Are You You're Own Worst Enemy? - Negative self talk and giving constructive feedback.

"I hate myself, I hate myself, I hate myself."  As a chronic overthinker I've had issues with negative self talk most of my life.  "Why did you do that? You're such an idiot!"  Even if your inner monologue isn't quite this aggressive I'm sure most of us use language about and to ourselves that we wouldn't dream of saying to anyone else.

It's understandable that we want to set high standards for ourselves.  That we want to do the best we possibly can, but how often does that self talk actually help?  Again most of us know it's not helpful but 'getting out of our own way' can be challenging.

Part of the problem is that when we take stock of ourselves we are constantly looking for the ways we can improve, what our areas for development might be.  This is not to say that knowing our weaknesses is a bad thing, it's vital, but why do we always ignore what we are already good at?  

Blow Down 2023

When I give feedback, in any area, I not only start with the positive, I want clients/students to recognise and talk about what they are good at. Even when working with pre-school children the starting point should always be; what worked? what went well? Then and only then do we look at areas for development.

This isn't to 'sweeten the sting of negative feedback'. When we receive feedback we place a higher value on what we perceive to be negative.  No matter what the positives we give power to the negative.  Imposter syndrome kicks in and self doubt takes over.

When we recognise and understand what we have done well, when we start from a place of confidence we are much more able to process and implement points for development.  This isn't about coddling people, it's recognising that most of us are our own worst enemies.  We are far harder on ourselves than we would ever be on anyone else.  If we could only realise that instead of driving us to do better this can often cause us to shy away from being the best version of ourselves.  We say 'oh that's not my area, so and so is much better at that than I could ever be.'  We can't be anyone else, but we can be the best, most authentic version of ourselves.  Recognising our strengths is one of the first vital steps on this journey.