Transcript
Jay Shetty (0:00)
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Kal Penn (2:40)
The number one health and Wellness podcast Jay Shetty.
Jay Shetty (2:44)
Jay Shetty. He was the only Jay Shetty. Hey everyone. Welcome back to On Purpose. I'm Jay Shetty, the author of New York Times bestselling books Think Like a Monk and eight Rules of Love. And I'M so glad you're here today because I think one of the biggest challenges that I'm hearing so many of you dealing with right now is, is not the voices outside. It's not the voice of your friends, it's not the voice of your families. It's the voice inside your head. If you've ever felt that you've got a critic sitting in your head 24 7, finding a way to over analyze, criticize, complain about every move you make, every thought you have, every decision you're about to make, and you find that that critical voice is blocking you from living your best life, is blocking you from unleashing your potential, is blocking you from making that idea happen. Maybe you have an idea for a podcast, but the voice in your head always says, don't do it. Maybe you have an idea about how to impact the world positively and you have a voice in your head saying you're not good enough. Maybe you have the desire to build your own business, to start your own company, and the voice in your head says it's a stupid idea. Whatever it is, we all go through moments in life where we keep beating ourselves up. If you're someone who wants to silence that critic in your head, this episode is for you. If you're someone who wants to break through that negative spiral in your mind, this episode is for you. And if you're someone who wants to stop beating yourself up and start lifting yourself up, this episode is for you. Let's dive in. The first thing I want to talk about is that self criticism feels like control, but it's actually sabotage, right? When we criticize ourself, we think we're in control. We think we know everything. We think we're correcting ourselves. What we don't realize is we're actually sabotaging ourselves. Imagine a top tennis player keeps berating themselves after every missed shot. Instead of focusing, they actually are just beating themselves up about the last point. That self criticism that they thought would motivate them actually destroys their rhythm. There's an incredible speech that was given by Roger Federer at Dartmouth University, and he said that in his career, he has missed so many points, he has lost so many points. But he said the biggest skill he had is that he never focused on the last point he missed. He said, if I'm focused on the last point that I missed or if I'm focused on the future point that I might miss, then guess what? I miss the present shot. I miss the present moment. So many of us are beating ourselves up for the past. So many of ourselves are beating ourselves up for not having the future we thought we were going to build. What does that do? It makes the present lose time, money, energy, everything. Ask yourself to stop seeing self criticism as motivating and control. Kristin Neff's research on self compassion from 2005 shows that students who forgave themselves for procrastinating studied more effectively for the next exam, while harsh self critics repeated the same cycle. Imagine that forgiving yourself makes you more focused. Forgiving yourself allows you to move forward. Resenting yourself holds you back. Criticizing yourself demotivates you. And think about it when you're talking to someone else or when someone's speaking to you. If someone criticizes your every move. I remember I've not played golf very often, but I took a lesson once and I had a coach who criticized me every quarter of a swing. So even before I swung and hit the ball, he would criticize every single time. And every time I was about to hit the ball, he'd have another criticism. It demotivated me. Think about yourself. If every time you share an idea with a friend, they just pull it apart, even if they're well intentioned, it demotivates you. How many of you have called yourself stupid after making a mistake at work? And instead of fixing it quickly, you spiral into self doubt, which means you make more errors. And what's really interesting to me about this is that it's not just about performance. It's not just about focus. It's even in relationships. Maybe you're beating yourself up for staying in a relationship for too long. Maybe you're beating yourself up for allowing someone to walk all over you. Maybe you're beating yourself up for allowing someone to mistreat you. When you beat yourself up for someone already treating you badly, it only gets worse. Forgive yourself for confusing attention with love. Forgive yourself for ignoring red flags because you wanted it to work. Forgive yourself for chasing validation instead of connection. Forgive yourself for being loyal to people who weren't loyal to you. Forgive yourself so that you can move on. Because we don't forgive ourselves, we don't heal. Healing is not just about forgiving others, about letting go of what's outside of ourselves. It's about saying, you know that mistake I made? That's all I knew then. That's all the information I had then. And maybe I even knew better. But guess what? I'm now learning that lesson. I'm now applying it. That will free you from actually blocking yourself from growth. The second thing I want to talk about Is you wouldn't talk to a friend like that. So why talk to yourself like that? Imagine your best friend failed a job interview. Would you say, you're useless? You should have prepared better. You'll never get hired now. You would never say that to a friend ever. Yet that's how we all talk to ourselves. We all talk to ourselves like our worst enemy. We talk to ourselves like someone we hate. We talk to ourselves like someone we don't believe in. You would never talk to your friend like that. Now, I'm not saying that you want to falsely cheer yourself up either. I'm not saying you just want to look at yourself and be like, no, I'm amazing, and they were wrong. But you want to have an honest assessment. So saying, no, you're the best isn't true. And saying you're the worst also isn't true. In the Bhagavad Gita, one of the books I studied as a monk, it talks about how attachment and aversion are two sides of the same coin. The feeling of I'm the best or I'm the worst are two sides of the same coin. It's just the ego playing games with you. When the ego makes you believe you're the best, well, you become complacent and fallible. When the ego makes you believe you're the worst, guess what? It doesn't help you grow. It's the honest introspection, the honest assessment that we all need. Hey, this is what I got right in the interview. But you know what? I didn't really nail these three things. You're now not assessing it as you. You're assessing it as something you took part in. There's research on self talk that found athletes who used positive instructional self talk improved performance, while negative self talk led to choking under pressure. Think about that. So we all have self talk. You can't stop the self talk. But those that were constructive, those that were positive, those that were focused forward made a difference. Imagine before a date, you tell yourself, I'm boring. I'm not sure they're going to like me. So what happens? You walk in nervous and awkward. It's a prophecy you help fulfill. And what happens in that scenario? You end up being boring. You end up feeling more boring. Now, I'm not saying you walk in there and think you're the most interesting person on the planet, but you think, hey, you know what? I've got a couple of things that are interesting to talk about. I've got a couple of things in my life that are important to talk about. Encourage yourself when no one else is clapping. Validate yourself when no one else is noticing. Challenge yourself when no one else is pushing. Forgive yourself when no one else understands. Believe in yourself before anyone else does. Push yourself without punishing yourself, because if you don't do it, you'll always be waiting for someone else. Strong people did the difficult thing when no one was watching. Strong people did the challenging thing when no one was clapping. Strong people did the hardest thing when it was just in private. Do the hard thing. Do the right thing when no one's there to notice. And you'll be able to do it brilliantly when they're all watching on the sidelines. The third thing I wanted to talk about is how beating yourself up doesn't build accountability, but it does build shame. Right? When you keep beating yourself up, you think, and by the way, we do this to other people as well. Sometimes we'll be mean to someone or we'll criticize them, hoping that helps them improve, but it just keeps beating them down. You can't beat someone down and lift them up at the same time, which is what we're trying to do, right? We're trying to beat ourselves up so that we do more, are more productive and more effective. Doesn't work that way. Imagine a teenager caught cheating an exam. They feel so much shame and they think, I'm a terrible person. Instead of changing, they hide their mistakes and cheat again. Brene Brown's work distinguishes guilt I did something bad from shame. I am bad. Guilt drives corrective action. Shame fuels secrecy and withdrawal. Notice the difference. I did something bad. I am bad. Every time you say I am and follow it up with a negative word, you start believing that is your identity. Every time you say I did something bad, you're able to recognize it as a habit or a pattern that you can change. It's a lot harder to feel we can change ourselves than change something we did. Let me give you a real life example. Imagine you snap at your partner and then afterwards you feel shame. You think, I'm a horrible partner. What happens? Instead of apologizing, you avoid them because you feel so bad about yourself. What does that do? It only makes things worse. When you just shame yourself as a bad person, you actually want to spend less time doing the good. It's almost like you get so comfortable in the dark that the light kind of exposes you, so you move away from the light. We don't want to move away from the light. When the light comes on, you see things for what they are. And shame blocks us from seeing the way things they are because it's too scary. It's too hard. I'll give you a really interesting example. I remember the first time I went to Vegas. At night, there was all this glitz and glam and all the rest of it. In the morning I remember with the lights on the casino floor, seeing people glued to the slot machine, sling vomit or drinks and popcorn all over the floor and seeing people passed out like it just wasn't the same sight because the light shows us what's actually there. So we move away from the light when it shows us what's actually there. But if we cannot let shame take over, we can actually look at things for what they are. Don't shame yourself, it won't change you. Compassion will. Don't blame yourself, it won't change you. Accountability will. Don't criticize yourself, it won't change you. Action will. Don't beat yourself up, it won't change you. Challenges will you. Don't grow because of guilt, it just slows you down.