How Shame Is Hindering Your Performance | Ep 273
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You're not weak for making mistakes. You're not bad for making mistakes. You're not a failure for making mistakes. You are only weakened if you allow them to define you and you allow yourself to beat yourself up.

What's up? Welcome back to Build, and today we are talking about beating yourself up. So today I want to talk about something that is near and dear to my heart because it is something that I used to be really good at and I actually think I have gotten much better at.

And it wasn't until I had an incident a couple days ago that I really realized how much progress I've made here. And I feel like it's a really important topic because it's something that I find myself coaching a lot of CEOs, a lot of portfolio companies, and a lot of my team on, especially those who are high performers who have a really high bar for themselves. And that's really around this concept of beating yourself up.

And so what I wrote down in my notes, beating yourself up isn't discipline, it's just dumb. And I really do think that this is probably one of the most important mindset shifts that I've ever made. So if you're listening to this and you're the kind of person who you think that being hard on yourself is why you succeeded, then I want you to think about this. When you beat yourself up, let's just think about it logically. You expend all of this energy

Telling yourself why you suck. Telling yourself why you did a bad job. Thinking about ruminating on how you could have done something better. What that does, right, is that time. It's time that you steal from yourself to create solutions. To learn from the mistake. To think about what to do better next time. To collaborate. To form a deeper connection with the person that maybe you messed up in front of. So when I made that comparison in my head, that's when I made the, oh, you know what?

it is logical and it makes way more sense to not beat myself up because I have a better shot at doing better next time. And so if you're listening to this and you like setting the bar high, you like being a high performer, you might actually find if you make this switch that

Beating yourself up doesn't make you better. It just makes you tired, exhausted, and feel like shit. And putting that energy into figuring a solution is actually the unlock to grow and evolve faster. And so I remember the first time that this concept kind of came to light for me, which was, I remember I was staying at my friend's house in Colorado, and we went to dinner,

And she could tell I was kind of down. She's like, what's up? And I was like, nothing. I'm just mad at myself because I got in my head about this thing and I could feel myself this anxiety spiral and like this thing happened at work and then I did this and then this. And she was like, when did that happen? And I was like, oh, well, it happened, you know, two days ago. She was like, wow, well, that's a waste of time.

And she said it's a matter of fact. And I was like, wait, what? What's a waste of time? She's like, well, beating yourself up. You could have taken all that time. You could have spent it on finding a solution and doing something better. And that's when it really clicked for me. And I realized that I had this false belief that beating myself up was something that helped me perform because I held myself to a high standard. But it's not holding myself to a high standard that's bad.

right? It's the beating myself up. And so it's like we miscorrelate what's leading to the success. The high standards can lead to success because you try and you aim higher,

Beating myself up for having missed those high standards only sets me back by days or weeks because I'm ruminating and I'm stealing my power and my confidence away from myself every time I beat myself further into that hole. And the reality is that nobody performs better when they feel exhausted and ashamed. And a lot of times we are our worst enemy. We're the ones making ourselves feel ashamed. We're beating ourselves up, telling ourselves why we suck.

Right. And I always do the, okay, well, what would I tell somebody I'm coaching? Right. If I were my own coach, I'm like, I would never speak to them that way. I would never beat them up. I would never do those things. And honestly, making that switch in my life has been one of the reasons my quality of life has gotten so much higher has been since I made this mental shift. And so I know so many of you that listen to my podcast.

You're high achieving, you're a high performer, you want to do well, not just in business, but probably in your personal life, in your fitness, in your family, as a mom, as a dad, whatever it might be. And I understand that. But the reality is this, high performers do not hate themselves into excellence. So most high performers or high achievers, whatever you want to call yourself, right, including myself at times, confuse self-discipline with self-punishment.

Meaning, you know, we mess up. Maybe it's on a diet. Maybe we skip a workout. Maybe it's like we fuck something up at work. And then we spend days beating ourselves up work mentally. But really what this is, is it's not productive. It is self-absorbed. Because what are you doing in that period of time when you're beating yourself up?

You are wasting time thinking about you and how bad you feel instead of how you can change to help others. See, the thing is, is that beating yourself up only succeeds in one thing, which is beating yourself up and feeling like shit. And so you don't become more productive. You become more fragile because you're creating this like emotional scar tissue where you need a performance muscle.

where you need resilience, where you need anti-fragility. And once I really understood this frame, which is that when we beat ourselves up, we're focused on ourselves. We're focused on us. We're being self-indulgent. And I know the moment that I realized that, I was like, oh,

like, oh, because that's the opposite of who I want to be. I want to be a great leader for my team. I want to be there for them. I want to inspire them to do better. I want to help them succeed in their careers. I want to help the CEOs, the entrepreneurs that follow me build their businesses. And every time I beat myself up, I remove myself from this frame of being there for others and serving others. And I go into this frame of self-indulgence. It's funny because we disguise it as, oh, well, if

if I beat the shit out of myself, I'm going to do better next time. But it doesn't actually do that, right? Because then what happens is we create this cycle of self-punishment where we fear messing up more because of how bad we feel after we mess up because we punish ourselves. And then we fear messing up even more, which usually leads to the mess ups because we spy on ourselves. We get more anxious, we get more stressed and we get on high alert. And so the cycle continues. And so the only way to break that cycle is

And to actually, ironically, make less mistakes and perform higher is to not punish yourself when you don't perform. And the truth is, most people don't want to hear this, but shame is not the same thing as accountability. Okay? So if we want to take accountability for the things that we've messed up on, the things that we've done wrong, then we're going to ask ourselves a couple questions. We're going to say, what happened? Right? Factually, what are the facts? Why did it happen? What caused this?

How do I prevent it next time? That's what a smart person does. That's what somebody intelligent and high performing is going to do. They're going to ask what happened. They're going to identify the root cause. And then they're going to say, okay, how do we do this next time? I think a lot of people in business, especially are really good at doing this for others. And they're really good at doing it in groups. But when it comes to an individual mistake or an individual error, we tend to not to take this approach. We tend to just say, I'm a piece of shit that sucks, right? And

and I need to do better. I should figure the fuck out, right? Whatever it might be that crosses our heads. And that really looks more like shame. Shame is, I suck. I always do this. I'll never get this right. I'm a failure. Now, if we take the frame of accountability, that's going to lead to us taking action. Now, if we take the frame of shame, that just leads to us feeling paralyzed. Like, even as I say those words out loud, I suck. I always do this. I'll never get it right. I feel like constricted.

I feel like I'm shrinking. I feel like the vision of myself gets smaller. But when I say, oh, what happened? Why did it happen? Okay, how do I prevent that next time?

I feel empowered. I feel like expansive. I feel like I am filling a room. I feel like it's a good thing, right? And so one of those is going to lead to you taking action so that you can get better and learn from this. And the other is going to lead to paralysis. So if you're serious about actually wanting to perform at a high level, you want to look at yourself like a scientist, right?

rather than a judge. Okay, that's the hat that you have to put on. You're a scientist about your own behavior, rather than a judge ruling, are you guilty? Are you not guilty? And so a scientist gathers the data, they make adjustments, and then they run the next test. That's it. And guys, I really am speaking from my own experience here. I look at my behavior like science. And I read a ton of behavior science, so that helps.

but looking at myself like a science experiment and my behavior like a science experiment has been one of the most freeing things I've ever done for myself. And

Seeing how much more I can do, how much better I perform when I don't beat myself up has been enough reinforcement to stop doing it forever. Because what I've seen is that it actually never helped me. It just set me back for days or weeks. It ruined relationships. It instilled less trust and confidence in me. It didn't really benefit me in any way. And so the way I see things now when I make a mistake is I'm like, well, I'm not a bad person. I just made a bad decision. Now I'll go fix it.

And I just go right into fixing mode. I'm like, all right, let's see. Why did I do this? Why did it happen? Oh yeah, I'm a fucking goofball. Did that one. I've done that. And even guys, sometimes I make the same mistake and I'm like, ah, fuck, did it again. But like, I just don't take it that fucking seriously anymore. And I think that's so helpful for so many people that you just take it way too seriously. You take a small mistake that is reversible and that won't matter in a year and you make it mean something horrible about yourself. That is not fun.

Now, I know what you're thinking, which is a lot of people think that if we want to be relentless, if we want to be persistent, it means that we have to be hard on ourselves. Now, my opinion is that being relentless, being persistent,

That means that we keep going. It doesn't mean that we punish ourselves. And so I look at it like this. The best, the most persistent, the most relentless, they get over things faster. They don't wallow. They don't spiral. They just move on. So if you want to be the best, if you want to be elite, you actually have to do the opposite of what you've been doing. You have to stop wasting energy on this

emotional indulgence whenever you make a mistake, because that's fuel that you could be using to fix the next problem or to hit your next rep, to go to the next level. And you're distracting yourself with what happened yesterday. The reality is that success doesn't require more suffering. It requires more action. But we conflate the two. I think we have a culture that sometimes idolizes suffering. And it's a very thin line that I have to tell because people see what I do and they think,

oh gosh, is she glorifying the suffering? And I'm like, no, I'm actually trying to be fucking realistic about it. I do all the mental self-care in the world. I try very hard to take care of my mentality. I think anyone who's close to me, ask them how much time I spend on developing, growing, and investing in myself. It is a lot, but that doesn't mean things are easy. It just means that I don't have to make them even harder by how I talk to my fucking self. So let's break this down like a business problem.

Okay. Every time you bully yourself or you beat yourself up, what happens? Your energy goes down. Your decision-making gets emotional. Your consistency tanks. You don't show up the same. And your confidence erodes because you've done all these things. And now you've got a compounding problem. Not only did you mess up once, but

You're less equipped to recover from it. And now you've taken a practical problem, you made a mistake, and you've escalated it into an emotional disturbance. You are now in a mood for days on end. This is how people spiral. Not because of the mistake. Not because it was too big. But because you made it personal. You made it about you instead of what you did. You made it mean something about yourself that it didn't need to mean. And so I want you to instead

Take the scientific approach. You're a scientist. You're not a judge. And use this framework when you screw up. It's the same framework I still use. Okay. One, acknowledge it. Own the fucking mistake. Don't deflect it. But don't like over acknowledge it either. Right? Like, it's me. Of course it's me. It's not anyone else's fault. Nothing else contributed. No. Own the mistake. Hey, here's where I played a role in that.

And don't try and deflect when other people take accountability. Let them take their own accountability too. Mistakes are seldom a one-person job. Okay, so you want to acknowledge it. Own the mistake. Don't deflect it. Don't overindulge. Second, you want to analyze it. What system failed? What expectation was unrealistic? Have you done or used the same system before? And did it work in 9 out of 10 cases? If it works in 9 out of 10, then it just happened to be 1 out of 10. Do you really need to do anything different?

I can't tell you how many times I go to this next question and then I say, you know what? That fucking system's worked for me most of the time. So like, I don't think I'd do anything differently. You know? For hiring, for example, it's like...

My system's pretty dialed. But every once in a while, I let a bad egg in. I let a, you know, bad kid on the bus. And then I'm like, ah, fuck. I don't go, like, rebuild my whole system. I'm like, okay, well, it's not perfect. There's always a flaw. Can I get better? Sure, maybe I can do this one thing. But you know what? This is just the 10%. The third is we want to adjust it, okay? So we want to see, do we need to put something in place to avoid repeating this? Can we?

Do that in a way that is low cost, high reward. And then the fourth piece, and arguably the most important, advance. Move the fuck on. Detach from the situation and get back to work. That, number four, is leadership of the self.

And that is how you earn your own self-respect, by moving on from your mistakes rather than indulging and beating yourself up for them. I promise you, you do not build your confidence and you certainly don't build your competency by beating yourself into an emotional pit. The reality is this, you're not weak for making mistakes. You're not bad for making mistakes. You're not a failure for making mistakes. You are only weakened if you allow them to define you and you allow yourself to beat yourself

up. And that is because you're not strong because you suffer. You are strong because you recover fast. It's important to understand the difference. So stop treating yourself like the enemy, okay? Stop treating yourself like you would treat somebody you hated, like you would treat somebody you're trying to destroy. And if you're done letting guilt run your life, good. Me too.

Let's get back to fucking work. If this podcast helped you or it resonated with you and you have a friend who is bullying themselves, please send this to them. There are too many people in this world who are amazing. They have so many talents and so many gifts and so many things that they provide this world and they beat the shit out of themselves on a daily basis. And I hope that you are not one of them and your friends aren't either.