Other people’s judgment

Music (00:00:00) – She’s dreaming, she’s drifting. Never been so wide awake. Captured in the moment by the beauty all around her. There’s nowhere else that she would rather be.

Koren (00:00:19) – Hello and welcome. This is Koren Motekaitis. And you’re listening to How She Really Does It, the place where inspiration and possibility meet. One of the biggest issues that clients bring to coaching sessions. I would think pretty much I can count on it every week and it’s other people’s judgments. This can be in the workplace. Often it is, whether it’s the boss, a colleague, somebody that you may be working with. Right. Other people’s judgments. This can be with family. Your own family that you’re living with in the household could be your family of origin. It could be your extended family. It could be your in-laws. This issue doesn’t come up as much, But from time to time, the issue with friends and judgment and this can be in community, right, in your community, whatever that may be.

Koren (00:01:14) – Maybe it’s your church, maybe it’s your kid’s school, maybe it’s the sports that you guys are involved with or theater recreational activities. So often my client solutions and remember, they’re intelligent people, just like you. I need to say that because when I start talking about my clients, it can be intimidating because of the stories that you may perceive of like, Oh, well, that’s not me, that’s who I work with. The one thing I know for sure is, because I work with people in a wide variety of industries, which I really appreciate because I get to see the human behavior. It’s not just industry specific. And oftentimes I talk about AquaMonster stuff here because it’s the same thing. What can happen in the arena of a swim meet or a youth swim team or community based swim team is the same thing that happens in Fortune 100 companies. So there’s a lot of similarities because guess what? The common element is that we are humans going through this human experience. So the solution, often with this idea of judgment of others that my clients will do before coaching is to hear the simple solutions.

Koren (00:02:28) – Leave the situation right, quit the job, kick out the friend from your friend group, or stop being friends with them and ghost them and ignore them. Never tell them why. Maybe judge them back. That’s another one. We like to leave the situation, right? We run away, which is one of the shame shields. So judgment is rooted in shame. I like to say that shame is the soil. It’s the toxic soil. And then you’ve got this tree that’s growing and it’s working really hard. It’s growing. It’s not thriving because the soil is toxic, but it can still grow and judgment is part of that tree. It’s those branches of the tree and it doesn’t feel good to receive it. It doesn’t feel good to actually be judgmental. And I’m talking as someone who works on unlearning judgment, on taking that judgment armor off because it actually creates the disconnection versus the connection that I so desire. So the solution often is I’m going to leave this situation. But here’s the thing. You can quit the job and how many times have you quit a job and then shown up and eventually that same issue, that same judgmental person showed up in your office but had a different name or a face or it can be the same friends.

Koren (00:03:48) – You get rid of that friend and then you move on and eventually that same judgmental friend shows back up, right? The players continue to be the same because there are teachers. They’re here to help us learn how not to take on other people’s judgments. So before coaching, right, my client’s solution and they’ll bring it to me, they’ll say, that’s it, I’m done. I’m quitting my job, I’m leaving this. I’m never going to talk to this friend again. They’ll leave the situation. I’m quitting that sport or I’m not going to let my kids participate in that because they’re so afraid of that judgment. So that’s one solution. The other solution they may have is working really, really hard to get the person who’s judging you to change their behavior. And this is what I call the script, the script we have for other people, right. Where you’re the director, you’re the writer, you’re the producer. They don’t know that you’ve cast them in your production and they’re failing at following your script because it’s really an invisible script that we have.

Koren (00:04:50) – Right? So my question to you right now is think about a time in your life when you are working to get them to change their behavior. How does that work for you? And it often doesn’t. I have lots of scripts, and one of the things is that as I’ve let go of these scripts, as I’ve fired myself and resigned from being the director, writer, producer, I’ve actually been much happier in my own life. Right? Because it doesn’t work to have invisible scripts where we’re constantly trying to get people to do what we want. And then the other thing is to go back to you. Do you like when others have invisible scripts for you? I don’t. I don’t like when others have. Here’s what you’re supposed to do, but they don’t share with me what I’m supposed to do. And then I fall down and it’s like, well, see, you’re not supposed to do this. It was never clear. Remember clear is kind. Unclear is unkind. And that’s why these invisible scripts are unkind.

Koren (00:05:47) – If it’s really important to you, be really clear about it. You can ask for what you want. We just can’t get other people to change their behavior. So trying to get them to stop judging you and you think you can change their behavior, that’s going to leave a lot of pain and suffering. Which then leads to the third solution that we do before coaching, which is believing this shouldn’t be happening to you, right? Complaining about it and complaining about it in a way where you’re spending lots of time and energy talking about it, thinking it should be different. And again, I’ve been there and I can do this. And sometimes we need to like it’s stuck inside of us because we’re trying to process and get clear of what’s okay and what’s not and being able to give ourselves permission that actually I’m not okay with this and not thinking we’re too much if we’re not okay with something. But really, we need to let go of this believing that this shouldn’t be happening. Because here’s the thing.

Koren (00:06:46) – It’s happening any time we argue with reality, we lose. We lose 100% of the time it’s happening. One of my favorite examples of this is we’re going into a really hot spell this weekend, and people for the last week have been talking about like, oh, it’s going to be 100, it’s going to be 107. This is going to be horrible. It is what it is. So what do we choose to do with it? And yes, we will be at a swim meet when it’s 106 or 107. Hopefully the meet goes smoothly and easily. I will not be wearing black outside because that’s what I can control. I will have my hat. I will have my sun pieces for my arms, right. And I’ll make sure I have lots of water. That’s what I can control because I already chose to have this commitment of going to meet. And so when we argue with reality, it just creates a lot of extra pain. Martha Beck calls it dirty pain. We have the clean pain of the experience and then we have the dirty pain.

Koren (00:07:42) – When we start to argue that it shouldn’t be happening. The same thing can be said about somebody who’s judging you. People are going to judge you when you think they shouldn’t be judging you. That is arguing with reality and that is creating additional dirty pain instead of being able to allow this to be a teacher for you and not a teacher, that you need to work harder or be better. But I’ll talk about it later in this podcast of what insight you can take from that. Now, before we go into a real solution, we must look at what is the root of what is going on, why is this other person judging us? And here’s the thing. Our go to is they’re judging us because there’s something wrong with me. I am bad, right? Like judgment is a shame trigger. And it’s not that they’re purposely necessarily trying to shame you. Let’s be clear about that. They’re judging you. They may not even realize that it’s rooted in shame and they may not even realize it is shame if people that aren’t aware of the work of Brené Brown, they may not even have that vocabulary.

Koren (00:08:47) – And I remember prior to being trained in this work and being aware of this work, the last word I ever wanted to speak with shame. I had banished that from my vocabulary because growing up I would hear “shame on you.” And that was such a horrible sensation. Like to have somebody tell me that, somebody I love, tell me that. And then that feeling inside. And I didn’t know what it was. And I was like, This is horrible and I’m just going to run away from it because I’m really good at that. So they may not even be aware that they are potentially shaming you, and it’s probably not. Their intention. They’re judging you. Most likely because what they want to have happen isn’t happening, and that’s a way of trying to control. So they may not be trying to shame you intentionally. Know that as well as now. What is our part? Because here’s the thing. The biggest shame trigger that we all have is how we want to be perceived and how we don’t want to be perceived.

Koren (00:09:48) – So, for instance, maybe being intelligent was a huge family value in growing up in your household and you want to be intelligent, or maybe you live in a community like I do, where most everybody has a D at the end of their name, a PhD, an MD or a JD. Right? There’s a lot of people that it’s a very highly educated community. I live in a university town next to the state capital, hence a lot of lawyers, a lot of government officials, right? And what we’ve done is we’ve worked really hard at learning more because that was part of the cultural programming. If you have more letters at the end of the name, that will mean that you’re intelligent, right? I kind of laugh about that because I don’t totally believe in that. But being intelligent can be a real big way that a lot of people want to be perceived. Definitely with my clients, intelligence is a really important value for them, so they want to be perceived as intelligent. They don’t want to be perceived as being dumb, not knowing, not intelligent.

Koren (00:10:54) – So if they have a colleague or a boss or somebody in their company that questions their intelligence, that can take them down, and then they come to me and they’re like, Koren, can you believe so-and-so said this, blah, blah, blah. Right. This happens all the time because how we want to be perceived and how we don’t want to be perceived are our shame triggers. Whether you know them or not, somebody else may be able to sniff it out. And that might be why they’re poking your button with judgment. How we want to be perceived, how we don’t want to be perceived. Take inventory of that. The other example would be doing good work, right? Like you want to be perceived as somebody who does good work in the world, in your company, in your field, right. For your profession that you do good work. How you don’t want to be perceived as being outdated or irrelevant. Irrelevant is how shame shows up in the workplace, right? People don’t go walking around like, oh, I feel shame in the workplace.

Koren (00:11:55) – They’re really afraid of at some point being irrelevant in this typically happens in their 50s. It depends on their gender, it depends on their title. And I can tell you this, it doesn’t matter how high up they are because I work with some people that are very, very high up. This happens in an athlete’s cycle, right? We watch professional athletes all the time. And, you know, they’re the up and comer. They’re the up and comer and then they’re the top dog. And then everybody tries to take him down. And then are they eventually going to be too old and irrelevant for their sport? It’s the cycle that we all see that irrelevance is a huge shame trigger another way of how we want to be perceived and don’t want to be perceived as we want to be perceived as smart enough for the work. We don’t want to be perceived as not being intelligent or not knowing. So, so often my clients are like, Well, I don’t know how to do this, or I don’t know what the answer is.

Koren (00:12:48) – And I often remind them knowing isn’t where the value is because Google is free. We type a question into Google, we get information back. The value comes from being able to figure it out. It comes from being able to to tragically think to being willing to fail, to being able to figure it out. Smart enough is not. Even though we’ve been culturally programmed, we think being smart is getting the A on the test. Being smart is being able to figure things out, being able to learn, being able to understand. Right. Being able to possibly see things that are often invisible. To so many others. Okay. Another way is being the expert in the company, right? Wanting to be perceived as the expert? Again, that’s another way of saying I’m relevant. I really know my stuff. Not wanting to be perceived as not having the expertise, not being smart enough, not being worthy of this title, the salary, this cost. Another perception trigger is wanting to be perceived as successful.

Koren (00:13:54) – And you think about social media and highlight reels and awards and LinkedIn does it right. Or in the 2008 mortgage home lending crisis where people were buying McMansions but didn’t have the money to really back it up, being perceived as successful. And then, you know, my thing is, seriously, what does that really mean? What does success look like? And that’s something that I work with my clients on getting clear of What does success look like for them? Because it’s really easy to get into this. Well, this is what success looks like because I need to do what other people are doing because we don’t want to be judged. But it may not be what you want. So we want to be perceived as being successful and we don’t want to be perceived as being a failure because then this won’t be possible for us. Even though on this show I’ve had hundreds of guests come on and talk about their falling down moments, talk about their failures. Right. And these are people who are thought leaders who are very successful, business people who are their New York Times best selling authors.

Koren (00:15:00) – They’re leaders in industry and they failed. But we allowed them that space. But we have so much shame about it in our own space. Other areas are being a good mom, right? Like wanting. I mean, I want to be a good mom and I don’t want to be a horrible mom or a bad mom. And that can be a shame. Trigger How do other people perceive you and your parenting, right? How do your kids perceive you and your parenting? The other one is having good kids versus being that parent that Oh, she. Yeah, you know, Koren, she has those kids. They’re really bad. They’re really difficult. Right. That nobody wants to be perceived that way. Body shame. Right? Body shame can be huge, like having wanting to be perceived as skinny, fit, young, beautiful, whatever the terminology is, and not wanting to be perceived as fat or out of shape or old, or wanting to be perceived as independent. Right? Or for some it’s like not wanting to be perceived as selfish because you choose to not have children, right? So there’s so much in there and think about for you, like, how do you want to be perceived and how do you not? Because when you can identify that, it gets really simple.

Koren (00:16:17) – Like you start to understand when you can get triggered. One of the things I often say and you can use this is that I’ll say to them, well, you know, I think you should bleach your hair platinum blonde. And they often looked at me very perplexed. And I’m like, Well, that’s a judgment. I’ve told you what I think you should do. And they’re often bewildered. So like, why are you talking about me bleaching my hair, making it platinum blonde, or like, I had a client this week. She’s like, I’ve done that already. It didn’t look good. It’s not for me. Right? So I have a judgment, but because it’s not a trigger for them, it doesn’t take them down. That’s why taking inventory on how you want to be perceived and how you don’t. And getting really clear of when you do want to be perceived as intelligent, doing good work, smart enough, the expert right? Being successful, being a good mom, you know, being a great wife, being a best friend to yourself, what does that mean? What does that look like? And get really clear, because it’s really easy to take what other people or what you think other people are doing and put that on you.

Koren (00:17:23) – And you may not even want that, right. And then you’re not living in your own authenticity. So all of this what happens is on this perception, it triggers and it goes into like we start with it taps into our own limiting belief about ourselves, which is often some sort of, I’m not good enough, I’m irrelevant, I’m not worthy, I’m a bad, you know, fill in the blank. A bad mom, a bad husband, a bad leader. Right. Whatever it may be. And that becomes the downward shame spiral. And often we spend so much time in other people’s brains imagining what they are thinking, and we’re trying to prove them wrong in that we’re thinking about this in their brain and we’re in their brain and we have no idea what reality is. We’re trying to prove them wrong. We’re trying to get them to see things more clearly about ourselves. We’re trying to learn more, to be better, to finally be good enough and relevant. Sound familiar? And this is why, my friend, you’re exhausted.

Koren (00:18:33) – Because this is a never ending journey. And frankly, it doesn’t work. Trying to get somebody to see and not judge you in trying to be who they want you to be. Cultural programming. I get it. Cultural programming has taught us the solution is to figure out what one needs the person to see, if it’s a person in power, what they need for us to get approval from them, and then to start doing it. And it may work right. It’s worked for many of us. But the other side, the problem is, is that our insides know it’s not authentically ourselves. And we’ve also been culturally programmed to think that people pleasing is a good thing. Like, Oh, you should be nice. And especially if you’re a female, right? There’s been a lot of cultural programming. We’re supposed to be nice, we’re supposed to be perfect, Don’t be too much. And then you can be accepted and you’ll be safe and be people pleasing. Isn’t that nice to be people pleasing? That’s being really respectful.

Koren (00:19:29) – But here’s the thing. It’s really approval whoring. You’re selling yourself out for other people’s approval of you. And that’s why I’ve stuck with that phrase approval whoring. Because people pleasing is a little seductive for me. I’m like, oh, well, isn’t that what I’m supposed to do? Please other people. That’s a good thing. But I don’t want to be a person that sells myself out to others. And that’s what happens when we’re trying to get others to stop judging us. We can either fight them down and that’s exhausting, or we can approval whore ourselves to try to get it. But the thing is, it doesn’t work. So you’re like, okay, Koren, hiding away doesn’t work. People pleasing doesn’t work, or approval whoring doesn’t work. Fighting them doesn’t work. What works? I don’t know if you’re going to like this. It’s about letting people judge you. They’re going to do it. What can you do about it? They’re going to do it. We have no control over what they do.

Koren (00:20:28) – All we have control over. Am I living in my own authenticity? Am I living in my own integrity? Am I living according to the values and my following through on what I say I’m going to do right? Am I in my own congruence? Am I in my own alignment? That’s what we have control over. Doesn’t mean we’re perfect, doesn’t mean we’re better than them. And they’re weaker than us, right? Am I living in my truth? That’s what we can do. And allow for ourselves to be imperfect. Allow for ourselves to say the incorrect thing or make a mistake. We can always circle back, right? We can always learn. We can grow. That’s the point of it is for us to learn and to grow as well as to have our own back and be our own best friend through our life and love ourselves. So the solution, when other people are judging you, let them judge you. Right? Because really, do we have a choice? We can approval whore, but they’re probably still going to judge you because they’re like, Oh, that works now I can control them further.

Koren (00:21:33) – We can fight them. And that’s exhausting. We can run away and hide and quit the job, quit the friendship, quit the relationship. And there you go. There’s another person there. Letting people judge us as part of the teacher because then we get to have our own integrity, our own agency, and we get to check in with what is true and what is not true about us. What can we learn that maybe we can improve on, and how do we want to live this one precious life of ours? Our insides desire our own authenticity and through life we lose it, right? We have it when we’re first born. And then that slowly that essential self gets pushed down and we become the socialized version of who we’re supposed to be, to be safe, to fit in. But when we choose to fit in, we lose our own belonging to ourselves as well as finding our belonging with our own community. But we have to be able to belong to ourselves. And here’s the thing. Fitting in gets in the way of what we really desire, which is we want to matter for who we are.

Koren (00:22:39) – And it’s our lifelong struggle as we will find areas in our life where we get triggered by other people’s judgments. Here’s an example. Maybe you’re a doctor and other people’s perceptions of you when you’re in your doctor arena is not an issue. You go about your job. You do what you need to do. You don’t worry about how your hair looks or if you’re in scrubs, you’re in your zone of genius, and then you go to your kid’s school. And then there’s the judgment of how dare you work and not be at home with your child, or you go to your kid’s sporting event and they choose to rebel and not warm up for their swim meet. And then you feel shame about that because your child is being disruptive. And maybe that’s a reflection of your parenting, right? But so in your doctor arena, you’re fine. But then when you go into that parenting arena, it’s a shit show for you because there’s all the shame that comes up because of how you’re worried about how you’re being perceived.

Koren (00:23:39) – Or maybe you’re a lawyer and you are fine in the business arenas that you’re in and in that conference room and tell that one day that a lawyer shows up with the fancy school diploma and others in the room are fawning all over them because of that. And you went to a state school and you’re not feeling very good, even though your work is solid and it’s great quality work, your clients love it, but everybody’s fawning over the branding of the fancy school, and that can trigger inside of you of how you want to be perceived and how you don’t want to be perceived. Right? So here’s the thing. We can’t change other people’s behaviors or thoughts about us. What we can do is the internal work so that other people’s judgments don’t trigger us or take us down. And when someone throws judgment our way. And we notice that we are triggered. Our own perception narrows. And what often happens is we become defensive and we are focused inward on ourselves and we start to look at ourselves through this scarcity shameful lens.

Koren (00:24:59) – And we nitpick ourselves. Right? I often say it’s death by a thousand paper cuts, right? Because we’re just looking at all of our flaws and our imperfections and beating ourselves down and judging ourselves about that. One thing that we said eight years ago and how it’s so horrible, people may or may not have remembered it, but we remember it because we have so much shame around it. Here’s the thing. When someone judges you. Remember, they are rooted in shame. Judgment is rooted in shame. We forget to look at the source, right? Often their judgment is based on their own past history. Right. An area where they have shame themselves are prone to shame themselves or an area they are not confident in their own life. So I’m going to go back to this. This is really, really important. When someone judges you, they are rooted in shame. Shame loves shame. It’s like mold. It festers and grows. It doesn’t come out of nowhere, it comes out of darkness.

Koren (00:26:03) – So when somebody’s judging you, it’s based on one, their own past history. Something happened in their history and they didn’t like it. And so there’s judgment. The other is that they’re prone to shame in that area themselves. And so they’re judging you. Or the third one is they are not confident in that own area. We’ll go back to that simple example of platinum hair. When I give that example, my clients are bewildered.

Koren (00:26:32) – They’re like, What are you talking about, Koren? Like, why would I do that? That’s not going to happen. It would fry my hair. It doesn’t look good on me. I like my hair color. Like they’re always bewildered. They’re not attached to it. And it’s such a great example because when you get really clear about what’s important to you and your values and your priorities and then somebody judges you, it just slides off because you’re bewildered. Like, why would you say that? Why is that important to you? Right? And you don’t take it on.

Koren (00:27:03) – We don’t become emotionally entangled in somebody else’s shame because remember, shame is highly contagious. And when my clients get emotionally entangled in someone else’s judgment, to them it is a shit show. They come in to session, they’ll be hot. Very hot. And the problem with that is when you’re in that angry space, you become perceptually blind. You can’t strategically figure things out. I’m not saying that you shut down those emotions. It’s really important to process them, feel the rage, especially if you’ve been that good girl who’s never allowed yourself to be mad. It’s important too.

Koren (00:27:44) – Do that usually with a coach so you have a safe, confidential place where you can be really messy and raw. The confidentiality of a coach is so, so valuable, right? Where you get to just show up and purge all of that and where somebody has the tools to help you process it. So here’s the thing, and this is from Barbara Fredrickson, who’s a positive psychologist. And one of the things that her research has shown is your awareness narrows with negative emotions and broadens with positive ones.

Koren (00:28:12) – It’s when feeling good that you’re best equipped to see holistically and come up with creative and practical solutions to the problems you and others are facing. So when you are in anger, when you’re in shame, that is not when you’re going to come up with solutions or great strategies. So it’s okay when you’re angry or you’re upset that somebody judged you. There’s a learning in there. Be angry, be upset. You just have to have a safe container. Maybe it’s a journal that you’re writing in. What we tend to do is we work our shit out on other people. And you know that because this is what’s happening to you. When somebody else is judging you, they’re working their shit out on you. So this is why a journal, a safe place, a coach, right? Some someplace where you can go and you can process this and get it out so it’s not in your head. So often when I’m in my head and I’m just sitting there figuring out it’s a huge spiral, you all.

Koren (00:29:08) – And I’m a coach, right? So I have to get it out. I’m a verbal processor. I write and I learn. I have a coach, right? I need those safe places to work things out to understand because the stuff that we’re talking about is the invisible stuff that we cannot see. And there’s words that are attached to it, but there’s so much invisible that we can’t see. And we’re still so young in our learning about emotional language and intelligence and connecting with our bodies. When other people judge you, it can trigger your own shame. They’re not coming to you to shame you. But judgment is rooted in shame, and shame is highly contagious. They judge you and you go internal or you defend, right? You either go internal and you defend and you’re not even looking at why they are judging you? What can we learn and relearn and continue to learn some more. People will judge because it’s their own self protection. Remember when I said one of the reasons people judge is because of something that happened in their past history.

Koren (00:30:17) – They’re going to judge you because maybe something happened in their life and that wasn’t safe. And so they have this armor and they’re just thinking that this is what’s happening with other people. Or they may judge you like if somebody judging you that you’re a bad mom because your kids are X, they may be so worried about what’s going on in their home, even though it may look on the outside really great. So there’s nothing we can do to make other people think differently about us. Let them think if they’re going to judge you and think poorly of you, they’re going to have to live with that. Like there’s a cost. Think about it when you judge other people and like, Well, I don’t like them. It doesn’t feel good, right? When I used to pitch a tent and build a campfire and sit there and story fondle and judge, I would wipe out the people around me. And I was constantly like, how do I keep them? How do I keep them? And those verbally vomiting.

Koren (00:31:11) – And I invited these friends and they would listen and they didn’t have the skills to help me move through. So it was a really good story for another and it was judging and I was judging. I didn’t feel better. In fact, I was exhausted and I felt worse. So if somebody is going to judge you, there is a cost to them. They’re not winning. If you’re thinking they’re winning and you’re losing, that’s not the case. But if you get in this battle of a zero sum game with them, you’re both going to lose. So what we can do is we can manage ourselves, our mindsets connect with our emotions instead of choosing, because we do choose whether it’s unconsciously or not, to let them live rent free in our brains. And that happens, right? Like, I can do that as well. And I’ve gotten much better at practicing, like not letting them be squatters in my own brain for free. Right. Like, people have access to my brain and they do pay me to have access to my brain.

Koren (00:32:07) – Why would I love people who judge me, have access to my brain for free? Right. Your brain juice is a precious resource that you have. We don’t need to let people live there as squatters rent free. So it’s time to let go of what other people think about you. They’re going to judge you. They’re going to think about it. There’s not a whole lot you can do. Your only thing is to take inventory. Are you authentically being you? Are you living in your life? What may be your part? Right? What may be misunderstood? What may be that you may not see that would not be out of alignment with your values? Wouldn’t it be selling yourself out that maybe you can clarify right, or circle back to or improve the way you communicate? Right. And so that’s some of the stuff that we work on. And I continue to learn this too. How do we communicate more effectively? How do we talk about the hard things? How do we show up with different emotions, right? Instead of showing up with fear or armor, like how do we show up and be vulnerable? It all takes practice.

Koren (00:33:13) – Those are things that we can improve so that we can work on connection. But if you’re judging me and I’m judging you, we’re not going to really resolve any of this, not, oh, I need to say this so that they approve of me. So yes, it’s time to let go of what other people think. And I get it. That’s easier said than done, right? Like, Oh, okay. Koren said, let go of what other people think. It’s like when Carol Dweck said to me, Well, can you just change your thought? And I’m like, But how do you do that? Like, now I know how to work on mindset and and the thoughts that we tell ourselves and reframing and all of that. Very simple to say, very complicated, to integrate and execute. It’s like teaching, swimming, learning how to swim. Swimming’s a beautiful sport to watch when people can see somebody swim. It’s really beautiful and it’s a challenge to get going and execute.

Koren (00:34:01) – But here’s the thing with practice and coaching, it’s transformational. And then at one point swimming 66 laps, which is a mile, is the warm up instead of the dreaded event. And that takes practice and coaching, right? So if we can learn how to swim, then at some point, you know, a child eventually learns how to swim 66 laps by the time they’re in high school as a warmup is not a hard thing. If that’s possible for them, it is possible for you to learn to let go of what other people think. Because here’s the thing you can’t control what other people think. You can try to do what they want and sell yourself out by being an approval whore. But at some point burnout will set in and possibly rage. You can let go of what people think. And here’s the thing. It’s a bonus because it’s actually fantastic when people do share their judgments with you because they’re giving you access to their mindset and you have a better understanding about them, right? So here’s an example.

Koren (00:35:15) – If they judge other people’s bodies. What do you think they say to themselves? Right if they judge people’s intelligence. What do you think they think about their own intelligence? If they judge people’s parenting. What do you think they think about their own? If they judge people’s management. What do you think they think about their own management skills or what experience do they have in their own life and their own profession that had them put up so much armor? It gives you so much insight and I get it. It’s really hard when you’re in the line of fire. And when my clients come to me, I’m in the compassion seats. I’m not in the weeds with them, and I can see it so much clearly. And that’s why we’re not supposed to go it alone, my friend. Right. It’s so hard to see when we’re down there on the weeds going in the day in and day out. And we can have a coach they can see and they can help us put it together. It’s no different than in athletics.

Koren (00:36:20) – The athletes down in the arena, you know, they’re playing their game, they’re swimming the race, they’re running the race. And then afterwards they go to their coach to unpack what worked well, what can be improved? Getting information from the athlete of What was your experience like getting information from the coach? This is what I saw working together to figure out, depending on what level of athlete they are working together on what’s the plan for the next competition or for the long term goal. That’s the beauty of working with other people. And yes, we can do this with spouses, we can do this with friends. Sometimes it’s really hard with a spouse because and especially like I think about one of the reasons parents don’t like to coach their own kids or teach their own kids how to swim. Like, I have a lot of former swimmers who are parents, and the last thing they want to do is teach their kids how to swim, partly because they’re so busy managing so many other aspects of their life and they don’t want to do that one.

Koren (00:37:16) – And part of it is their own vulnerabilities come up, right? All of their own limitations. If it’s a story of like, well, good things don’t happen to us, they can carry that limiting belief into that relationship. So sometimes our spouses who can be our greatest supporters can also be our greatest blockers. So that’s why oftentimes in athletics, not all the time. My kids swam for us. Right. But oftentimes it’s nice to have somebody else that won’t get emotionally entangled in your fear and in your shame. As I close up today’s show, what I’ve come to learn is that people hold a lot back because it’s really vulnerable to share what we think and what we feel. And so oftentimes they’re not going to tell you directly. And this is one of the biggest problems in workplaces is people won’t give feedback to help people grow and flourish. For my clients that are doing this, it’s so cool. Their employees are turning around because my clients are willing, not all of them, right, But the ones that are getting in and and doing this, they’re giving feedback and providing clarity.

Koren (00:38:21) – And the people they manage and lead are turning around because they have an understanding instead of having all the shame. Right? So we don’t know how to communicate, but then how it seeps out is in judgment from others. So maybe the people that are giving you judgment, they may not have the skill sets to give you feedback or to share with you the vulnerabilities of how they see the world. But that’s where the beauty is in When people do judge you and you don’t get emotionally entangled is that you can gather so much insight into someone else. If you can stop being defensive and listen and see. So, my friend, my invitation for you is to let go of what other people think because you can’t change it. Stop taking on other people’s judgments and trying to change them. You get into that shame tango with them where you’re constantly intertwined and shame is going to win. It’s going to take you down. It’s exhausting. The judgment is about them and then go in and do your own inventory of what is true about you, what may be true, what may be not true.

Koren (00:39:35) – What can you learn from this? How can you grow? Continuously learning to love yourself. It doesn’t mean like, I’m fantastic. They’re idiots. I don’t know what they’re talking about. That’s what I’m talking about saying. Like, here’s what I know is true for me and here’s where I can learn to grow. And. Let go of other people’s judgments. All right. I’m smiling big for you. Hey, if you enjoy listening to this podcast, you’ll love my weekly emails. I know you’re thinking Koren. Really? Do I want another email in my overflowing inbox? Yes, you do. Yippee, Skippy, you do. These are short. They’re sweet. On Fridays, I send out the Friday podcast. It’s a great reminder that there’s a new show and it comes straight into your inbox of the latest episode. Awesome. You click on it, you go straight because we all need reminders. We have busy, full lives. And then on Sundays I have my Sunday Love column and these are emails I write from the heart.

Koren (00:40:39) – They’re filled with love. We need more love. We all do, myself included. These are short emails where you get a quick take away so you can incorporate this into your life because people often want to know what to do and how to do it. And maybe sometimes it’s a story that you get. Or there’s like one time I wrote about the ten Ways to Practice Gratitude, and that became such a great tool when one of the readers was struggling in the middle of the night, because it can be a scary place in our brains in the middle of the night. And she remembered the email that I sent about ten ways to practice gratitude, and she was able to practice gratitude and fall back asleep. And that was an awesome lesson for her to incorporate into her life. Go to the show notes and there’s a link in the show notes where you can sign up and get these emails in your box on the link.

Music (00:41:35) – She’s dreaming, she’s drifting. Never been so wide awake. Captured in the moment by the beauty all around her. There’s nowhere else than she would rather be.