High Performance Mindset | Learn from World-Class Leaders, Consultants, Athletes & Coaches about Mindset - 586: Failing Better with Dr. Ashley Kuchar, Mental Performance Coach & Researcher

Episode Date: December 14, 2023

Are you harder on yourself than you are on others? Do you believe that the more critical of yourself, the better you will perform or more motivated you will be? Dr. Ashley Kuchar is a former collegiate student-athlete and the founder of Fail Better Training™. As a mental performance coach, she is passionate about helping athletes (of all levels) learn how to respond to challenging situations in ways that foster resilience rather than rely on harsh criticism.  Ashley completed her PhD at The University of Texas at Austin, working alongside Dr. Kristin Neff. During her doctoral degree, Ashley developed a resilience program called RESET. She tested the 6-session program with over 250 NCAA student-athletes and found that it supported adaptive coping, well-being, and sport performance. In 2019, Ashley was one of five graduate students to receive an NCAA research grant to aid in the development of RESET (formerly "Fail Better"). In this podcast, Ashley and Cindra talk: The research-supported reasons we should practice self-compassion 3 components of self-compassion How self-compassion is a learnable skill How the best approach mistakes And how to reduce your inner critic    HIGH PERFORMANCE MINDSET SHOWNOTES FOR THIS EPISODE: www.cindrakamphoff.com/586 FOLLOW CINDRA ON INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/cindrakamphoff/ FOLLOW CINDRA ON X: https://twitter.com/mentally_strong TO FOLLOW DR. ASHLEY AND LEARN ABOUT HER RESET TRAINING HERE: Fail Better Training Love the show? Rate and review the show for Cindra to mention you on the next episode: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/high-performance-mindset-learn-from-world-class-leaders/id1034819901  

Welcome to the High Performance Mindset Podcast. This is your host, Dr. Sindhra Kampoff, keynote speaker, executive performance coach, and founder of the Mentally Strong Institute. And today, I'm just pumped that you are here, ready to listen to another episode of the High Performance Mindset. And today's a good one. It's with Dr. Ashley Kuchar. Now, are you harder on yourself than you are on others? And do you believe that the more critical of yourself, the better you will perform or more motivated you will be? In today's episode about failing better, we answer these questions. I heard Dr. Ashley Kuchar speak at the Association for Applied Sports Psychology conference in September. And as I was listening, I knew I had to have her on the podcast. I've been following her mentor's work, Dr. Kristen Neff, for several years and use a lot of the self-compassion work that we talk about today in the episode in my one-on-one work with athletes and leaders and executives.

And so it's just great to have her on. I'm very impressed with everything that she's put together and what she's done, her research, as well as her reset program. And I think you're going to learn a lot today about the power of self-compassion and why really it's important to be kinder to yourself than be critical of yourself and the research-backed ways to do so and how to do so. Now, Dr. Ashley Kuchar is a former collegiate student athlete and founder of the Fail Better Training. As a mental performance coach, she's passionate about helping athletes at all levels learn how to respond to challenging situations in ways that foster resilience rather than rely on harsh criticism. She completed her PhD at the University

of Texas at Austin alongside the leading researcher on self-compassion, Dr. Kristen Neff. And during her doctoral program, Ashley developed a resilience program called Reset, which we talk about in today's episode. It's a six-session program that she tested with over 250 NCAA student-athletes and found that the program supported adaptive coping, well-being, and sport performance, which we'll talk about today and unpack that. And in 2019, she was one of five graduate students to receive an NCAA research grant

to aid in the development of RESET. In today's episode, we talk about the importance of self-compassion. We share research about athletes, but also leaders and executives. So no matter what your role is, you'll find that today's episode is really applicable to you. And we talk about research-supported reasons why we should practice self-compassion, three components of self-compassion, how self-compassion is a learnable skill, how the best approach mistakes and rebound from them, and how to reduce your inner critic. My favorite quote from this episode that Ashley shares is,

we perform best when we feel the best. If you'd like to see the full show notes and description of this episode, you can head over to cindracampoff.com slash 586 for episode 586. And if you haven't already, we'd love for you to share a rating and review of the podcast. Wherever you're listening, you can click on the rating and review button, or if you're on an iPhone, for example, to scroll up and leave us a rating and review. This just allows us to reach more and more people each and every week, and we would be forever grateful. All right.

Thanks so much. And without further ado, let's welcome Dr. Ashley Kuchar. Welcome to the High Performance Mindset Podcast. I'm grateful that you're here. Ashley Kuchar, how is your day going? And thanks again for joining me. Yeah, it's great. It's sunny here in Texas, so I'm enjoying it.

You know, it's sunny here in Minnesota, and that doesn't normally happen in December. We have zero snow, so I'm very excited, you know. That's amazing. I know, it's very warm. I don't know if it's balanced. Was last year extra snowy? Because I feel like it always makes up for it eventually. Yeah, that's what I'm feeling like, too. So I'm just really excited that you're on the podcast today. We're going to be talking about self-compassion and failure and resilience and really important topics for every single person who's listening. And I think what an incredible background that you've had in sport and then studying

with Kristen Neff, who I believe is the leading researcher on self-compassion. You got your PhD with her. So what a great experience you've had in background and self-compassion. You got your PhD with her. So what a great experience you've had in background in self-compassion and resilience. Let's just get started and let's talk about what resilient performers have in common. Yeah, so I feel, and let me just say, yes, it was an honor to work with Dr. Kristen Neff, and she is the kind of founder, the one who coined that term self-compassion. And so I'm very grateful to have worked with her through my doctoral program. So yeah, with resilient athletes, I feel like, I mean, obviously one, they're able to adapt to whatever's on their way. They're able

to adapt in some way, have some of that psychological flexibility, we might call it. And I feel like some of the reasons why they might be able to adapt is because they have great social support. And that doesn't necessarily mean a lot of people. It just means that they have a solid group of people who, you know, can support them. They usually have a great perspective, which could come from having a strong sense of purpose, maybe some gratitude in there as well, so having that perspective can be big. They're able to regulate their emotions. So maybe being more mindful, they acknowledge them, they process through them rather than getting carried away and losing themselves and whatever might be going on. And then probably I would say the last thing,

not the last thing, another thing is they're confident. They're confident in their abilities. They're confident in their ability to be resilient, maybe trusting the process a little bit more. So those are some of the things that I've seen with athletes, performers, people in general who, yeah, I would say are quite resilient. Yeah. And we, you know, we perform every day. I think as an athlete, we perform, but I think about myself and everything that you just said, adaptable, psychological flexibility, great social support, purpose, gratitude, regulate my emotions, right? Like I have to do that every day as a business owner and, you know, all that. Exactly.

It's everywhere. It's not good. We all need to be resilient. Yeah. Yeah. And like a practice that it seems to me that it's not something we just have and always have, but we have to practice resilience every day. Would you agree with that? 100%. Yeah, 100%.

So give us a little bit of background and tell us kind of your origin story of getting into this field and studying resilience and performance psychology and self-compassion. Yeah. So I grew up as an athlete. I started playing basketball when I was five, played all the sports and loved it. I, I excelled in sports and in school. It came pretty easily to me. And I've always been interested. I don't know. I think I was just born this way, but interested in just psychology of normal people, like what motivates us. I was really interested in coaching when I was in high school. How do I motivate, you know, my teammates or having that empathy? So I've just always kind of been interested in psychology in general. That said, I had very high fear of failure,

a lot of perfectionistic tendencies, right? I suppressed my emotions, which is very typical, I think, within high high performers all these things are are quite normal I was very very hard on myself and so at some point probably in high school but then into college as I was studying psychology I was like there's got to be a better way there has got to be a way where we can perform at a really, really high level without sacrificing our well-being. And I also had had several different coaches at that time. I had some who were very, very demeaning and tried to motivate in that way. I actually had a coach who said, I need you to show me that you're angry after you make a mistake. And I was like, oh man,

it's all in my head. I'm just trying to hold it in actually. You don't know how much I'm trying to hold it in and not let it out of me. I don't think that's actually going to be helpful. Of course I didn't say any of that in that moment. I just was like, okay, I can show you I'm mad. And did you do that? Did you show you were more mad or what did you, how did you respond? I would clap my hands. I'm like, it's easy to show. It was all inside of me.

I just had to let it out a little bit. And I knew it was terrible advice. I knew it would not help me at all. And it did not. But I had this like power dynamic where I was also trying to do what my coach asked me to do. So of course, that was that was challenging for me. And then I had another coach who was the opposite of that just loved us, really wanted us to love each other to enjoy the sport and so I had the totally stark experiences between what it felt like to be motivated by fear versus by love really and encouragement and so during that time also so in college I was introduced to mindfulness and self-compassion and I was hooked it flipped my whole perspective around. I had for mindfulness, I would say the thing for me was that a mistake didn't have to mean I was bad or it could literally just be a data point.

I was like, yeah, you're missing some shots. Let's make an adjustment and move on. I didn't have to be taken away by all this emotion. And then when I was introduced to this idea of self-compassion which I had some resistance to which is very common for athletes as well to the idea to it felt soft but I had this complete perspective shift where I felt like I had been taught my whole life literally be mad at yourself when you make a mistake and now I was getting this perspective shift of what if I was encouraging what if I was kind to myself what if I could just take it and move on and so I was hooked from then on I wanted to study with

Kristen at UT and was blessed and lucky enough to get that opportunity to do that and and wanted to bring mindfulness and self-compassion these ideas to athletes in a way that makes sense to them to actually reduce those barriers that I had, even being, you know, a woman being an athlete, studying psychology. And so, yeah, that's what I've been doing ever since. And it's awesome. I love it. Well, it sounds like that's your true calling and purpose. You know, there's people who are listening that maybe have studied self-compassion and there's others that aren't sure. And I think you said something that's really important that maybe a barrier to self-compassion is like, I'm going to feel like I'm soft or I'm going to not, I'm not

going to achieve my goals or I'm going to be lazy. So let's talk a little bit about like what self-compassion is and what it isn't. Yeah, great. So as defined by Kristen Neff, it's got three components. You've got the mindfulness, just acknowledging things in a balanced way. We're not getting carried away by our suffering, our pain. We're also not avoiding it. Then you've got common humanity, understanding that as humans, we will struggle. We will suffer. It's really normal. It's actually part of just being human. And then we've got the self-kindness and that would be, you know, as we would treat a child or a friend typically with kindness, then we also want to turn that towards ourself. And then recently, Kristen has also identified tender and fierce self-compassion. So tender

self-compassion is more probably what people might think of when they hear that word compassion right it's more the comforting and reassuring being present with your suffering not necessarily trying to fix it just more validating and then this more active which the athletes and performers love i love is this fear self-compassion so it's much more action oriented it would be protecting yourself, you know, providing for your needs and motivating. So a lot of people think that self-compassion is also being self-indulgent or it's weak or it will undermine your motivation. It's not. And there's lots and lots of research that proves that, that shows that it actually increases your motivation, improves performance and all those all those kinds of things.

So that's a quick rundown of the of the term. Yeah. So I just bought like check it out for whatever weird reason on my bookshelf. It's like pointed out today just because you were coming. And I didn't even intend to do that. But I have Dr. Kristen's next, Neff's last book, Fierce Compassion. And it's specific for women, which I think is pretty cool. But you said something there about, well, not fierce, not fierce. Fierce self-compassion is just for women, but at least her book is. That's what I meant to say.

But you said something there that's really important about you know self-compassion increasing motivation and increasing performance and I think that's why we want to practice it more often um you know I appreciated ASP how you had us think about a time and for people who aren't familiar with ASP it's the Association for Applied Sports Psychology, where I saw Dr. Kuchar speak on this topic. And I was like, I gotta, I gotta have her on the podcast. And you were, you had us think about a time we performed poorly, and then what happened and how we felt. And then you had us write down what we would say to a best friend. And it was really cool because I realized I try to be kind and compassionate with myself, but I'm human too. And I realized I was really beating myself up about this missed opportunity. And I was kind of replaying it a lot in my mind. And when I wrote

down what I would tell a best friend, it was like, you're doing the best that you can, and there's a better opportunity for you instead. And it helped me get unstuck and just realize, first of all, recognize that I was being self-critical. And so tell us about the power of an exercise like that and why you had us do it? Yeah, this is probably one of the best introductory practices because typically I would say 90% of people are kinder to others than they are to themselves. There are some people who are meaner to others than they are to themselves and we also can work with them, but we know how to be compassionate. The challenge is when we have some kind of perceived threat, right? A missed opportunity, a missed shot, a lost game, whatever the thing might be.

And we go into that fight or flight and we're in that part of our brain that's like, we're going to fight, flight or freeze. And a lot of us choose to fight ourselves, which isn't actually super helpful, but that's the best that part of our brain can do. And so what we need to do to shift perspectives and what I call going from the inner critic to the inner coach, a great way to shift perspectives and step back is to think about, well, what would I say to a friend? What would I say to a teammate? What would a really, really good coach say to me? And you feel this shift, this perspective shift in your brain where you can go so naturally, so easily to the encouragement, to supporting them, to be like, hey, it's okay that you got another shot. It's not a big deal.

And so that exercise I think is the best mindset shift. And it's something that you can use anytime. Anytime you catch yourself being self-critical, you could ask yourself, would I say this to a friend? That's a great question too. What would happen if I said this to a friend? Would I ever say, you're an idiot? You're so dumb. I can't believe you did that.

Probably not. Or I would have no friends. And so if we're not going to say it to our friends, we wouldn't say to a small child, then probably saying it to ourself is also not helpful. Yeah. Yeah. And some people might say, well, gosh, maybe the, and I used to think this too, Ashley, as I used to, especially when I was a college athlete, I thought that the more I beat myself up, like the more it would motivate me, you know, and that now looking back, I realized it was like, just, it crushed my confidence and my motivation. And I just didn't

realize that at the time because I wasn't as self-aware as I am now, you know? But why would you say that's really important to just be mindful of that critical voice and ask yourself, you know, what would you say to a friend or would you say this to a little child? Yeah, I think just like you said, it can actually crush our confidence. And I'm not saying we shouldn't be evaluative. It's really important actually to evaluate our performance and where we're at. I had a doctor actually that I was working with and he had this realization in one of our sessions where he said, you know what? I think I have, I used to think that I am

successful because of my criticism. And he said, actually, I think I'm successful despite my self-criticism. So where he went from, he thought that that harsh criticism was actually helping him. It wasn't right. The purpose of the critic, if it is there to motivate you, it's there to be the alarm system of, Hey, this is something that's important. Hey, we want to do something differently. And that's very, very helpful to let us know this is something we want to change. And that harsh tone, the internalized voices of criticism or negativity, it's just it's not helpful. And it's not a long term strategy.

It might help you in that short term moment. But over a long period of time, it leads to depression. It leads to anxiety. It leads to more stress. And so there, there is a better way. And I recognize that for these high performers, really just people in general, it takes a little bit of trust to see, is there a way that I can still motivate myself that I can still be evaluative without being harsh? Because that's very different. Yeah. So powerful. So powerful. I was in one of my favorite books by Dr. Kristen Neff is the Mindful Self-Compassion Workbook. And I use it a lot with the people I work with. And there was a quote in there that I read yesterday and something like when we are self-critical, we're both the attack, attacker and the attacked, right? So we're both attacking ourselves and attacked. We're, you know,

we're, we're the person being attacked, but we're the attacker. And I thought that was so powerful just to help me recognize also like why I need to keep working on softening that inner voice. Yeah, that's really good. It's really good. So let's kind of dive into some of the research findings that are important for us to consider about, you know, what are the outcomes that self-compassion really promotes? Yeah, honestly, if anything positive that you can think of, it's probably going to help with that. It helps with more mastery related goals. It helps with, you know, like less perfectionism in terms of like that fear of failure, but still reaching

for high standards. So your goal setting is better. Your motivation is better. Your performance is better. Healthier relationships, better communication. And then on the flip side, in terms of reducing, reducing that too much stress, right? The anxiety, shame. So a lot, there's a lot that it helps with. And honestly, I don't know that there are downsides. And if people are saying, well, can you be too self-compassionate? Then you're probably shifting from the self-compassion to self-indulgence, right? Because self-compassion does keep in mind short-term, long-term. And it's the idea is you're doing the best thing that you can for yourself. You're taking care of yourself in a way that you're trying to alleviate your suffering. You're trying to be with your suffering. And so honestly, I don't know that there are any downsides. Yeah, that's powerful. It's pretty cool. Yeah. Tell us about the difference between self-compassion and self-indulgence.

Yeah. So self-indulgence, an example of self-indulgence might be this is what's tricky actually because it's you can't say these actions are self-indulgent and these acts are self-compassionate because it really depends on the situation so for example there might be a day where I'm like you know what I am gonna do nothing today I'm gonna watch tv I'm just gonna chill and that might be if I chill. And that might be, if I'm burning out, that might be the absolute best thing I can do for myself. Because in the short term, it's going to help me feel better. And in the long term, it's actually going to give me the energy I need to do what I need to do. Now, there's other times where I might be avoiding

something. I'm avoiding work. And I'm like, I'm going to do nothing today. And it might actually be more of that self-indulgent in the short term. It might be helping me feel better, but actually I've got some deadlines. I got things I need to get done. It's going to make me more stressed the next day. And so in that case, it might be more self-indulgent than it is compassionate. So yeah, it depends on the intention. And like I said, I think if you think about short term and long term, what's going to be the best for me, then that's going to give you a good idea of where it's along that spectrum, I guess. Excellent. Okay, that's super helpful. Hi, this is Cyndra Campoff, and thanks for listening to the High Performance Mindset. Did you know that the ideas we share in the show are things we actually specialize in implementing? If you want to become mentally stronger, lead your team more effectively, and get to your

goals quicker, visit freementalbreakthroughcall.com to sign up for your free mental breakthrough call with one of our certified coaches. Again, that's freementalbreakthroughcall.com to sign up for your free call. Talk to you soon. Well, let's dive into your reset program. I love the work that you've done in your PhD and then, you know, when you did your dissertation

and now how it's shaped your work now with your reset program. And your reset program is like the six session program you tested on over 250 NCAA student athletes, right? And you found that it supported adaptive coping while being in sport performance. So tell us about the study and just like the application of what you did there that really has helped you set up what you're doing now. Yeah, so RESET is based off of the Mindful

Self-Compassion Program that Kristen Neff and Christopher Gerber created to teach self-compassion because it's a learnable skill. It's not something like you have it or you don't. And so the MSC program is eight sessions, two and a half hours per session, which is a lot. So athletes performance, they don't, the time is a barrier for first off and so um when i adapted msc for athletes that was a big change that i made was shortening it to six one-hour sessions and then the other really big thing as i mentioned was a huge barrier for athletes is even just that term compassion so there are some interventions out there where they use the term and then you have to back it up you guys say, I know self-compassion sounds soft and weak, but it's not.

Here's the research to back it up. And that has worked great. I wanted to create a program where I didn't even have to do that. I just reduced the barriers on the front end and it just made sense to them. And so that's a lot of what I did. and so one way that you see that is in what i call the four pillars of resilience and so with with the three components of self-compassion you have mindfulness common humanity and self-kindness and so mindfulness i kept you have to be aware before you can do anything about a situation common humanity i use the word connection same idea you're and i like that word connection. Same idea. And I like that word connection. You're connecting yourself. How do you feel connected? Is it, hey, even the pros make

mistakes. I'm not alone. Also tried to bring in some of the fierce side of the common humanity of this is something I can learn and grow from, right? Whether or not I do, I at least have the opportunity. And then the self-kindness bit was the biggest change. I took the self-kindness and I split it into two. So you have encouragement and you have productive feedback. And so by splitting it into two, changing the words also, encouragement is that we typically perform our best when we feel our best. So that's the boosting ourselves up. How do we get ourselves feeling confident, feeling better, feeling motivated? And then the productive feedback is we want to be active. We have had little, if any, resistance to the idea. It makes a lot of sense to athletes of like, yep, okay, I got to understand this is what's going on.

Here's how it's affecting me. I'm feeling stressed. It's okay. I'm not alone. This is normal. Boost myself up. As you've done, you've gone through hard things before, you can do it again. Boom, here's what you need to do differently and move on so that's that's uh kind of the setup one of the key practices and ideas within the reset program and then working working with the athletes it was during covid it was all online at that point and it was i mean it worked great if i was confident that it would work well i didn't expect it to work as well as it did. Nice. The uptake was really good. I've had, you know, a lot of great testimonials from the coaches, from the athletes,

they were able to integrate it into their normal routines. They were able to apply the practices into their normal life. And so now, yeah, we do reset in-person online. I have a fully online version. I have a published workbook that looks great. I had a graphic designer do an awesome job. So it's been wonderful since from the beginning and to where we're at now. Yeah, that's awesome. And going through the six sessions, right, that's what supported adaptive coping, well-being, sport performance. Tell us a bit about what you found

on, which is ultimately training resilience and training self-compassion. Can you dive into that a little bit more on the outcome? Yeah. So adaptive coping would be more self-compassionate, right? Less of that harsh criticism, which makes sense in those six sessions is very intentional, the process of those six. So the first one is really laying the foundation that mistakes, setbacks, challenges, failures are part of life. It's part of sport. And how we respond to them matters more than the challenge itself. So it's we are taking ownership of our lives. And we're going to learn how to respond in a way that's going to be beneficial to us.

And then mindfulness, awareness is the first step. You have to be aware before you can do anything. And so diving not super deep, but deep enough into the mindfulness. And then that third session, really diving. This is diving deep into understanding the inner critic. Why do we have those beliefs about, oh, a harsh criticism is going to be the most helpful for me. Where are those myths coming from? What does the inner critic sound like for you? Can we have some compassion and understanding for that critic? And then making the shift towards the inner coach. And then those last

three sessions are all about building it up. How can we strengthen that voice of our inner coach turn that volume up a bit and um yeah there's lots that we do within there right focusing on your strengths understanding core values self-care and so that's a little bit about the kind of the order the order there and then yeah that the outcomes like i mentioned harsh criticism, more self-compulsion, less depression, anxiety, and stress, and then better performance from the perspective of the athletes. They rated themselves and also the coaches rated the athletes, which was nice. So both improved.

Cool. Well, awesome. And those six sessions we were just talking about is part of Ashley's reset program. Let's dive into a couple of them a little bit more. And I'd love to dive into a little bit about bouncing forward. And I like the way that you said bouncing forward, not bouncing back. And what you just said about mistakes are part of life in sport. And, you know, I'm just thinking there's some executives and business leaders who are listening.

And, you know, we'm just thinking there's some executives and business leaders who are listening and, you know, we make a mistake every day. And I started to define, like, try to decide for my own life, like, what is a mistake? I don't even know, like, what the definition of failure is that I really want, you know, to use. I know, yeah. I mean, even that word failure versus mistake, I don't know about you, but failure is a really strong word. It's like, it's in your feels a bit. Like we want to avoid failure at all costs. And I think each person can have their own definition. I like to think of it as when do feelings of failure come up? Because here's an example, kind of a dumb example. I recently bought a bookshelf for my house

and I put the top piece on backwards. So it's a white bookshelf and now it's got the unfinished piece on the top. And I didn't notice until it was done and I turned it up and I thought, oh my, how did I, I was being so careful. So do I actually think that I'm a failure? No, that's, that's a global statement about myself or that that is a failure. No, not necessarily,

but did I have some feelings of being a failure or, or some of that come up for me? Absolutely. Was it a mistake? Absolutely. So yeah, when I think about failure, I'm like, there's definitely times when those feelings, those tough, tough emotions come up and it might be when I, you know, I'm making a mistake at work. I didn't do something the best that I could. But going back to that term, bouncing forward, I heard someone else use it several years ago. And I really like, I like it and kind of morphed into my own. So in sports, all the time we say bounce back. I hear it all the time, right? Every day I go to the gym or not to the field, you hear bounce back. But that would mean then I'm at this baseline.

I make a mistake. I fail. Now I'm subpar. And now I have to just get back to where I was. But what if we could take that challenge and actually use it to help us grow and be better? That is what we want. We don't want to just get back to where we were. We want to use it as an opportunity for growth. I heard this recently, rather than a setback, it's a setup. Can we see it rather than setback? It's not even, I've heard

like the setback to set up for a comeback. Like it's just a, you make a mistake. That's actually part of the process. You maybe didn't even a mistake. That's actually part of the process. You maybe didn't even go backwards. It's just part of it. And now we're going to learn and break, break out of that and use it as an opportunity. So that's kind of what that means to me. Awesome. I love it. And I'm also thinking about how do we actually do that? Because it's hard. And if maybe our default is more of like the self-criticalness and I was, when you were thinking of when you're talking about your bookshelf. So last night, I, we don't normally send Christmas cards, but I decided that I was going to do it this year

because my husband, my husband, like, come on, we got to do it. We got to do it. And we had this really awesome picture from a wedding. So we're like, okay. But I got so frustrated doing this Christmas card and it's not in my zone of genius. And then I got mad at him. And then I was like, Sindra, why are you getting mad about this stupid Christmas card? Right. And then I'm still like feeling bad about it because I got mad at this really silly thing. And, you know, so, um, I guess I'm just sharing my own little tiny little mistake. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What would you say? What would you say? Is there something you've learned about yourself? Like by getting frustrated and angry about this thing? Like what is that anger teaching

you about you? What would you say say what is it teaching me about me uh well I what I learned is why I haven't sent a Christmas card the last couple of years because I don't really love the creative process of that and um like that's not something that I dig. So, so maybe next year I'll send it to my niece and ask my niece to do it for us. Yeah, there you go. Yeah. So you're like, all right, the creative aspect of that isn't my favorite thing. Right. There's outcome. If I still want the Christmas cards out, but how can I make the process? I'm going to loop in my niece. And now maybe that relationship even stronger, especially if you're like, Hey, will you do this thing? Your niece feels closer to you. Oh my gosh. My aunt just asked me to do this thing for her.

Yeah. Right. And so it could be something where you're learning to take care of yourself. You're like, yep, that's a no go for me. Love the idea. I'm not going to be the one to execute it. And I'm going to build this relationship. And this is actually an opportunity for me to whatever, or kind of take ownership or learn. In that time that I would have spent being frustrated about the creative process, I'm going to spend that time doing X, Y, Z, something that you feel like really builds on your strengths or something like that. Right? Yes, absolutely. And I also learned that I shouldn't do it on a Sunday night where I'm tired and because it ended up taking like a couple hours and I thought it was going to take me like 20 minutes and I was tired, right? So,

but I like the question that you asked me and you asked me like what am I learning about myself as I respond to this moment right where I feel like I made a mistake and the mistake to me was like how I got angry at my husband for no real reason and he kind of just laughed right he was like you know what's happening right now you know yeah yeah well and you can see how something like that, like the framing, the framing matters a lot, which is like why I fail better. It's why I named the company, I had help naming it, but the name of it is that we're not seeing failures as bad things anymore. They're not fun, but if you can see it as this is, I'm learning something about myself. This can actually help me build my relationships.

Right. Because now, you know, OK, when I got something that I don't really like is frustrating to me next time, I'm going to try not to do it when I'm tired. And then if I do it when I'm more awake, I'm still going to be frustrated, but I'll have more energy and less likely to snap at my partner. And maybe we even flip it even more where we're going to make this be a funny thing. And now we're laughing about this thing that happened. Right. And it all starts with that acknowledgement, the acceptance of, yeah, this is not my jam and here's how we're going to fix it. It kind of reminds me a little bit. I'm a major conflict avoider. I grew up like avoiding conflict, like the plague. And it's still really

challenging for me. And I see, I've seen in my relationships that it can be a real growing opportunity between people. And if I'm able to approach, I'm able to voice my knees or something's not working well for me. For some people, they might run away, but then it's like, well, good. That's probably wasn't a healthy relationship, but in those healthy relationships, it's actually a growing experience. So the inner critic is like, run, run, run, do not engage, right? Alarm bells. And the inner coach is like, Hey, this is hard. You're going to get stronger from this. You're actually going to build your relationship stronger if you're able to just engage. And then I'm going to help and support

you through it. Very, very different the ways that our inner critic motivates versus our inner coach. Awesome. So let's dive into that a little bit more. How can we continue to develop our inner coach versus our inner critic? Yeah, I think reflection is really important. So just being aware and start paying attention to when does my inner critic show up so that you can make a game plan later. But it all starts with that awareness. So when is the inner critic showing up? When is the inner coach showing up?

When I was in college, I didn't know I had an inner coach. I only knew the inner critic because it was so prevalent and so loud that it actually took me some time before I could make even a shift because I didn't even hear that voice. It was too quiet. So just start paying attention to when those things are. Asking yourselves, you know, yourself, what is fulfilling for me? How am I feeling after the situation? Whatever. The next thing I would say is, is for me, it's so helpful to go through that, those four pillars of resilience. I think you, my big question when I went into grad school was, how do we support our well being and our performance at the same time? And I think this resilient reset, as I call it, will do that. When you have the mindfulness, you're aware. the common the connection the connection and encouragement is that like promoting the well-being can you realize that you are not the only other like the only person who gets frustrated with Christmas cards I also am not a big creative process kind of person that would also be very

frustrating to me you're not alone okay thank you I feel much. That is like not my jam either. No, it's like, I'm going to stay in my zone of genius. That is not my zone of genius. Exactly. Yeah. I will find a different way. That is not it. So that, you know, you're not alone. That's very normal. And it doesn't matter. It doesn't mean anything about you. It's just, yeah, that's just not something that you like. And then the encouragement, right? And the encouragement might be different for you. Maybe it's like, this is something something that you like and then the encouragement right is if it and the encouragement might be different for you maybe it's like this is something I could get better at if I wanted to or I am still an expert in these other ways right I do have a lane this isn't defining my whole being right it's just a little thing that's that I don't enjoy so that's the boosting ourselves up how do we get ourselves back to feeling confident

and then the the last bit is the productive feedback we get ourselves back to feeling confident? And then the last bit is the productive feedback. What am I going to do differently? And for you, it might be, I am going to defer this to my niece, right? Or it's, if I have to do this, I'm going to make sure I do it in the morning when I'm more awake or after some exercise. And I'm going to game plan for how I'm going to minimize this frustration. And there's lots of ways that we can have that feedback. So for me i think the most important thing in resetting would be acknowledgement boosting ourselves up making an adjustment and if you fail again great reset again you're going to get better each time

trust the process change is more like a sunrise than flipping on a light switch. And I really, really celebrate those small moments because they're actually huge, right? Not snapping or snapping an hour later than you normally would is a huge win actually, right? Engaging in a conversation that normally you would avoid, even though it's scary, even if the conversation doesn't go great is a huge, huge win.

And we need to, we need to save those. We need to celebrate them because that really is building up our resilience and our, our confidence. Excellent. Well, I appreciate all of this. I appreciate what you said about like, if you fail, get back up, think about what did you learn and then work, you know, fail again. And just this idea that, you know, when we get in this downward spiral of self-criticism, then it makes that failure, I think about it as like stickier in our mind. We're more likely to remember it. We're more likely to the next time fear going after that big shot or fear that presentation.

And so I think that's another reason why we want to be kinder and more compassionate to ourselves. So Ashley, is there anything related to resilience or mindset or reset the concepts we've talked about so far that you kind of hear yourself saying over and over again? I'm just curious about that. If there's anything that we haven't said that you want to share. Yeah. I mean, I think one, I have said this, but really it is, we get to choose. We get to choose our responses and our responses matter more than the miss shot, than the snapping at our teammates, than whatever didn't go so well. How we choose to respond and reset matters a lot.

And we always have that choice. It's not, we might not always respond the best right away. That's okay. You always have a chance later down the road, right? So I would say that's one. The other one that I talk about a lot is process over outcomes. And I know I'm not alone in that. There's a lot of, in the mental performance, performance psychology, we talk a lot about performance over process over outcomes and focusing really on what matters the most. And I love asking athletes, Hey, why do you play your sport? Or asking the doctors or med students or whoever, whatever performance, like, why did you get into this in the first place?

They're not usually talking about outcomes, right? So with athletes, they might be like, I love exercise. I love building relationships. I love learning. And so if they're taking that approach, when they go to practice, their performance anxiety is reduced. Their fear of failure is reduced. Their performance is increased because they're going in, they're focused on what they can control and not only something they can control, but something that they really, really care about. So that's probably one of my favorite things. I think one of the most impactful things is to identify what matters the most to you. And that will help with the resetting too.

And then how can you set goals based on that? And then the outcomes will come. But if we're focused on the process, then the outcomes will come and we'll enjoy it a lot more. And what I have found working with, you know, executives, doctors, athletes, whoever that might be, is like when we also say focus so much on the outcome, it just creates so much anxiety and tension and pressure. And that doesn't allow us to be our best in the moment. Is there, you know, one kind of final question, then we'll wrap up. But I'm curious, is there, you know, you've done an incredible job of just explaining what self-compassion is and then how can we use it. But is there a tool or a unique way that you might tell us to really practice this more in our lives?

I would say, call me. Let's have some one-on-one sessions. Perfect. I would say call me let's have some one-on-one sessions I think I mean one I'm a huge believer in in coaching what oh however that looks like it doesn't actually have to be with me as a joke but to have someone alongside you who can help you through whatever your specific challenges I'm also a big fan of the workbook. So I know Kristen has her workbook. I also have the reset workbook that you could go on at your own pace. But I think that probably like the quick tool would be, how do you treat yourself? And when you catch yourself beating yourself up, think about how would you treat a friend? That's going to be one of the most powerful and simple simple practices is if you just keep checking yourself in that moment or you're feeling you're feeling really lazy and you feel like you

got to get up and going great what would what would your ideal coach say to you who would your whoever your mentor is what would they say to you so whatever you can do to get that perspective shift get outside of your own brain and tapping into the compassion we have for others or the others have for us, that can be a game changer. Awesome. Ashley, how can we find out more about what you're doing, your reset program and then your reset workbook? You also have a certification for reset for coaches. Tell us a little bit about that. Yeah. So everything is going to be on my website, failbettertraining.com. You can also reach out on Instagram, failbettertraining or LinkedIn. But yeah, it's all on there. The reset program,

coaches can sign up so we can work with entire teams. We have a fully online version. So if people want to go at their own pace, then they can go. It's all online, on demand. They can do that. And then for other mental performance coaches, life coaches, grad students who are interested in teaching or executive coaches, right, who are interested in learning more about RESET and teaching it, we have an instructor training that's held three to four times a year. Happy to, you know, hop on a call with anyone who has more questions after looking at the website. But yeah, we're really excited. We're excited where things are going. We'll add some more online short courses soon in the coming months as well. And then do the one-on-one individual

coaching as well. Awesome. Okay. failbettertraining.com. And I'm going to do my best to summarize what we talked about today. So we talked about three components of self-compassion, mindfulness, common humanity, and self-kindness. And then we were also talking about fierce self-compassion and tender self-compassion. Why we want to grow in our self-compassion is there's no reasons why we shouldn't. It's only beneficial to increase performance, increase motivation, less perfectionism, less

anxiety, less depression, all those things that a lot of people can be paralyzed with. I appreciate the differences between inner coach and inner critic. 90% of most people are harder on themselves. Okay. I don't know if that's a perfect step. I do know it is very high though. It's got to be 80% minimum. But yeah, you got to fact check the exact number.

Yeah. I mean, most people I know, almost everyone I know, is harder on themselves than others. There's probably like only a couple people I know that maybe are harder on others. Yeah, I don't know what that is. Yeah, I mean, in any team I work with, you got a group of like 30 or so, there's usually one or maybe two who are harder on others, which again, that that uh the self compassion can still work because usually they're avoiding their own thing and trying to blame on others it's still a deflection coping mechanism and then you usually have one maybe two who stay

equal and they those people have probably gone to therapy or have had coaching before because they used to be hard on themselves and now they've balanced it out but i think yeah at least in my experience with the you know know, hundreds of athletes I've worked with, I would say definitely 80 to 90% are harder on themselves than they are on themselves. Yeah. Yeah, which I think is really helpful for people because we realize we're not alone. Exactly. It's so normal. So normal.

So normal. So what a great interview. And I just really appreciate all the insight that you shared with us. I know people who are listening got several things out of today's interview. So do you have any final advice for people who are listening today? some coaching if you don't have one get some coaching um takes time to reflect whether that's in a journal an app with yourself take some time to reflect and then the last thing i would say is that your worth is not determined by your performance that you have worth just because period you have value and performance is a thing that is separate from us that we do that we love sometimes sometimes we hate. But our worth is not determined by our performance. They're separate.

I'm giving you some snaps over here. I don't know if people can hear. Dr. Kuchar, thank you so much for joining us today. Outstanding. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. This was great. Way to go for finishing another episode of the High Performance Mindset.

I'm giving you a virtual fist pump. Holy cow, did that go by way too fast for anyone else? If you want more, remember to subscribe. And you can head over to Dr. Sindra for show notes. And to join my exclusive community for high performers, where you get access to videos about mindset each week. So again, you can head over to Dr. Sindra. That's D-R-C-I-N-D-R-A dot com.

See you next week.