When lying to yourself is ok
Let me ask you something: when you’re cold, do you tell yourself you’re cold?
When you’re tired, do you tell yourself you’re tired?
When you’re afraid, do you tell yourself you’re afraid?
The first response for almost everyone is this - no - when I’m cold, my numb fingers and frozen face are telling me that; when I’m tired, the physical fatigue and no energy are telling me that; and when I’m afraid, my gut and the vibration in my body is telling me that. I’m not telling me that.
And that may all be true. And then our problem starts - we begin to reinforce it in our own inner monologue. And that matters. A lot.
One of the most important things I learned when becoming the best in the world at throwing myself down a mountain at 95 mph is - The things you say to yourself about what you’re doing or how you’re feeling will impact your performance.
In fact, what you say to yourself about the experience can matter more than the experience itself.
Get a load of this Mel Robbins clip:
Clip Transcript: The only difference between the groups was one group was taught in a situation that made them nervous, to simply say, as dumb as this sounds, I'm so excited. I'm so excited to run this race. I'm so excited to take this test. I'm so excited to get out there and sing, even though they felt nervous. I'm so excited. And the people that were taught to say ‘I'm so excited’ outperformed the people who had no tools, and the reason can be explained by chemistry and physiology and neurology. If you get too nervous and you start to get too worked up and your thoughts start to spin, and your body stays in a fight or flight state. Your brain releases cortisol and cortisol impacts your brain's ability to focus. So all your preparation goes out the window because you just blew it with the cortisol in your brain. When you say I'm excited, even if you feel nervous, your brain buys it and doesn't release cortisol which allows you to focus on what you need to do.
When I watch this clip, what strikes me is what Mel isn’t saying.
What she isn’t outright saying (but is the implied subtext in her message) is that sometimes this practice means you need to borderline lie to yourself.
But I don’t think it’s actually lying to yourself; it’s reframing and in this example that’s a very different thing.
You see, fear and excitement are closely linked. So if you feel a combination of both fear and excitement (say, before public speaking or entering a competition), it makes positive sense for our performance and well-being, to lean into that excitement. Focus on how excited you feel, rather than your nervousness.
But, Steve, what if I’m just straight up NOT excited? What if that’s just not at all how I feel? I can’t trick my brain when it’s my brain telling me what is going on.
According to the research, it’s still possible to reframe, or reappraise, for your brain/self. And in my experience, that’s only half the story.
Let’s use the “fear of public speaking” example since that’s a thing for 75% of the population (and very much was once for me). When public speaking, we’re sharing an idea we have. We signed up to do it because we wanted, most of the time, to share that idea. You were excited to share an idea, to some degree. If you didn’t volunteer for it, then someone signed you up for a reason. Keep that in mind.
Here’s an important thing to understand - fear/anxiety and excitement are siblings. The physical feelings we perceive from them can be almost exactly the same. The racing heart, stomach butterflies, and sweaty palms as pointed out by best-selling author Aytekin Tank in this piece on the topic - are shared symptoms of fear and excitement, and show how closely related they are.
So whether it’s the lead-up to getting in front of your audience, feeling cold on the ski hill, or feeling worn out at the end of your day with things yet to accomplish, what can we do?
In a brilliant section of Alex Hutchinson’s 2018 book “Endure”, he interviews researchers who are finding the brain, not the physical limits of the body, are what causes performance changes more than anything else. Which I bring in to say - if there is quality University research behind the power of our minds to overcome physical fatigue at the edges of marathon performance - there is endless room for us in our day-to-day.
We’re going to want to lean into finding the excitement over the fear, the warmth over the cold, and the energy over the lack thereof - so let’s lean into a few methods that I find helpful to get there…
Mind Trick #1 - Try to understand the nuances of what you’re feeling
We live in a culture where things are positioned as very black and white, very divisive. We’re taught that you have to be one thing or another, fit yourself in one camp or another.
But humans are more complex than that.
Sidenote: I remember moving to Alberta, Canada, many moons ago and the political party in power, which no longer exist, were called the “Progressive Conservatives”. The American in me was very confused. A political party could be both socially progressive while also being fiscally conservative? Where did I land, Mars?!
In the above speaking example, people’s fear can be overwhelming. We can lose sight that we have something we want to share with people. That want is excitement underneath it.
The fact is, we can be both afraid and excited at the same time. We are almost always feeling multiple feelings at once.
You may be 95% afraid and only 5% excited. But you are still excited.
75% of your body may be cold, but 25% is still warm.
You may be pissed off at someone, but you still do like them as a person.
We will often physically feel the thing that we are mentally focused on.
Start with that recognition and you will be able to calm your body to be able to make rational choices once again. When I started applying this to my fundraising at Classroom Champions and I began to recognize it wasn’t all bad things - many good things followed.
Mind Trick #2 - Use discipline to tell yourself what feels untrue.
To me, by building off of Mind Trick #1, this is the foundational perspective to the above Mel Robbins’ clip. If you feel fear, recognize it’s closely related to excitement, and that somewhere under there you are excited. Don’t lie to yourself, but unearth the hidden feeling you have. Recognize you have fear, but then learn into the covered-up excitement.
Then tell yourself over and over you are excited. No need to caveat that you’re also afraid. Just like previously when your inner monologue kept saying you were afraid, you weren’t caveating that you were also excited.
People tend to undermine themselves by caveating themselves constantly because it’s very difficult not to. It takes practice to build the discipline to not let in the overpowering emotion, which in turn gives us an excuse to not perform as well as we could. I love the angle the author takes in this piece, Making Excuses Is a Habit in Many People, about the habit of excuse-making; which in this case is caveating, to me.
Mind Trick #3 - Don’t say how you feel if it doesn’t help
This leads into the third Mind Trick - Focus on the emotion that will help you the most, and stay there.
My mother-in-law, who I absolutely love, spends a lot of time with our daughter, Bee. A couple of summers ago, when Bee was about 4 years old, she and I were walking to the playground when Bee all of a sudden said “my knees are tired.” This was clearly Gramma speaking, though Bee likely had something going on - at that age boredom, fatigue, hunger, anything can be labeled as anything.
But, she’s also four, and I do know a handful of blocks a marathon does not make - so the likeliness of her having knee fatigue was pretty darn low.
So we had a long conversation that crescendoed with -
Me: “Bee - does saying your knees are tired make you feel good or bad?”
Bee: “I don’t know.”
Me: “Fair. Well, you’ve been saying it the past block. How do you feel?”
Bee: “Bad.”
Me: “So, does saying your knees are tired make you feel good or bad?”
Bee: “Bad.”
And a simple lesson learned, convoluted or not. She acknowledged to me and herself, after that, that saying that didn’t help her. And now we use the technique all the time - on the ski hill with cold hands, doing homework she “doesn’t want to do” yet knows she needs to, and so on. The moment I say that to her now, it’s “I know, Daddy, I know…” and then she stops saying the negative thing.
Important Note for Parents: When dealing with children, you have to be very observant in using this technique. The last thing I want is for her to hurt herself or bury real, true emotions. We always work hard on acknowledging what’s really going on, and if what’s really going on is the negative emotion or negative physical experience, then we have to stop and deal with that.
I’m a strong believer that the application for the rest of us is this - it can be helpful to acknowledge how we feel. But unless we’re in dire circumstances, repeating the negative over and over again likely isn’t going to help and will only remind our brain again and again of the negative, unhelpful thing.
So, even if you don’t feel like flat-out lying to yourself (telling yourself you’re nice and toasty warm when in reality you’re freezing your ass off), sometimes the least you can do is not repeat to yourself how cold you are.
Focus on something else. Like how nice it is to be out walking in the winter with your daughter. Or taking the opportunity to get on stage and speak. Or pitching your ideas. Or whatever else it is that makes you uncomfortable.
When working hard to find the 5% isn’t the answer, ignoring your negative 95% might serve you just as well.
Go forth and conquer your challenges, and I hope you find as much utility in these techniques as I do every day!
- Steve
