High Performance Mindset | Learn from World-Class Leaders, Consultants, Athletes & Coaches about Mindset - 647: How to Practice Radical Self-Acceptance with Dr. Laura Gallaher, Organizational Psychologist and Professional Speaker

Episode Date: October 31, 2024

Dr. Laura Gallaher is a professional speaker and organizational psychologist who inspires driven self-starters to transform their relationship with themselves and accomplish more than ever. She combines insights on radical self-acceptance with humor to create a unique connection with her audience.  Despite being a national best-selling author, Dr. Laura stands out from the typical "academic" personality of her PhD peers. Her notable achievements include being hired by NASA to reshape organizational culture after the Columbia accident, leading significant changes in performance management at Disney, and inspiring Yahoo’s global teams to pursue transformation from within. In this episode, Cindra and Dr. Laura discuss:  What is radical self-acceptance Why radical self-acceptance is difficult and important to practice  Strategies to grow in your radical self-acceptance How radical self-acceptance relates to culture and leadership    HIGH PERFORMANCE MINDSET SHOWNOTES FOR THIS EPISODE LEARN MORE ABOUT DR. LAURA TO TAKE DR. LAURA’S SELF-ACCEPTANCE QUIZ REQUEST A FREE MENTAL BREAKTHROUGH CALL WITH DR. CINDRA AND/OR HER TEAM TO LEARN MORE ABOUT THE MENTALLY STRONG INSTITUTE Love the show? Rate and review the show for Cindra to mention you on the next episode.      

Welcome to episode 647. This is Dr. Cinder Kampoff, your host of the High Performance Mindset. And welcome to the episode. Thank you so much for joining me here today. I'm the founder of the Mentally Strong Institute, where we help leaders, entrepreneurs, and athletes play big and achieve their most audacious goals. If you want to achieve your goal quicker, up-level your confidence, and increase your influence, I invite you to sign up for a free coaching call with one of my team members at freementalbreakthroughcall.com. We will help you create a breakthrough, a moment of more clarity and understanding,

and help you practice the high-performance mindset. That's freementalbreakthroughcall.com to sign up for your free mental breakthrough call. And thank you so much for joining me here today where I interview Dr. Laura Gallaher about how to practice radical self-acceptance. And to be honest, there were many times throughout this conversation that I thought to myself, I need to practice radical self-acceptance more often. Now, Dr. Laura is a professional speaker and organizational psychologist who inspires driven self-starters to transform their relationship with themselves and accomplish more than they ever thought possible.

You know, despite being a national bestselling author, Dr. Laura stands out from a typical academic personality of her PhD peers. Her notable accomplishments include being hired by NASA to reshape the organizational culture after the Columbia incident and leading significant changes in performance management at Disney, as well as inspiring Yahoo Global teams to pursue transformation within. And in this episode, Dr. Laura and I talk about what in the world is radical self-acceptance, why radical self-acceptance is difficult to practice, but also important to practice. We talk about different strategies to grow your radical self-acceptance and why it really

is important to practice radical self-acceptance as it relates to culture and leadership. And if you'd like to see the full show notes and description of this episode, I encourage you to head over to cindracampoff.com slash 647 for episode 647. All right, I hope you enjoy this episode with Dr. Laura Gallagher and that you learn how to practice radical self-acceptance even more often. Welcome to the High Performance Mindset Podcast. I'm so excited to have Laura Gallagher today on the podcast. How are you doing, Laura? I'm doing great. Thank you for having me. Well, all right. I want to start, Dr. Laura, about, you know, today we're talking about high achievers and there's a lot of high achievers who listen to the podcast.

And so, you know, people who are listening are people who want to be their best more often. And today we're focusing in on radical self-acceptance. And I'm curious, tell us just a little bit more about how radical self-acceptance relates to people who are listening and what does it actually mean to you? Radical self-acceptance is a way for high achievers to basically continue to kick ass, but feel a lot better in the process of doing it at the highest level, right? That's the benefit, one of the many benefits of focusing on it. And the simplest way that I can define self-acceptance is you are okay with who you are right now. That means being okay with your imperfections and your flaws and being able to honor your talents and strengths. So being okay with who you are right now without having to change a thing. That's the simplest explanation or

definition. So say more about that. Like, that's usually what I hear. What is difficult for you with that, Dr. Sindra? What's difficult about that is I think just like our judgment of how we judge ourselves or judge others or judge situations. So I think it's really easy to, in our mind, especially when we're high achievers, high performers, we have really high expectation of ourselves. And so if this isn't perfect or this isn't perfect, I think there's a really high amount of self-criticalness that can come about for high achievers. I know this by listening to my own voice, but also working with a lot of high achievers. Yes. Yes. We often like to serve the people that are similar to us or to former versions of ourselves, right?

Absolutely. Absolutely. Like coach heal thyself. I know. I know. There's a great quote by a guy named Roy Vaden, who is the owner of Brand Builders. And he says, you are best positioned to serve the person that you once were. Yes. Which I think that you're right. That's true. I still have some, you know, I would describe myself as like a recovering overthinker and someone who is like continuously working on self-compassion and self-acceptance. So this topic, I think, will resonate with me, but also everyone who's listening. I think so, too. Yeah.

So when you think about radical self-acceptance, tell us, you know, why it's really important for high achievers and just why it's really important for anyone who's listening, even if they don't, you know, name themselves as a high achiever. I know, right? That's the funny thing, too, about saying like, oh, I help high achievers is that a lot of high achievers are like, well, I don't know if I'm a high achiever because they're always focused on the gap of where they want to be. Well, so let me share a story about one of the first huge kind of gut-wrenching moments for me in recognizing the power of self-acceptance. This was about, it was 10-ish years ago, and a little history and background. You know, you obviously have your PhD too, so I'd love to hear more about your journey as well. I was working full-time at NASA while I was finishing my PhD. And I was also like teaching as part of, you know, fellowship assistantship stuff.

And so I was ridiculously busy. I was feeling crazed all the time. And my boyfriend at the time, we were talking about getting married. And I was like, please do not propose to me until I finish school. Like I cannot take on something else. And if I have to choose between finishing a dissertation and planning a wedding, I might never finish school. So he very patiently waited for me to graduate. And then we got engaged like a few months later. He gave me like a few months. But so I went from all of my energy and attention going from like the PhD, right, on side of the full-time job to like planning the wedding.

And then it was all about getting the house and we got the house. And then it was all about making changes to the house. And I just, I realized that I was in this constant state of busy, busy, busy. And then I start my business on the side. So I'm still working for NASA. And now I've started a side business. And so this moment I'm thinking of, it was like a weekday evening. I think it was a Wednesday. And I'm in my office. It's like seven o'clock. And my husband comes to the door and he says, hey, and Kelly met us to go to movie what do you think and I said oh babe I can't right now I just I have way too much to do and he's like come on Laura like we never get to go out like when are we gonna get to go do some fun stuff

and I'm like I promised it's not gonna be like this forever it's just gonna be until and I realized I had no idea what the end of that sentence was. It was this like constant hamster wheel of always feeling like wherever I was wasn't enough. And I wasn't letting myself hold space and time for fun. And so I just realized how full of, I don't know if I can swear on this show, but I was so full of it. Right. I was like, oh my gosh. And, you know, he looks at me and he's kind of watching the mental process in my head and like sees how much my heart's like falling into my stomach. And he says, you know, if you're not good enough now, you never will be. Wow. Wow. Wow. Mic drop.

Yeah. And I was like, oh, my gosh. That's so true. Like, if you're not good enough now, you never will be. Because, like we were just saying, there's always going to be something for high achievers that they are wanting to move toward. There's always going to be that gap between where they are and where they want to be. But that gap is not the problem. That gap is not the problem at all. In fact, one of the ways to think about self-acceptance is when you look at the gap between where you are and where you want to be, how do you feel about that gap? Yeah. And that's a choice. It

might be a choice that you have to practice making, but I can choose to look at that gap not as evidence that I'm not enough, not as something to therefore judge myself over, but rather something I feel really excited about. Like here I am and that's enough. I'm enough. And you know what would be really cool is if I get here, right? And so it's a choice and a practice to continuously reframe. Because for me, when I realized that there would always be something, something to improve, something to grow, something to work on, I realized that is not a good reason to not accept exactly where I am right now. Yeah, beautiful. And in your book, The Missing Link, Launching a High-Performing Company Culture that you wrote with Philip Mead, I was reading this over yesterday,

specifically the section of self-acceptance. And you give like a little Venn diagram, right? With kind of two circles. And then it's like where I am now, my ideal. And in the middle is basically what you're talking about is how you feel about the gap between where you are today and who you want to be. And then there's this little arrow you have there where it says higher self-esteem. Tell us about how self-esteem fits between this gap here of where you are with where you want to be. Yeah, so self-esteem really is how do I feel about my self-concept? So I have some idea of who I am today. And for most of us, that I am circle, that self-concept, is not exactly the same as our idealized self.

There is some kind of difference. And so what you're talking about is really like, how much do those things overlap? If there's a huge difference and therefore very little overlap between how I see myself, my self-concept, and my ideal, then I might actually find that I don't really like my self-concept. My self-concept is continuously falling short. And so that's kind of an oversimplified way to look at self-esteem. But then self-acceptance is more nuanced in that because it says that actually I can choose how I feel about the gap itself. So being okay with that gap is the key. Well, and I appreciated what you said about the gap itself. So being okay with that gap is the key. Well, and I appreciated what you said about the word excited and, you know, helping us kind of

reframe our future to be excited about it or like excited to step into that future self. Tell us how, you know, what are some like strategies that we could use to be even more excited instead of like being frustrated that we're not there yet. Because I think there's a lot of people who are listening and sometimes I can get that way, Laura, where it's like, I have a vision of where I want to go and where I want to take my business and it can be really frustrating. It's like, ah, it's not really where I wanted, you know? Absolutely. Yeah. So this is going to answer your question, I promise. Do you have dogs or have you ever had dogs?

Yes, we just got a new puppy about four months ago. And we have another dog. We have two dogs. Wonderful. Okay. Have you ever trained a dog on the trick of rolling over? Yes, we have. Uh-huh.

And would you walk me through like what was the process? How did you get the dog to learn to roll over as a trick? Well, okay. So for the treats are really important. So say that, right? And then, you know, one of the things we did was like we would show them the process of rolling over first and then you know slowly they would do it but especially the treats the reward is key yes and tell me if this matches your experience because when i've taught dogs to roll over i have to reward them a little bit as we go at first maybe it's rewarding you know they learn the lay down process. And then once they're laying down, getting them to even start to turn their bodies over. Yes, that's what I want. Giving them a reward. And then you want more than that. And so you're

looking for then the next step. So that constant positive reinforcement is, not that I'm saying that humans are dogs. However, I am saying that there are certain, you know, learning theories that apply to all kinds of animals that are super relevant here. Are we still good? It looks like maybe I'm frozen or you're frozen. Yeah, we just are we good for a sec. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I was wondering if it's me. So I'm just going to quick put my hotspot on. Okay. Okay. But yeah, keep going wondering if it's me. So I'm just going to quick put my hot spot on. Okay. Okay. But yeah, keep going. So, okay. You were just maybe just start when you were saying like the rewards of kind of slowly, that's where I, where that's where.

That's where it started to catch up. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. All right. So that process of, you know, rewarding a dog a little bit at a time, right? So rewarding the dog first for just laying down and then the dog takes it a little bit further by rolling over a little bit like, yes, yes, yes, that's what I want. Positive treat. And just keep going a little bit more, a little bit more. And the learning theory associated with that is, you could argue that it's oversimplified, but it really actually works very well on humans too. And so if you think about wanting to change your relationship with yourself, then it is about letting yourself feel really good about every step of progress that you're making, even when, or maybe especially when, it doesn't match up with your exact goal.

And the language that we use for this is called taking credit. And it's not about stealing credit. So if any of your listeners are also in like leadership roles, I work with a lot of leaders, I'm not talking about stealing credit for other people's ideas. I'm not saying I did this when it was a whole team. I am saying allow yourself to recognize the power of progress and choose to take credit for every step along the journey. That is your own positive reinforcement. And it's a very useful practice that feels extremely foreign and unfamiliar to most high achievers because they are used to beating themselves up when they fall short instead of choosing to feel good about the progress. Absolutely. And we know, I'm just

thinking about Dr. Kristen Neff's work on the power of self-compassion, right? That actually being kind to yourself when you feel inadequate or you fail actually leads to more confidence and higher performance and more motivation, right? I love what you're saying because I'm curious, how would you tell us to take credit? Is it just in our own mind? Is it writing it down? Is it going out for dinner to celebrate progress? What are the different ways that you would tell us to actually take credit for our success? I love all of those examples. I would say definitely making it a daily practice is really useful and really important. I love the idea of inviting in an accountability partner. So for your listeners to think about, you know, who is somebody else in

their life that they think would also benefit from this practice and or just be willing to engage in it, which, by the way, I have yet to meet anybody who's like, oh, I'm amazing at taking credit. Yeah. I don't know. The people that I work with are like, you mean feel good about missing my goal? And I'm like, well, did you take steps closer to the goal? They're like, yeah. I'm like, yeah, that's what I'm saying. Let yourself look good. So find an accountability partner. And then it could be something that y'all are sharing with each other every day. We have in my company, we have a very small team. We're a boutique consultancy. But we have a Slack channel. It's like morning check in. And we've got a theme for every day. And Tuesdays is take Credit Tuesday. So no, I acknowledge that's only once a week and it's not every day, but the invitation there for the team is at least once a week, share with the entire team, like what is something that you want to take credit for from the last week? And so, you know,

if anybody wants to bring this into like a work context, they could create something like that. Something that can feel really vulnerable and super awkward, but is really powerful is to say it to yourself in the mirror out loud. Yeah. Yeah. All kinds of ways to do it. And it's the way to think about it is building up a muscle. I love the idea, Laura, of like taking credit because I don't think very many people do take credit. And as I was listening, I was thinking about, you know, even just acknowledging some things I did yesterday, they got me closer to my goal. But, you know, at the end of my day, I was like, I didn't get this done or this done that I really wanted to, you know. So it's easy. It makes me

think of Dan Sullivan's book, The Gap and the Gain, and how we measure our success based on not where we are or what we've accomplished, but more where we want to go, right? And that gap. Absolutely. Absolutely. It's the same idea. And I was starting to say too that it's like building a muscle. If I have never done a pushup before in my my life and this was actually me right after grad school that was the other thing that I did after grad school I was like I'm getting a personal trainer let's get really into fitness um and he had me lay down and he wanted me to do a push-up like a full push-up no cheating no knees and I had to hold good form and with all of those rules I couldn't I couldn't do it like I was just because I hadn't done one in such a long time. And he laughed at me,

which is a great practice for a personal trainer to do for their client. But at the end of three months of working with him, I was actually doing 50 full push-ups all at once. Awesome. You can build muscle. It was great. I mean, that's part of why I think that physical fitness can be such a great thing to point to for people to realize what they're capable of with practice. It's so tangible. But the same ideas apply to something like this, like taking credit and letting yourself feel good about what you've accomplished and gotten gotten done, even if it didn't hit the high goal that you had for yourself. It's a muscle. It's going to feel weird at first, hard at first. You're going to question if you're doing it wrong. You're going to be like, I feel super awkward doing this, all of that. And when you keep doing it like anything else, it becomes more and more second nature. And you are really building up your reserves and that self-acceptance bank. Love it. And in your book, I'm going to read this little quote here because I'm thinking about, well, why does this, all of this really matter, right? And you said, when you have higher self-acceptance and accept yourself as you are, you show up with more

flexibility. You're more creative and open. You're more humorous. You're more attentive to others. You're more productive because your energy is focused outwardly on problem solving and not inwardly on feeding yourself up, right? That part I added. But when you experience lower self-acceptance, you show up with more rigidity. In those moments, you're consumed and self-conscious and you can experience fear. Tell us, what are some other benefits of practicing radical self-acceptance? So this is going to sound like hyperbole, but it really is the key to making literally everything in your life easier.

Have you ever heard suffering equals pain times resistance? I have not. Okay. So this is a really... I gotta break it down. Yeah. It's such an important idea to internalize and think about. So suffering equals pain times resistance. The premise here is that pain in our lives is inevitable. And it really is. Like there's a version of myself when I was younger, I was like, I don't know, maybe I can live in a way where I don't feel pain. Like to happen, but pain does not have to mean that I am suffering. There is so much relief that is experienced in a moment of simply accepting what is. It is the resistance to what is happening and the resistance to ourselves that creates problems and rigidity. And it's going to create problems for you in relationships. So that means that lower self-acceptance is going to create more difficulties in your home life, right? In relationship with an intimate or romantic partner, with your parents,

if they're aging parents, especially, right? With kids, siblings, and then at work. Lower self-acceptance is going to cause more difficulties, more problems, more conflict. So higher self-acceptance is going to ease the relationships that you have with everybody around you because you're demonstrating that flexibility, because you're able to listen more effectively, because you're able to communicate from a place of more self-awareness. So it literally affects everything. That's why it's such a deep and powerful practice. Yeah, I appreciate that. Everything you said about especially the relationships, I want to have, you know, more relationships in my life with more ease, right? And less tension. So what are the

ways that we might, maybe some signs where we know we're practicing radical self-acceptance and some signs where we're not? So imagine, let's just take home life for a moment. And let's say that your partner comes home and they're kind of in like a bad mood for, you know, whatever's going on for them. They're in a bad mood. And so they're not like the warmest when they greet you or when you ask them a question, they respond and they have sort of like a tone that's a little biting or just a little unpleasant. Most people probably have what we would call a defensive reaction to that.

And that can look like anything. It can be like biting back. It can be like pulling back, withdrawing. It can be playing the victim. Why are you picking on me? You know, like we have this defensive reaction normally and that's where things spiral, right? That's what the other person then their defenses go up even higher and we just nobody's listening to each other anymore. So that would be a sign of like, hey, there's an area for me to look at here where I can practice more self-acceptance. Because a self-accepting moment, I won't even say person because I think it's a practice that we step into and then we fall out and we get back into alignment with it.

A self-accepting moment, if a partner comes home and they're cranky and they use a rough tone, in that moment, I'm actually not going to make that person's behavior about me consciously or subconsciously. I'm going to, right, instead of like focusing my energy inwardly and being like, what is this about? I don't deserve this kind of treatment. I'm actually going to be able to access that compassion that you were talking about. And I'm going to be able to say, hey, babe, you okay? What's going on? That's a self-accepting moment right there. In that moment, I'm just realizing like my partner's experiencing some kind of distress or some kind of pain or difficulty, let me just check in with him and see what he's, how he's doing, what's going on in his day. I'm not making his behavior about me.

Yeah, so helpful. I think it's really easy to make things about you. When most people don't do things because of us, you know, it's likely has to do with that person's day and something that was scary or frustrating about that day. Yeah, pretty much always. This is one of the hardest and weirdest ideas to grasp, especially when we're talking about people that are close to us, but other people's behavior is actually never about you. Even if somebody was to come up to me and say, you know what, Laura, I don't like you. I think you're a jerk. Their choice to talk to me that way and to say those things is not about me. It doesn't mean that I haven't like maybe contributed to some dynamic that's triggering pain for them, right? It's not to absolve me of any responsibility in managing a positive

relationship. But how they choose to respond to me, how they behave toward me is all about how they feel about themselves. Always, always, always. And the same is true for us. 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. So tell us how you practice radical self-acceptance and how you've learned to do this over time, right? Yes, yes. And it is definitely a practice. So obviously taking credit is a big one for me. The other thing that I've done, we lean a lot into this particular theory. It's kind of a mouthful. It's called FIRO theory. It's Fundamental Interpersonal Relations Orientation Theory. And it says that all humans want to feel significant, competent, and likable. And I just like the framework. It's pretty well backed up empirically by data. And all models are wrong. Some models are useful. So if it's useful, use it. And so one of the ways that I have learned to practice self-acceptance is let's take that moment that I think everybody

can relate to, right? Where like a partner is coming home a little cranky or they talk to me in a way that's like, meh. So when I feel triggered or dysregulated and I have my own kind of defensive reaction, I can introspect in that moment and say, what's the story in my head here? I'm not responding to what my partner is saying or doing. I'm actually pulling on some old script and I'm telling myself a story, consciously or subconsciously, about why this behavior here is really about my inadequacy. So I can always ask myself, what is the story in my head right now? Is the story in my head that he wouldn't treat me this way if I mattered more to him? That's significance.

Is the story in my head that he wouldn't treat me this way if he loved me more? That's going to come back to my fears or unlikability. And maybe it's a competence thing. Like maybe he's being cranky with me. The story in my head is because he thinks I'm an idiot and he's upset that I didn't pull the garbage cans in from the street or like, right? Like what is, but what's the story I'm telling myself? And so being able to use those three significance, competence, likability, when I can regularly

check in, I can hone in on my primary areas to practice more acceptance. Mine happen to be insignificance. So like when I'm a bit triggered or defensive, which means I'm having a low self-acceptance moment, it's almost always I'm telling myself the story that they're behaving this way toward me because I'm not important enough to them. That's my stuff though. And then there's a whole litany of things that I do and that your listeners can do to increase self-acceptance around that. So for me, what does it even mean to be significant? Like how do I define that? Where do I get that from? What are the sources of significance that I allow to be outside of myself?

And what are the sources of significance that I allow to be outside of myself? And what are the sources of significance that I allow to be inside myself? So how do I actually create more self-significance? How can I be important enough to me so that I'm not so worried about somebody else's opinion about my significance and I'm not making it about that? Because 99% of the time it has nothing to do with that. It's like you said, it's a bad day. They had a stressful moment. They're coming home and it has nothing to do with me. And then we create things that aren't there, like create tension or disagreement or frustration or conflict when really it doesn't have anything

to do with us. And so I'm hearing from you that when we practice radical self-acceptance, it only helps us kind of work through the world a little bit with more ease. Maybe we don't get as frustrated or angry. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. I like to ask myself, like, what else could this mean? You know, when someone gets really frustrated or they're acting, I don't know, angry or frustrated and I'm taking it personally because I've been really working on that probably for about 10 years to take things less personal. And I just think, well, what else could this mean?

Because it probably has nothing to do with me. Yes, absolutely. Find that alternate story. Like the story in my head, that's just one idea. So do I let myself make up even one other possibility of what could be happening here that's not actually about me? I love that, Cindra. That's good.

Why do you think radical self-acceptance is so hard for us to practice? Okay, so I have several reasons. Part of it is, and this is a really good reason for your listeners to lean into a practice of self-compassion. Yeah. A lot of it is that we build a lot of our narratives about ourselves in our formative years, in our very early years, when we do not have a fully formed brain and we do not have the ability to not make everything about us. Kids make everything about them. I actually remember probably being 10 or 11 years old and that being the first time that it occurred to me that my parents were actual human beings who existed before I was born. That's awesome.

Like I remember being like, oh, yeah. You know, like they told me stories about being kids and how they met, but like I didn't get it until I was like 10 or 11. So when we're little, we make everything about us. And that's brutal because we're all being raised by imperfect humans who have imperfect moments. All of us have internalized some of those imperfect moments as I am only lovable if, I'm only lovable when, I'm only competent when, right? I only matter when. And these are some of the scripts and the stories

that will just stick with us. And they run in our subconscious. They run in the background, like a computer that has some old program running on it and you don't know what it is and you get this like result sometimes. You're like, why is it doing that? It's the same thing for us. And so a lot of it really is embedded in our subconscious or our wiring. And so it takes a good bit of energy and attention to rewire. And this is fun for most of my high achieving clients. You got to feel stuff. Yeah, you got to feel stuff. The defensiveness that comes up is there to protect you from the really negative feelings that you don't want to feel. And so the defenses are there to protect feel. And so the reason those defense, the defenses

are there to protect you. It's there. It's a psychological immune system, right? It wants to keep you safe kind of from your own internal harsh judgments. And so you want to practice letting yourself feel it and kind of trust in your own internal processes and systems. Your brain will not let you feel more than what you're ready to feel. But let yourself feel it. Say, okay, part of me fears that I'm not as significant as I want to be. What does that mean for me? This is the embodied practice. This is dropping in. This is like feeling, feeling into, feeling through. And so it's a major practice, I think, for a lot of people to allow themselves into that emotional space. We have a lot of programming in

society that discourages us from being too feeling, even like, oh, it's touchy-feely. Has this negative connotation, but you have to actually feel in order to heal. That's a really good comment. You have to feel in order to heal. And so as we think about actually practicing, you know, kind of what you're suggesting, when we notice these scripts in our head that are showing up, right? And I appreciate what you said about

the need to feel competent and likable and significant and how each of us has those needs. Because I think of times where that shows up for me too, right? And probably mostly with my family, most, you know, because I am most comfortable with them and that those scripts kind of show up a little bit more. And so what would you tell us to do to like rewire some of those scripts that we know aren't serving us? So there's kind of, there's maybe short-term and long-term ways to answer it. One thing that can be really useful in a moment to disrupt the pattern is to share the story that's in your head. And there are a couple of key things about sharing that story in your head to help be successful. Own it fully. So if I share the story in my head, like, oh, well, you just think I'm an idiot. And that's why you're talking to me.

Like, I'm like, oh, I'm just sharing the story story my head no that i'm i'm blaming i'm playing the victim right like that's probably gonna continue to trigger problems but if i can pause out of pause long and outy to say i notice this is triggering a story a painful story in my my head that you think that I'm stupid because I forgot to bring the cans back up from the street or whatever, something like that. Hopefully what we're doing in that moment is we're shifting the conversation away from the surface issue of like bringing the trash cans up from the street into the, I'm afraid, I own that there's a story in my head, right, that you think that I'm stupid. Most of the time, the vast majority of the time, the person's going to be like, no, not at all, right? Like in that moment, there's a real-time

opportunity for recovery and a recognition of, oof, whatever we just like triggered here is not about trash cans. It's something super deep. And so it pulls us into the space to actually solve the problem. So that's a good like kind of short term thing in the moment, especially if any two people can get into the pattern of doing it regularly. Longer term, I'm a big fan of this idea of re-perception. So I don't know if you've read um so you mentioned dan sullivan's book the gap and the gain he wrote that with dr benjamin hardy another organizational psychologist um and he he talks a lot about how memory is not retrieval it's reconstruction

so it's the scripts those narratives right like I'm not as significant as I want to be is based on my memories, but my memories are not accurate for one. Sure. You know, I can be pulling back from like, I'm six years old when this thing happens and I've encoded it in my brain with the maturity of a six-year-old, which is why all of us sometimes act like little narcissistic children. That's what happens most of the time when we get triggered. So when I allow myself to go, God, when in my childhood do I remember feeling the same way? Like, when do I remember feeling this kind of insignificance? When do I remember feeling

this incompetent? When do I remember feeling this unlovable? Think about that moment, but don't get married to your memory of it. Let yourself do what you were saying earlier, Dr. Cinder. Think about what's an alternative story here. I looked at that moment from when I'm six years old, right? When my big sister doesn't want to play with me, right? And I feel so bad about myself in that moment. I internalized a moment like that of like, I'm not important to her. She doesn't love me. I'm not fun or worthy of spending time. Okay, sure. That's what six-year-old me thinks. But what does 40-year-old Laura think of that? How can I look back at eight-year-old big sister and go, I mean, she was eight years old. She was a little kid. I bet I was

pretty annoying to her. She probably just wanted to play things a certain way. Did that have anything to do with my lovability or my significance? No, of course not. And so like letting yourself re-script and reframe a lot of these memories from the past that have created the narratives to begin with can significantly lessen and reduce that impact. Yeah, super helpful. Super helpful. And yeah, I appreciated that you just said like the re-perception. Yeah, re-perception. Yeah, right? Yeah, you got it. When you said that about memory is not tell us more. Say that that a statement again from Ben Hardy and just unpack that a little bit because I thought

that was such a powerful statement. I'd like to hear more about that. So memory is not retrieval. It's reconstruction. We like to think of memory as like, let me just open up this file cabinet and I'm going to go to this folder and I'm going to pick out this piece of paper and here you go. Here is the memory. This is what happened. As though it's some kind of concrete tangible thing that's accurate and real. But that's not how the brain really works. It's always put into our brain is pulling together all kinds of stuff, including our level of consciousness in the moment, including our emotional state, including other things that have happened that have shaped our mindset, right?

You know so much about mindset over time. And it reconstructs the memory and goes, here, this is what happened. And there's so much evidence of this. Even look at four people standing on the corner who all saw a car accident happen, and you ask them to describe what happened. If memory was retrieval, they would all have extremely similar stories, but they changed the color of the car, the make of the car, the direction that cars were going, the order that things happened in. Our memories are kind of terrible, actually. Our memories are not very effective and we cling to these memories to shape our identity. And so to recognize it's not a retrieval, it's a reconstruction, is actually one of the coolest things because it means I can reconstruct this to serve me today.

Yeah, I love that. I love this quote by Byron Katie. And she said, and I think you and I have talked about this before, but the quote is something like, what if everything happens for you, not to you? Yes. And I think that's an example of changing the narrative or changing the story about something. And that's actually really difficult to practice, I find. But it's like if you look back at a time where, you know, where maybe you did feel like you weren't significant or lovable or, you know, competent or something like that. If you can think, how is that a gift or what else could that mean? Or what's a different interpretation I could have around that story? Yeah. And that's part of that flexibility, right? That you were kind of reading about from the book is if I can offer more flexibility into my interpretation of any given moment, then I'm very well positioned to create the kind of relationships that I want to have and to create the self-concept that I want to have for myself that actually

serves the direction I want to go. Like that's really the essence of self-acceptance is you don't have to beat yourself up in order to be a high achiever. You don't have to beat yourself up in order to hit really high goals. In fact, research is pretty clear. You will slow yourself down if you are working on improving yourself through the lens of self-judgment because self-acceptance and self-improvement are not opposite ends of the same continuum. The opposite of self-acceptance isn't self-improvement. The opposite of self-acceptance

is self-judgment. So self-improvement exists either from the place of self-judgment or from the place of self-acceptance. When you practice self-improvement through the lens of self-acceptance, everything is faster and easier and better. So helpful. So we're thinking about just this idea of intentionally creating our self-concept, right? Like what do we believe about ourselves? Or when you said, you know, the I am, do you have any thoughts on how people could create that intentionally? Yeah. I mean, journaling is a very powerful way to do it. And I would say journal with honesty. So like sometimes I think really, really powerful advice is either

misunderstood or it's dismissed because I might, somebody with really low self-acceptance or self-esteem might be told like, just tell yourself that you're smart and then you'll feel like you're smart and it doesn't ring true. It doesn't resonate and it's not going to move them forward. It's actually going to probably pull them even further back because now they just feel like they're lying to themselves out loud. Exactly. Yeah. So it can be, you know, I'm in the process of, in terms of if I want to create a new self-concept, a new identity, and it might just even be like a small shift that I want to create, right? I would invite your listeners to really just focus on something small to start. I'm in the process of, and then fill in the blank. Also, like let yourself look back and find the evidence that supports the version of you

that you do want to be more and more of. That's part of what Dan Sullivan and Ben Hardy write about in their book, The Gap Versus the Gain, is that when you can actually pause and let yourself take a look at like, what were all the gains? You're in a totally different mindset to actually create more because what you focus on grows. Yes. Yeah, I love it.

So as we're talking about radical self-acceptance and your book, The Missing Links, launching a high performance or high performing company culture, how do you think self-acceptance connects to culture? And I'm thinking about culture at work, but also culture in families, because we've talked a little bit about our families today. Just tell us a little bit about how that all connects together. Well, so much of culture is about the relationships, right? Culture is this emergent property that's based on the interactions and the beliefs and behaviors of the people. And so it really does come down to how are the human beings interacting with one another? And we've talked

a lot today about how those interactions between people are going to be much different when there's high self-acceptance moments versus when there's low self-acceptance moments. And so it's the higher self-acceptance moments that create cultures, whether that's work or families, where people are more willing to be vulnerable. They're more willing to say, I'm sorry that I snapped at you. I apologize. That was not okay. I had nothing to do with you. A low self-acceptance moment, you're not going to get an apology. You're going to get people digging in their heels and defending themselves even harder. In the context of work, for leaders, it's especially important. So a leader that has high self-acceptance, they're going to create the kind of culture where vulnerability is encouraged and accepted.

They're going to create that psychological safety. It takes high self-acceptance for a leader to create that space by modeling it first to say, I made a mistake or, hey, I actually don't know the answer to this question or to admit, you know what? Some of what's going on for me right now is actually tough. Like, here's what's hard for me about this right now. How are y'all feeling about it? You know, creating that kind of space for humans to be real, to be authentic, that's the place from where we create the most creative and effective solutions to whatever is ailing us. So the connection is huge and it operates through so many different mechanisms of human behavior in any kind of culture. Thank you. Laura, what we're talking about, I think is so powerful and I'm hopeful that people are just taking in, rewinding it, listening again to what you said. And we'll continue to work to practice this. And I love this idea that we kind of how I think of self-compassion is just like a practice

I have to recommit to every day. I thought what we talked about today was so powerful in terms of, you know, what you said about being excited about the small wins. You shared about taking credit and the ways that we can do that. And you encourage us to do that every day and and the power of radical self-acceptance of like less conflict just having more easy relationships and then this idea of like re going back and looking at the story you know how is this maybe about significance or competence or being feeling like I'm unable. And so just being really careful about

the story that we tell ourselves about ourselves or about our past experiences, because those scripts are what's showing up. How can people follow along with your work? And I know you have a quiz you want to tell us a little bit about. So just tell us how we can follow along with what you're doing. Absolutely. Well, I would invite any of your listeners to follow me or connect with me on LinkedIn. I love to post there, you know, whatever's kind of top of mind for me, how I'm seeing self-acceptance play out with all kinds of high achievers. I get to work with some of the coolest people. And yes, the quiz. So if your listeners want to better understand, like, where am I right now in this

whole self-acceptance, self-judgment space, they can go to selfacceptancequiz.com. And what you're going to get when you complete this is you're going to get a profile. I don't want you to think I'm married to this profile forever. This is who I am. This is capturing where you are in a moment, right? Self-acceptance moments or self-judgment moments. So capture where you are by taking this quiz, and it's going to actually put you into this framework so you can see, are you high or low on self-acceptance? And are you high or low on self-improvement? Because this is what's really important for your high achieving listeners to know. This is a quote from Dr. Robert Holden.

There is no amount of self-improvement that will ever make up for a lack of self-acceptance. A little powerful. Yeah. We like to think we can like improve ourselves up to the point of finally being like, okay, now I accept myself. But it's just like the story I told you about from like, you know, 10 or 12 years ago

and I realized I was full of it. Like there is no amount of improving myself that's going to suddenly magically make me accept myself. It is a different practice in and of itself. Wonderful. So selfacceptancequiz.com. And where should people go and find your book, Dr. Laura Gallaher, The Missing Links, Launching a High-Performing Company Culture? How could they find it? It's available on Amazon. We have it on Audible and Kindle or paperback. If you want the hardcover version, then you'll want to go to our website, which would be gallaheredge.com backslash book. But yeah, it's available in lots of places. Thank you, Dr. Laura. This is very powerful and I know thought- provoking for everyone listening.

So thank you so much for joining us here on the podcast today. Thank you. 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. Sindhra. That's D-R-C-I-N-D-R-A.com. See you next week.