1+1: Feeling bad to feel better + Listening to shame

Here’s one leadership idea and one resource I’ve found beneficial this week:

1 idea: Feeling bad to feel better

“I have to feel bad to feel better.” That was the answer my client gave when I asked why he got stuck in a cycle of depression whenever he made a mistake. If I feel bad, he said, that terrible feeling will teach me not to do it again.

He made the statement with a smile because as soon as the words left his lips, he realized how ridiculous it sounded. But I could certainly relate.

For years, I operated off the same playbook. Looking back on it now, I clearly thought that beating myself up over mistakes was the way to eliminate them. That was how my coaches functioned—screaming at me when I missed a tackle or fumbled the ball. So I internalized those voices and made them my own. When I’d throw an interception during a football game, I’d do pushups on the sidelines for penance.

It wasn’t until college that I realized the three problems with this approach—for sports, and for life in general. The first was that devoting all this attention to self-pity distracted me from learning. Rather than taking a moment to analyze the situation and learn what to do differently next time, my mental soundtrack was just blaring the same message on repeat: you’re an idiot. (Not exactly the peppy halftime speech that I needed.) While this approach certainly did the trick of making me feel bad, it didn’t help me do any better next time because I hadn’t learned anything new. I was bound to repeat the same mistakes again.

The second problem was that getting swallowed up in the past kept me from doing the next right thing. Instead of asking myself, “What the best thing I can do next?”, my mind ruminated on the same thought: You shouldn’t have done that. You shouldn’t have done that. Being stuck in the past didn’t help me learn from the past, and it certainly didn’t make me better in the present.

The final problem was one of attitude. Marty Seligman and others find that an optimistic mindset is the foundation of creative problem solving and perseverance through adversity. Positive people are more likely to think of alternative solutions and act on new ideas. So even if digging myself a hole of depression did teach me valuable lessons, feeling like a loser was going to make me less creative and motivated to get out of it.

I asked my client, “If that’s a lie—that you have to feel bad to feel better—what’s the truth? I have to feel ________ to feel better?” He paused for a moment, then said, “forgiven and loved.” As a Christian, he believed that Jesus had already forgiven him for his mistakes. The bill was paid, and no penance on his part could add to it. God wasn’t disappointed in him—He was waiting to embrace him and heal him.

I couldn’t help but smile at his thought because it aligned with what I've learned by interviewing people who have transformed. Every person I've spoken to who has radically changed their life for the better had a moment where they experienced unconditional love from God or another person. My client was on to something here, and I was excited to see the freedom that would come next.

***

• What mistakes are most likely to trigger a shame spiral for you?

• What’s the ‘next right thing’ you could do in that moment?

• How would your life be different if you could get un-stuck faster in those moments?

1 resource: Listening to shame

One of the most helpful paradigms I’ve seen in helping people break the shame spiral is the difference between shame (bad) and guilt (productive)—a revolutionary idea. Researcher Brené Brown articulates the difference in her second TED talk here.

PS: Beat it!