by Kristen Tobias, M.A.
Our culture thrives on pigeonholing individuals as successes or failures, and it can be easy to get caught up in this illogical, irrational reasoning. The success/failure dichotomy ignores the complexity of being human and presumes some objective standard of success or failure that is true for everyone in all cases. High school yearbooks often identify someone as “Most Likely to Succeed.” What does this title even mean? If we agree that this accolade refers to one’s professional life, the meaning still remains unclear. Does this mean the person who makes the most money? The person who earns the highest degree? The person with the most innovative career? The person who helps the most people? The person with the broadest influence? My inquiries could go on and on.
Try to think about ALL of the behaviors that you exhibit in a single day. From every audible word, to text messages and emails, and finally, every action you complete (e.g., holding the door for someone, completing a work assignment, watching TV). People are a complex combination of good, bad, and neutral behaviors. We operate in too many roles for it to be rational or logical to allow ONE behavior to define us in our entirety. Son, daughter, mother, father, sister, brother, friend, lover, colleague, neighbor, aunt, uncle, employee, companion, et cetera.
I recently heard someone speak about getting assigned a new, high-level project at work. The person reported feeling very anxious about the completion of this project. Upon further exploration, this person was telling himself that if he did not do a good job then it would mean that he is a failure, and therefore not a worthwhile person. You can see how that type of thinking was leading to anxiety and procrastination, an emotion and a behavior that were not helping him to reach his goal. On the other hand, if he attended to the complexities of being human by rating the behavior and not the self, the ensuing experience would look much different.
Let’s imagine that the above person tried to think differently the next time he is given a challenging task at work. Imagine he were to think: ”I am not a worthwhile person because I perform well at work. I am a worthwhile person whether or not I fail or succeed at work, who is capable of trying to do better in instances of failure whereby I learn from my mistakes or find ways to compensate for my weaknesses.” If the person believed this new thinking, he would feel concerned about the project but free himself from crippling anxiety. It is important to note that the more we value something, the harder it will be to change irrational thinking. This person is a very conscientious employee, who has had many successes at work, and values his professional career very much. But, when he defined himself by his professional success (and only his professional success), he wasn’t in the best place to do well at work!
Today is a good day to break the bad habit of calling yourself a failure. First, we can think about all of the different roles that we have in life to prevent narrow, unhelpful thinking. You might want to write them down (i.e., type them into a notepad on your smart phone) so that you have this list to refer back to. Be sure to include all of the different roles that you have in your family, professional life, community, etc. Next, we can practice rating behaviors and not the self. The more we can successfully engage in this practice, the less disturbed we will be. This puts us in a much better place to digest criticism or examine personal weaknesses so that we can work to improve that which we are not happy with.
