The 4 Lies You Tell Yourself that Keep You Stuck
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You’ve been lying to yourself...
Those might be strong words, but it’s true…
If you’re a high-achiever, guaranteed there are lies you’ve been telling yourself!
In fact, it’s probably one of these 4 lies…
You may not know this about me, but I’m in the process of writing a book. A book about being a scientist in your life and how it can help you overcome burnout, but part of the original transcript for that book was about these…the 4 lies…and how they keep us stuck in life. So, let’s get into them. What the 4 lies are and how they impact us…
Lie #1
THAT "HOW" WE ACHIEVE A GOAL MATTERS…
We’ve been told for far too long in our lives to focus on the “how”. How are we gonna do the thing we want to achieve? How are we going to accomplish that? What’s our path for our career? Etc. etc. etc. It’s all about the how!
And I’ve been guilty of this, too! Hell, I’ve been a goals and productivity coach in the past (one of my many former lives as a coach).
But, the long-and-short of it is that I’ve watched too many smart, ambitious, driven people make a career out of planning as a procrastination tactic. They spend so much time planning that it keeps them from actually starting and doing the thing that they want to do. Has that been you? Have you been this person?
You don’t start the business because you don’t know how to set up a website or use Instagram
You’re so paralyzed by not knowing how to self publish that you don’t even write the book
You can’t decide where to take the trip so you just decide not to go
I’ve seen too many people get so stuck in the planning stage of an activity that they don’t even start the activity they want to start. But do you want to know what the secret is? The how doesn’t matters…so long as you do the damn thing!
If you want to be an author, who gives a shit how you do it?
If you want to run a half marathon, who cares what plan you follow?
If you want to start a business, who cares what advice you follow? Or how long it takes you to build it?
It’s like that old cliche: you only fail when you quit. And it may be cliche, but hey - a lot of cliches are really fricken true and this is one of those situations.
Besides, your perfectly crafted plan? It might not go the way you think anyway. When I was training for a half marathon, I stupidly injured myself in an overuse injury. And, despite the fact that every single runner will tell you not to try something new on race day, well, I did. I used K tape for the first time on race day to alleviate the strain in my hip. And guess what? I PR’d and set a personal best half marathon time.
Tak Cara Alwill Leyba. She’s an author and has written Girl on Fire, Like She Owns the Place and Sparkle. In her most recent book, Girl on Fire, she tells the story of how she got too caught up and stuck in her plan to get a book contract and work with a publisher, which she did for Like She Owns the Place. The interesting thing was that the experience wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. She didn’t enjoy it and actually went back to self-publishing for Girl on Fire.
Interesting right? Our best laid plans might never work out quite the way we want to.
So, how do we work through this lie? Focus on making short-term decisions. Instead of approaching a decision as the end-all-be-all and like it’s something you’re going to be locked into for the long-term, focus on making a decision “for now". If you’re building a business for your website, who cares what platform you use? Pick the option that feels like the best choice for now! You can change later! If you want to write a book, it doesn’t have to be the one where you become an Amazon best seller and work with a publisher. you can just publish. Instead of focusing on the “perfect plan", focus on the perfect plan for right now. Give yourself permission to change your mind!
Lie #2
THAT MINDFULNESS IS BULLSHIT…
It’s easy with conversations about mindfulness to say, “ oh you’re just super woo woo” but let me just shut that down right now! I’m a FRICKEN SCIENTIST! I’m not more woo than you - promise!
And I’ll admit - I was a doubter when it came to mindfulness! But I’m a convert because mindfulness can reveal some of the honest to God missing pieces that hold you back and hanging you up—whether we’re talking burnout or achieving our goals.
I think my girl Elena Thurston said it best in this podcast episode:
“We’re juggling all these balls and we all feel that. That’s a universal feeling…And a lot of people will feel like, here I am saying: “You need mindfulness. You need to meditate. You need to journal. You need to move your body in an intentional way.” And they’ll say, “You’re just handing me another damn ball! Are you freaking kidding me? I can’t juggle that one too.” And to that I’ll say, mindfulness is not another ball. You actually don’t know this, but you’re juggling the balls with a blindfold on. When I hand you mindfulness, I’m actually taking off your blindfold so that you can actually see the damn balls you’re juggling. you’re dropping things you don’t even realize you’re dropping. And you’re tossing some of them up in the air way too. Let me take your blindfold off so you can feel and so you can actually decide which balls you want to juggle.”
So, what does meditation look like? Well, it doesn’t have to mean yoga retreats and visiting an ashram in India like something straight out of Eat, Pray, Love. It can look like journaling. Meditating. Time in nature.
It’s really about turning off your brain, pausing, and getting clear and aware. It’s about tapping into your intuition.
And that pause in your life?! It’s incredibly powerful for overcoming burnout, listening to what you need, etc. and we can only do any of that by slowing down and getting mindful.
And—like I said—I’m a convert!
So, no, mindfulness is NOT bullshit. It’s an incredibly powerful tool enabling us to slow down and tune in. And that’s something all of us could use more of.
Lie #3
THAT FAILURE IS NOT AN OPTION…
Let’s be real—the hardest parts of achieving any goal are starting and doing the damn thing and analyzing and reflecting on how things are going. We have been trained to tie self-evaluation to self-judgment.
Let me give you an example. In 2015, I was training for my first half marathon. I was a little bit of a psycho and opted to do a half marathon, my first obstacle course race, and a second half marathon all in the span of 3 months. I know - it was kind of dumb lol 😬
But, as I was training, I hit a frustrating barrier that I couldn’t breakthrough. Seemingly no matter what I did, I couldn’t break through the 7-mile barrier. I would try and try and try and yet, every time, I would fail at achieving my running goal of the day and each time I would come home and just rag on myself.
Seriously, what do we all do after we fail? We don’t sweet-talk and comfort ourselves. We shit talk ourselves. It’s not “oh, don’t worry honey - you’ll get it next time!” Instead, it’s “wow, you’re such a fuck up! You’re so lazy! What’s wrong with you?”
That’s the kind of stuff we say to ourselves.
It was a “failure”, but if I was going to keep going and achieve my goal, I’d have to learn. And I learned a LOT! I learned that I need to be better about pacing. I learned that I need to be better about stretching on my days off. I learned that I needed to tweak some of the other workouts that I was doing so I didn’t exhaust my legs because by the time I got to my long runs at the end of the week, my legs were just toast!
I had to listen to what my body was telling me! Hell - that one time I ignored it, I pushed through an injury and dealt with it for the next 9 months…
It’s a moment for ANOTHER cliche: it’s not FAILING, but it’s an opportunity to learn.
To learn, you have to be willing to look at the data and take your ego and judgment out of the equation to see what you can change tweak.
When we put so much pressure on ourselves to never fail and be perfect in the process of achieving things we’ve never actually done, we’re doing ourselves a disservice. We are setting ourselves up for a really shitty process of achievement, but we’re also basically setting ourselves up for a lose-lose situation.
STRAIGHT UP - you’re going to fail! You’re going to screw something up. You’re going to run up against things that are REALLY hard and maybe even impossible to overcome.
If we go into things having the expectation that we’re going never going to struggle and we’re never going to fail, that’s not going to serve. Instead, shift to “I only fail if I quit.” And hell, if you fail, be sure you learn as much as you can!
Lie #4
THAT QUITTING IS FAILING…
I saved this one for last for a reason because if I had stopped telling myself this life, I would have saved myself a decade. This is the lie that kept me in my Ph.D. program for as long as it did. Hell, I knew 6-12 months in that it was WRONG for me. That I was in the wrong place. And yet, I stayed. I stayed until the start of my 4th year and I stayed staring it down in complete and utter misery.
But there’s a reason why I did. Because science was my identity.
Think about it! When you’re a senior in high school you’re identified (and validated) by your future major. This continues through college and—in so many ways—this identifier is used as a means to determine how much respect someone should give you. When we leave college, we’re identified by our career. In graduate school, we’re identified by our degree— “Masters” or “Ph.D.” student. Hell, I remember when I took an MBA class during my PhD program (for fun!) that they literally just called me “the Ph.D. student.”
No fricken wonder we wrap our identity up so much in our careers.
For me, quitting my Ph.D. felt like losing my identity. It felt like failing. It felt like weakness. It felt like I was unfocused or flaky or lacked discipline.
I did eventually quit and all the dread, uncertainty, and catastrophizing went away. It felt liberating. I described making the decision to leave graduate school as feeling like I was in a straight jacket. An emotional straightjacket. I was being so inauthentic that that’s what it felt like to exist.
I’ll never forget what my mom said to me as I was making my final decision. “Your stay in something come hell or high water just because you said you would.” So many of us are like that. We stay committed—read stuck—in a decision out of some misplaced sense of integrity.
It’s now been over 5 years and now I have complete certainty. Not only of my path but of the simple fact that quitting is NOT failing! Similarly, it’s about giving yourself permission to change your mind. To pivot. To do something different. To honestly and vulnerably realize that fallacy if you’re going to benefit.
I’m writing a book on this and I’m so excited to deep dive into so many other examples of people who have quit and how that has bettered their lives. Well, people more renowned than me.
So, those are the 4 lies we tell ourselves...
Recognize these lives! Recognize that they exist!
And best believe - letting these lies run your life can burn you out!
What do you think? Have you told yourself these lies? Which one?
