for our future. We cannot communicate in the best way. We cannot lead in the best way. But if we can be self-compassionate with ourselves, and bring ourselves to a place where we can understand our mistakes, take responsibility for them, while we hold ourselves with love and kindness and warmth, that's the place where we can be the best leaders, the best visionaries we know we can be.
And also, to all of you, we constantly hear about this epidemic of mental health that we are all facing in this world today. These three tools, self-kindness, common humanity, and mindfulness, are fundamental to staying healthy, to being resilient, to being able to have a good outlook on life when things get really hard.
Because as you know, the journey of building our vision, of creating what we dream of creating, is gonna be filled with shortcomings and failures and disappointments and tough moments.
So more than anything, here's what I want you to take away from this episode. Self-compassion is essential to our success. It's not a nice to have, it's not a soft skill. It's really a powerful tool for us to be at our best. When we're beating ourselves up, when we're being harsh with ourselves, we tend to be harsher with others and tend to be worse leaders.
We also tend to stall in decision-making because we know that if we make the wrong decision, we're going to suffer, we try to find the perfect decision. But as you and I already know, that doesn't exist, and that slows down our growth.
When we're hard with ourselves, we also suffer in an unnecessary way. Life is too short. Your dreams are too important for you to be your worst enemy. Intentionally practice self-compassion and simply see the results you create in your life. And remember, we have a couple more spots open for Consult Week. The link is at the top of the description. And that's all for today. Can't wait to meet you, and I'll see you next week. Bye.
If you're currently pursuing a big, bold idea and would love some support, let's talk. In my coaching program, I'll teach you how to manage yourself, your own thoughts and emotions, as well as your team and your money, so you can turn your beautiful idea into a reality. Go now to carozuleta.com/consult. That is C-A-R-O-Z-U-L-E-T-A.com/consult and complete the form to book a complimentary call with me.
See you there.
