Brené Brown, in a fantastic discussion with Chase Jarvis, talks about how her life changed after her Ted Talk on vulnerability went viral, and how she needed to develop new skills for taking care of herself. Because she made a mistake: She read the comments on her video. And the lowest denominator didn’t disappoint: there were unkind comments about her weight, shaming comments about her poor children being stuck with her for a mother, critiques of how she spoke and what she shared. Those voices rattled her confidence and took up valuable brain space.
I definitely haven’t had a viral video. Yet. But I know the pain of letting the voices of shame and derision eat up the very valuable and limited brain space I have. Sometimes those voices are so loud, and sound so reasonable, I buy into their bullshit. Even if I don’t, fighting those voices also takes up energy and my brain space. It’s a losing situation all the way.
Brown found that those voices followed her when she went to start new work, and she needed a solution ASAP. Her answer was simple: she wrote down the 5 people she most cares about and who care deeply for her. They are the only ones who matter, and they support her in the best way possible. Including giving her hard feedback (in a loving way) when she needs it. She wrote them down on a post-it note and keeps it in her wallet. Whenever the critical voices (and the critics) come after her, she looks at her list and asks what those folks, and only those folks, would say about her work/what she’s doing.
It’s a simple solution. It doesn’t completely solve the problem, but it helps. Sometimes I tell myself to let the folks on the post-it argue with the voices. Which yeah, is all in my head anyway, but it gets more fun to listen to my team.
When I first did this, I couldn’t come up with 5 people. I had my kids on there (I counted them as 1 for now). My husband. And a friend. And…. I just stared at that orange post-it note. Some not so pleasant thoughts about my inability to form close relationships began to circle. Then I added one person I only knew online. That was 4. And then I had an inspiration from Barbara Sher‘s fantastic book Wishcraft (affiliate link): I added someone who I view as a mentor, even though I didn’t know him. Sher considers Einstein a mentor – she has pictures of him in his house, reads about him, keeps quotes of his accessible.
I chose Stephen King.
NEW YORK, NY – JUNE 03: Stephen King attends Meet the Creators at Apple Store Soho on June 3, 2013 in New York City. (Photo by Jim Spellman/WireImage)
Choosing Stephen King had an added bonus: If the voices got really loud, I could ask him to create a monster to send after them. That would often get me giggling, and that helped immensely.
Make your team up today. And don’t be afraid to add someone you don’t know, but consider a mentor. Come join me on Facebook and tell me who’s on your team!
If you enjoyed this – please share it!
More later,
dawn
Links to the earlier posts in this series: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.
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