May's Mental Fitness Workouts

What to Expect:

• 2 Mental Fitness Workouts for the month of May

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I have a theory that a good bit of high performance is driven by what might be called "insecure overachievement."

There's a need to prove ourselves to someone or a group of people, to show others that we can do it, or that there's always another hill to climb that will validate what we're capable of. The insecurity pushes us to higher, better heights. We achieve more, but can often feel like less.

While this source of motivation can be powerful and sustaining, it often comes with some dark sides: perfectionism, self-criticism, judgment, doubt, and more.

Since May is mental health awareness month, this month's workouts are going to be geared a bit toward emotional health and well-being -- with a focus on counteracting some of what drives peak performance in a more insidious way.

Setting a strong foundation of wellness is the first step toward consistent high performance. These practices should help you strengthen that foundation on a consistent basis, and with regular practice, you'll broaden your coping strategies around failure and the stress of constant achievement.

Workout #1: Self-Compassion

Pioneered by Dr. Kristen Neff, self-compassion has 3 steps:

1. Practicing self-kindness vs. self-judgment: If we can regularly practice speaking to ourselves as we'd speak to a friend, we'd find that the voice in our head would be a lot more friendly. We tend to be kind, accepting, and warm toward others in the face of mistakes or failure, and treat ourselves like total crap when it happens to us. The first step of the self-compassion framework is to simply adopt the treatment we offer to others - kindness, warmth, care, compassion, and curiosity - for ourselves.
2. Recognizing our common humanity vs. seeing ourselves as isolated: When something isn't going our way, we have a tendency to feel like it's only happening to us and that nobody can relate. Step 2 is all about recognizing that to suffer, fail, or experience discomfort is part and parcel of what it means to be human. By connecting with our common humanity, we can reduce the isolation we feel and practice being more accepting of ourselves.
3. Being mindful vs. over-identifying: The final step is practice awareness and acceptance of our "negative" emotions, without getting swept away in the narrative that often accompanies them. These stories about how we suck, will never make it, or how terrible we are (the typical narratives that accompany a failure) are rarely, if ever, helpful for promoting growth and recovery. Instead, recognizing that we're experiencing a negative emotion and being aware of the feeling in our body, while also accepting this as part of the process, can reduce the distress associated with a mistake.

For May's workout, try to regularly implement a self-compassion practice in response to a failure. Mindfulness practice can often help you catch yourself being self-critical and allow you to turn your attention toward self-compassion, so leverage the mindfulness work we've talked about before to help yourself here.

Aim to practice self-compassion at least 3x per week (ideally, every time you fail, but we have to start somewhere).

For more on self-compassion, check out this link. There is ample empirical support behind self-compassion alleviating distress and improving our well-being.

Workout #2: Forgiveness

When we're driven by the need to achieve, we can often find ourselves with a chip on our shoulder - especially when it comes to someone we believe has wronged or harmed us.

For this second workout, think about someone that you've been holding something against. Perhaps they've hurt or wronged you, or maybe they simply stepped on your toes.

Whatever it is, this workout is simple and straightforward, but not easy...

Forgive them.

You can do it privately - just give yourself permission to let it go and forgive them. Or you can do it publicly - reach out to them directly and let them know what happened and that you forgive them.

The weight of holding on to these past pains can often drag us down, and forgiving them can lift a weight off our shoulders.

In fact, the data on forgiveness suggests that forgiveness leads to:

• Higher subjective well-being
• Greater life satisfaction
• More positive emotions
• Fewer negative emotions

More on forgiveness here.

A final word...

Some exciting changes are coming to the Perform newsletter in the next week or so... stay tuned!