High Performance Mindset | Learn from World-Class Leaders, Consultants, Athletes & Coaches about Mindset - 599: How to Let Go

Episode Date: February 10, 2024

Showing yourself self-compassion is key to adapting and bouncing back quickly after setbacks, adversity, and mistakes. There are so many things you cannot control. Self-compassion is also a powerful antidote to stress, anxiety, and perfectionistic thinking, which can lead to poor performance. When you practice self-compassion, you are able to live and let go. In this episode, Cindra shows you how. Power Phrase this Week: “I am kind to myself today.” Quote of the Week: “To let go does not mean to get rid of. To let go means to let be. When we let be with compassion, things come and go on their own.” – Jack Kornfield

Hi friends, my name is Dr. Sindra Kampoff, a national leader in the field of sport and performance psychology. Every week I'm on the local radio sharing my top tips on exactly how to develop the mindset of the world's best, so you can accomplish all your dreams. Get ready for a jammed, packed episode focused on practical tips to help you get after your goals and step out of your comfort zone. Let's go. Time to check in with Cinder Campoff this morning. And today our topic is how to let go. Now Cinder's going to start us off with a quote. I love this quote, Lisa, by Dat Cornfield. He said, to let go does not mean to get rid of. To let go means to let be. And we let be with compassion. Things come and go on their own.

I like that. And I need this talk today. I have a tough time letting go of not like my own mistakes or anything like that, but a lot of stuff with other people sometimes. Just a tough time letting go. Yeah, I think we all can lead. So sometimes I have a tough time letting go. I think about my kids a lot, you know, like two boys. And sometimes I have a hard time letting go. I think about my kids a lot, you know, my two boys. And sometimes I have a hard time kind of letting that go. And it weaves me down. So I totally get what you're talking about. Yeah.

So what exactly are we talking about today? Well, we're talking about the importance of having high standards for yourself and expecting success. You know, the world's best. We're talking about entrepreneurs, the world's best athletes, the world's best leaders. They have high standards and expect success. but they're also kind to themselves, and they can let go quickly after things don't go perfect. They can let go of things that they can't control. And the reason that we want to do this is to protect our confidence, to protect our energy and our momentum, And we want to let go with compassion.

Now, Cinder, this is one of the practices in your book, I think practice nine, if I remember, live and let go. Can you tell us a little bit more about that practice? Ultimately, the practice is based on this idea of self-compassion. And it's the practice of being kind to yourself in times where it's difficult, any times where you're experiencing failure or pain. And the clean, instead of the practice. And I find that it's the most difficult of the 10 practices in my book that I see people struggle with, you know, because most people, Lisa, believe that they should be critical of themselves to get ahead. You know, that way you might believe that the harder you are on yourself, you know, that the quicker you'll get to your goal.

For many years, I thought that, that the more critical I was of myself, the better I would perform or the more I would achieve. But it's actually quite the opposite. And I wish I would have learned this lesson earlier in my career. I think actually revenge is a lot of my own suffering. And so really, to be your best and to build the career and the life that you envision, you want to strive towards self-compassion, which is the opposite of self-compassion. So why is the practice of self-compassion so important? There's a leading researcher named Dr. Kristen Neff, and she coined this term self-compassion. She has found it needs a wider way of benefits and rewards when you practice self-compassion. Things like higher levels of happiness and optimism, greater emotional resilience, less anger, right?

Less anxiety, depression, and rumination. And so being self-compassionate just allows you to reach your goals quicker and you experience less fear of failure. Do you have any examples of why compassion is important for us? Sure. There's a really cool research study where two University of California Berkeley professors asked a powerful question in their study on self-compassion. And they said, could treating oneself with compassion after making a mistake actually increase motivation? And they found that yes, it did, right? Taking an accepting approach to failure actually helped people be more motivated to improve themselves.

And so that's just one reason, again, why being kind to ourselves is going to actually help us increase our motivation. And what tips can you give us to help us let go of things? Sure. So I've got three today, three quick tips, and you can find more information in my book, Beyond Grit, and then Beyond Grit for Business. But here's the first one. Practice showing yourself self-kindness over self-judgment. And that just means like being warm to yourself, softening that inner voice when you fail or make a mistake or when you're holding things on, right? Instead of just ignoring or criticizing yourself.

Number two, I think just remember that everybody struggles in some way and sometimes we feel like we're alone in that but just acknowledging that um everyone can have the feelings of personal inadequacy and it's actually part of the shared human experience uh that can just help you realize we can we can keep going right and then number three just remember many of your thoughts are not true. And we tend to kind of go to extremes in our own mind. And so just observing your thoughts and emotions with openness and just observing can really help you just see and notice what you're experiencing. And just noticing will help you let go. And can you summarize today for us, Cendra?

Sure. I think Lisa, you know, showing self-compassion is key to adapting and bouncing back quickly after setbacks or mistakes. Or, you know, at the beginning when you and I talked about the things that we can kind of hold on to that we can't control. And so it's really, you know, self-compassion is a powerful anecdote of stress and anxiety, perfectionistic thinking that can lead to us not performing at our best. So we want a perfective self-compassion to help us let go. And what's the power phrase that we can follow this week?

I am kind to myself today. I am kind to myself today. If people want to maybe check out the rest of the practices in your books or get more information about what you do, where can we go? You can head over to drcindra.com and my information about my speaking and our coaching and then the books Beyond Grit and Beyond Virtual Business over there that this goes into those books go into a lot more detail. 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.