It Can't Just Be Me - It's Not Just You: Reframing Failure As Success

Episode Date: February 14, 2025

Anna is joined by clinical psychologist Dr Soph to answer a listener dilemma about how they feel they've failed when it comes to achieving their ambitions. Dr Soph encourages them - and us - to reframe what we consider to be failure, and get better at being our own 'inner CEO' and regulating the negative self-talk. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Get the Rakuten app or join at rakuten.ca. R-A-K-U-T-E-N dot C-A. RAKUTEN.CA Hello, I'm Anna Richardson. And if you're a regular listener to It Can't Just Be Me, then welcome to our second weekly episode, It's Not Just You. Each week I'll be joined by an expert to explore the issues and dilemmas that are affecting you. No guests, just you, me and an expert.

Nothing is off limits, we're open to it all. From your mental health, to dating, to your sex life, to addiction. All of the challenges and hurdles that life throws at you. We're here to offer some practical advice and support because whatever's on your mind, it's not just you. So let's begin. Today I am joined by clinical psychologist Dr Sophie Maut aka Dr Soph. Now, these mini weekly episodes are all about our listeners and there it can't just be me dilemmas. So let's get straight into it. Hi Anna and team. Last year, after a difficult period mental health wise, I set ambitious

goals for myself. Starting my own business, training for a marathon, and building a better relationship with my family. I didn't manage any of those things. I did a course in starting a small business, but then was too scared to quit my day job. I started couch to 5k but ended up giving it up after a few months because I was just so slow at running. And my relationship with my family has the same frustrations and arguments it did before. I feel like a total failure and the experience has just been so demoralizing that I've struggled to set myself any goals at all this year.

It can't just be me that struggles with achieving the things I want from life. Oh my god, once again, I feel like that we can all totally identify with this dilemma. Setting goals that are just totally unattainable, particularly at the beginning of the year and then beating ourselves up about not being able to achieve them. So what are we saying here? What's your immediate thought when you hear this dilemma? That the person did a really, really good job and the issue here is self-criticism, not a problem with goal setting.

Oh really? Interesting. What do you think about that? Interesting, so you're saying actually this person's done incredibly well. Yes. And instead it's just an issue of... I'm gonna explain what I mean.

Okay, so these are some ambitious goals, right? Running a marathon, setting up a new business, changing your family dynamics. But this person said they did a course on their business and the reason that they stopped is because then it was too scary to leave their job. They ran actually for a few months. That's much longer than most people complete their habits for at the beginning of the year and then stop because they were too slow.

And then that they feel like a failure because they haven't changed any of these things, but also haven't changed their family dynamics. Now, what happened was this person actually hit the ground running, achieved some really measurable and impressive things, but then when they hit the next wall, stopped and immediately equated that with their own sense of failure,

and it sounds like really beat themselves up. So what happens when we start criticizing ourselves, well firstly it normally happens because we don't understand the science of habit, we see ourselves as failures rather than this is just a normal process of changing our lives. If we slip into self-criticism,

it's kind of like pouring salt into a wound, which then means we don't feel good. We're certainly not gonna be able to continue with the things that are important in our lives. We feel like we're never gonna have change, which leads us to feel hopeless, right? And low mood often ensues and we become stuck. So I actually think this person needs to give themselves credit that they got a lot further along than most people do. That actually, if they could start with some self-compassion exercises, I'm actually going to say this woman

called Kristin Neff, she's brilliant on self-compassion exercises, has a whole website full of free self-compassion exercises. She doesn't pay me to say this, I just want to say this to the person listening. If they could start there and really bring some kindness into their lives, it would kind of reset their nervous system so they'd be able to see the good that they'd already achieved. Then I'd say get out there and learn the science of habit because you're already doing so well. And when you say get out there and learn the science of, you know, changing habits, basically, are we talking about, and I don't mean to completely plug your book here, but basically go and read Unstuck.

Well, hilariously, that hadn't been my point, but as a shameless plug, why not? Why not? For example, read Unstuck or go and find other resources that talk about changing habits. Yeah, because there's a few things that we know. First thing is, it's great to have goals. We need to make our goals specific, measurable, realistic, timely. This means you might have a big goal of running a marathon, but you need to break it down into smaller chunks

that you can work on. We know that working towards a habit rather than a goal is actually going to make you more likely to achieve that thing. We know that working towards a habit rather than a goal is actually going to make you more likely to achieve that thing. We know that repetition is the single most important factor in creating a habit. So what I mean by this is, if you wanted to run a marathon

and you haven't really started running, it's going to be more important for you to run for two minutes, I really mean two minutes, every day, if you can sustain running for two minutes every day, for a longer period than you'd imagine, than running sporadically for half an hour to an hour. Does that make sense? We know that actually when you start something new, you get worse at it before you get better. I mean significantly worse and

that's normally a sign actually that your brain is now trying to figure out, okay what do I need to do wrong to figure out what I need to do right to move forwards? When you know that, you realize that this person who was struggling with running maybe was just going through this really awful valley of disappointment that you go through when you're building a new habit.

We know that, for example, that when you set the challenge of a task at 85%, as in I can do this 85% of the time well, 15% of the time I fail, that's when you're gonna learn most quickly. When you know that, you realize failure is actually gonna help me get better at this thing. So when I say go away and learn science of habit,

what I mean is it will help you realize that things are gonna get worse. It's not because you're bad at it. It'll help you understand how to set your measurable specific steps to build towards the marathon, for example, or the business. And it will help you plan for the times where you fall back into your old ways and offer yourself the compassion you need to get back up and keep going.

How important is self talk when it comes to how we're managing life's expectations? Because I noticed that right at the beginning of this dilemma, you said, do you know what? It seems to me this person's doing really, really well. They're just really bad at self-criticism. Yeah. I mean, the way that we talk to ourselves colors every moment of our life.

You know, if you have, and in a monologue that's more like an inner heckler, it's like walking around the world just being constantly undermined. And I'm telling you, like some people walk around the world and they have an inner cheerleader that's just like, you're so great. And you're wondering like, why are you smiling? It's like, oh, my inside world is so nice.

Now I'm not saying that it's easy to become your biggest cheerleader. Actually for most of us, we don't need an inner cheerleader. We need an inner CEO, you know, someone who's a bit more rational and reasonable, the one that kind of says to the inner berater, is that the word I'm going to use? Mmm, I see what you're saying, but you're wrong because of this evidence. But self-compassion is a way that we can kind of manage this.

And interestingly, when it comes to habits, there's some really fascinating research that shows, and I hope I'm going to get this right, that when you start off a new habit, you want to be thinking, what if I don't do this, right? So hang on, let me think about this. There's two ways around. No, when you start off, you want to be like, who will I be if I do this thing? Right? So you go pure motivation. I'm going to be, I don't know, X and Y, all the things I ever hoped to be. And in the beginning you go for this like supportive,

compassionate approach. Then you need to oscillate or alternate between the kind of, oh, but if I don't do this now, then I'm going to miss out on this opportunity. It will be bad. So you need to actually use these two tones of voice depending on the mood state that you're in. The issue is most of us use them the wrong way around.

We become demotivated, we beat ourselves up when we need to actually be saying, look, you're already doing such a good job, get back out there, or just imagine doing the exercise. Few of us realize that if you don't go for the run that day or you don't do your new habits, simply closing your eyes and imagining yourself doing it gives your brain a chance to start laying down the pathways of you doing that activity.

Oh really, so just using that visualization, that imagination. So your brain does know it's not the same. It does know that you're not really going for a run. But it's already laying down some new neural pathways. Exactly, you've got the neurons firing. So I really think that we often set these goals at the beginning of the year and set up a rod for our own backs. Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. And now this is a big question. What is the secret then to achieving the things that we want, staying motivated and boosting our self-esteem. Are you able to kind of distill that massive question down into maybe just sort of three bullet points that if I were a client sitting with you now saying this is what I need, I need motivation, I need self-esteem and I want to achieve the things I want, what would you say?

Oh this is so big! Okay, self-esteem. So your self-esteem is made up by so many different things. It's made up of identity, belonging, confidence. So, okay, how do you achieve these things? I want you to start with thinking about your identity. Here you go, okay. So if you imagine your identity is like a jigsaw puzzle and each different part of your identity is a different piece.

Often what happens with each of us is we only focus on one identity puzzle piece, such as work. This means when it starts to go wrong, our whole identity feels unsettled. So imagine your identity, write down all of the different pieces. Then I want you to think about all of the different ways,

we've talked a bit about this before. I want you to think about who you would like to be in the future and what parts of, what things those people do, right? So maybe it's instead of I'm gonna run a marathon, they run more because they focus on their health. Instead of setting up a business this year, it's they work towards doing this kind of job that builds value in the community. Maybe instead of I'm gonna change my family dynamic, it becomes I'm the kind of person that takes responsibility for the arguments that I start right you list them these are values not goals and you make sure that every day you tick off

those things and as long as you're doing those things every day you're never crossing them off the list you're doing them every day this is how you're going to build your self-esteem because you're working on our identity and you're also starting to see I can do the things that matter to me every day. This is how you're going to build your self-esteem because you're working on your identity and you're also starting to see I can do the things that matter to me every day. You're building values into your life rather than these pass fail goals and ironically over time what you're going to notice is you'll probably end up getting to the goals that you'd set yourself right at the beginning. Maybe more like the tortoise in the hair. You're going to be

maybe more like the tortoise but you're going to get there in a more sustainable way than someone who sets a big goal and then beats themselves up when they don't get there. So it feels to me a little bit as though our listener might benefit from some support or coaching or therapy. Finally, are there any resources out there that you would recommend that wouldn't cost the earth for this person if money was an issue? Yeah, I really want to go back to Kristin Neff's website where they do the free self-compassion exercises. There's audios on there, that's where I'd start. I would perhaps start talking to friends,

right? Because I'm guaranteed that every person that you know this year has set a goal for themselves that they haven't yet achieved. And if you say to them, this is how I'm feeling, they're going to say, this is how I'm feeling, they're gonna say, oh my God, me too. But you know what, we're not failures, because we even tried. So what are we gonna do together? When we speak to friends,

they can not only help us feel accountable, they make the shared habits much more enjoyable, which makes us likely to do those things more often, but they also catch us when we start beating ourselves up, and they offer us kind words, the words that we should be using to speak to ourselves in those scenarios. So that's maybe where I'd go. So Dr Sophie Mort, as always, brilliant advice. Thank you so much.

That's it for today. Thank you so much for sending in your dilemmas and sharing your stories with us. It's so important that we're having these honest conversations that ultimately everyone can benefit from. A little podcast update for you. It Can't Just Be Me is taking a brief pause in recording after this episode. And don't forget, if you want to see more of the show, remember, you can find us on Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook. Just search for It Can't Just Be Me, because whatever you're dealing with,

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