The questions below come from many conversations over many years with clients and students.
1. How would I know if my relationship to mistakes and failures (or successes) was a problem?
You might...
Find yourself avoiding work often and engaging in lots of escape activities.
Have a hard time enjoying work.
Feel exhausted a great deal of the time.
Label yourself with a global term, like “loser.”
Compare yourself frequently and negatively to others.
Feel perpetually disappointed in yourself.
2. Don’t mistakes and failures mean that I’ve messed up?
There’s some truth to this. Some mistakes mean we did mess up somehow. But let’s look closer. We might think of ourselves as having a relationship with mistakes, which, by the way, are inevitable in many situations. I’m not suggesting we ignore our mistakes. But when we turn them into something more than is actually there, we can get into trouble. That can happen when our relationship to work is such that we tend to interpret mistakes as contributing to a larger narrative or painful image of ourselves. Sometimes there’s a long backstory with meanings that can, in a sense, overshadow the actual mistake we’ve just made. And there are different kinds of mistakes. It can help to do some detective work to learn what actually contributed to a particular one.
3. What do you mean, “There are different definitions of success and failure?”
Of course, some failures are inevitably disappointing. And we usually feel good when we achieve something we wanted. But how we respond to these concepts of “success” and “failure” varies. A given mistake or failure can seem like a huge thing, fraught with shame and other difficult emotions. But it can also be experienced as if it were information to be processed; we can try to figure what happened. What seemed like a simple failure can sometimes give rise to new understandings. This can make learning invigorating, even when it’s challenging.
Likewise, some apparent successes can seem initially simple, but context can mean a lot. Sports events are good examples of this. An Olympic competitor hoping for gold might be devastated to win only silver. But someone who never expected to place at all might be overjoyed with bronze. At another level, what constitutes a “successful life” for one person might not bring satisfaction to another. And all this can change over time.
4. Doesn’t it help to be tough on myself when I make errors?
We often think that the best way to respond to mistakes is with blame or punishment, and we’re often harder on ourselves than on others. In the moment, that might even help us feel better. If I tell myself I’m not living up to my standards, it helps me believe that this isn’t my best work; I can do better than this. But self-recrimination also has costs. It leaves us feeling bad. And feeling bad, especially about oneself, can lead to discouragement and loss of creative energy. With this approach, we can end up feeling tired and miserable a lot of the time, which is counterproductive for doing better.
5. But if I’m not hard on myself, what will motivate me?
One assumption behind the idea that punishment is helpful is that there aren’t other reasons to do something. And, if we’ve spent many years doing work for external reasons or to avoid punishment, we may not have many internal reasons, such as curiosity or personal satisfaction. But those more internal motivations can be cultivated over time.
6. Isn’t this just a way to justify bad performance?
That challenge seems to come up a lot in my work with clients. We worry about the consequences of being too easy on ourselves. This is related to the question above about how motivation happens. The assumption seems to be that we are basically lazy—that we have a character flaw. But research indicates that almost all human beings actually want to be engaged in things, unless there are reasons not to be. When we slack off, it’s usually because we’re tired, unengaged, or worried about letting ourselves down. Having an emotionally difficult relationship with our work can certainly make us want to do as little of it as possible.
7. What can I do to work on this?
First, keep in mind that this is a gradual process. If things don't change as fast as you want them to, it may be hard not to lapse into old patterns of self-blame, But cultivate patience, if you can!
You can begin to notice your relationship to your work; how do you feel, emotionally, as you think about your work?
You can begin to notice how you are feeling if and when you engage in self-blame. Noticing is a powerful way to initiate change, even though it may not be immediately obvious.
You can invite yourself to take more of a investigative approach to your relationship to your work and to your mistakes: You can ask, “Has this work become a way I define myself?” “Who am I other than my work?” "What do I care about most in life?" “Realistically, what actually contributed to this particular mistake?” “What did I misunderstand?” “What contextual factors might have contributed?” "What might I do to begin to change that?"
It can help to find someone you trust who is able to accompany and support you as you work to make changes. Reflection and personal change can be hard to do alone but, over the long-term, it can lead to a more satisfying way to engage with work and with life.
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