Speaker 1: What's your relationship like with failure.
Speaker 2: I mean, I know lots of people talk about being
Speaker 2: good with it and seeing it as an opportunity to learn.
Speaker 1: From you know, etc. Etc. But really, if we're.
Speaker 2: Being honest, failure kind of sucks and most people are
Speaker 2: not that great at dealing with it. So today's show
Speaker 2: is a bit more personal than the average How I
Speaker 2: Work episode, and I want to share some of my
Speaker 2: failures with you. But there's a reason why I want
Speaker 2: to do this, and I also have a personal challenge
Speaker 2: for you. My name is doctor Ramantha Imber. I'm an
Speaker 2: organizational psychologist and the founder of behavioral science consultancy Inventium,
Speaker 2: and this is How I Work.
Speaker 1: A show about how to help you do your best work.
Speaker 2: A few years ago, my team at Inventium completed a
Speaker 2: strength Finder assessment. I expected my report to tell me
Speaker 2: that my top strength was something like time optimization, as
Speaker 2: a similar test had revealed many years ago, or creativity
Speaker 2: or some other skill that I utilize every day. But no,
Speaker 2: Apparently my number one strength was competitiveness. Although this would
Speaker 2: come as no surprise to anyone that's played Settlers of
Speaker 2: Katan against me. My first memories of being competitive are
Speaker 2: from primary school. But in addition to being competitive, I
Speaker 2: was also a perfectionist. If an essay came back with
Speaker 2: an AID, I would feel disappointed that the plus was missing,
Speaker 2: And if I wasn't the first to finish a maths quiz,
Speaker 2: I would question my numerical ability, and if I didn't
Speaker 2: top the class in all academic assignments, I would feel
Speaker 2: like a failure. In primary school, Bonnie Smart was my
Speaker 2: arch nemesis, and she lived up to her name. I
Speaker 2: felt like we were the only two people who existed
Speaker 2: in our class, and whenever she beat me, I felt devastated.
Speaker 2: The mix of perfectionism and competitiveness can be a winning
Speaker 2: combination for career progression, not to mention getting good grades
Speaker 2: at school, it's not great for dealing with failure and setbacks.
Speaker 2: Growing up, I prided myself on winning and being successful.
Speaker 2: Failure was not part of my self identity. I was
Speaker 2: used to succeeding at anything that I put my mind to,
Speaker 2: which of course means that when failure does arrive, it
Speaker 2: hits you hard. My natural inclination was to hide my failures.
Speaker 2: My failures embarrassed me because I thought they meant I
Speaker 2: was a lesser person, like if people knew about my failures,
Speaker 2: surely their positive impressions of me would be destroyed. Through
Speaker 2: the work that I do it behavioral science, consultancy, invent him,
Speaker 2: I see so many people struggle with failure, wanting to
Speaker 2: hide it, punish it, deny it, and no good can
Speaker 2: come of this. The best way to learn is to fail.
Speaker 2: And when we start to talk about our failures openly
Speaker 2: rather than repress them, we actually increase our resilience. So
Speaker 2: Harvard's psychology professor Daniel Wegner coined the term ironic mental processes.
Speaker 2: Through a series of experiments, he found that when people
Speaker 2: try to suppress certain thoughts and emotion that actually resurface
Speaker 2: more intensely than before. So, for example, psychology professor Jennifer
Speaker 2: Borten and her colleagues found that when we ignore doubts
Speaker 2: about ourselves, self esteem declines and anxiety rises. So Wegner
Speaker 2: argued that we need to stop suppressing negative thoughts and
Speaker 2: emotions and instead express them, and ironically, doing so should
Speaker 2: increase resilience and self belief, which is where a failure
Speaker 2: resume comes into play.
Speaker 1: So I wrote.
Speaker 2: My very first failure resume, a part of an experiment
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty, but now as we head towards the
Speaker 2: finish line of twenty twenty one, I've revisited it and
Speaker 2: I'm sharing a new version with repidation. Once more so,
Speaker 2: I challenged myself to be more raw, more open, and
Speaker 2: pick some even more devastating and recent failures. So here
Speaker 2: are some big ones from the last few years, and
Speaker 2: I'd love to see yours if your game.
Speaker 1: Failure.
Speaker 2: Number one linking my achievements to my self worth nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty four, when I was about seven years old to
Speaker 2: the present. Now, you don't have to be a psychologist
Speaker 2: to recognize that I had a serious case of achievement
Speaker 2: derived self worth. Now this is not a propher psychological term,
Speaker 2: but it sounds like it could be. Whenever I would
Speaker 2: accomplish something new, I felt and still feel, the strong
Speaker 2: urge to tell other people and lots of other people
Speaker 2: about what I've just done. And I tell them not
Speaker 2: to brag, but because I believe it will make them
Speaker 2: like me more. And as someone who cares too much
Speaker 2: about what other people think, I really want people to
Speaker 2: like me as much as possible, and obviously saying this
Speaker 2: out loud, I can see how flawed this reasoning is,
Speaker 2: but I still do it. So here's what I learned
Speaker 2: from failiure number one. A couple of years ago, I
Speaker 2: read a Seth Godin blog that said confidence is a choice,
Speaker 2: not a symptom, and it dawned on me that I
Speaker 2: didn't need to achieve certain things to feel confident and worthwhile,
Speaker 2: especially in my life. And while I'm making progress on
Speaker 2: this failure, it's been slow. It's hard to change something
Speaker 2: that's been hard wired for decades. But here is some
Speaker 2: evidence of change. I went for a walk with a
Speaker 2: close friend a couple of weeks ago and he asked
Speaker 2: me how I was doing. I said, relieve, because I'd
Speaker 2: just submitted the first draft of my book to my publisher,
Speaker 2: all seventy two thousand words.
Speaker 1: His response was, what book?
Speaker 2: So I had completely failed, not consciously to mention that
Speaker 2: I'd been off at a book deal with Penguin six
Speaker 2: months prior.
Speaker 1: Yay wit.
Speaker 2: Although sharing this win feels like I might have missed
Speaker 2: the point of this learning, Okay. Failiure number two not
Speaker 2: having the courage to leave my marriage sooner twenty nineteen.
Speaker 2: On August twenty five, twenty nineteen, I left my partner
Speaker 2: of thirteen years. No big event had precipitated the decision.
Speaker 2: There were no affairs, no abuse, nothing especially newsworthy. There
Speaker 2: was just a gradual realization that were not particularly compatible
Speaker 2: as human beings. The most devastating part of this decision
Speaker 2: has becoming a single mother and now only seeing my
Speaker 2: daughter half of that time. So while to my friends
Speaker 2: and family the decision seemed sudden, it was a decision
Speaker 2: that was used in the making, but fear kept me
Speaker 2: in a sub optimal relationship for years past its du date,
Speaker 2: and two years on I can say with certainty that
Speaker 2: I'm far happier on this side of the fence. So
Speaker 2: what I learned is that being scared to do something
Speaker 2: that feels really big is not a good enough reason
Speaker 2: to not do it. The scariest and hardest decisions can
Speaker 2: often be the most rewarding. And while I stayed for
Speaker 2: longer than I should have because of my daughter, role
Speaker 2: modeling a substandard relationship to your child, to our children
Speaker 2: is not helpful role modeling all right. Failure number three
Speaker 2: wearing a mask to work twenty nineteen to twenty twenty one. So,
Speaker 2: following on from the aforementioned failure. Perhaps if you've been
Speaker 2: through a similar situation, you'll know that the first couple
Speaker 2: of years out of a marriage can be pretty rough,
Speaker 2: and you know with everything that there is to navigate
Speaker 2: and separate. My default setting is to be open with
Speaker 2: my team, but during this time I felt the need
Speaker 2: to hide my stress from my workmates and keep it
Speaker 2: to myself. I didn't want to be a burden or
Speaker 2: bring the mood down. In some instances, this credit a
Speaker 2: necessary distance between me and my teammates, and there were
Speaker 2: many days where it was beyond exhausting to maintain. And
Speaker 2: I'm totally okay if it's sad, when I really wasn't.
Speaker 2: So what I learned from this Looking back, I question
Speaker 2: the cost of not being truly real about what I
Speaker 2: was experiencing outside of work. I felt really protective of
Speaker 2: my team and I didn't want to dump my stress
Speaker 2: on them, But going to the other extreme where I
Speaker 2: tried to make light of what was some really heavy
Speaker 2: things I was going through, probably wasn't super healthy either.
Speaker 2: So I'd like to think that in the future I
Speaker 2: would and could drop the mask and just show up
Speaker 2: one hundred percent as me, and by doing so, I
Speaker 2: suspect that my own mental health and my relationships with
Speaker 2: my team would be all the better for it. And
Speaker 2: I should add that seeking support from a brilliant clinical
Speaker 2: psychologist was critical for me in making it through this time.
Speaker 2: I saw him weekly during the hardest times, and I
Speaker 2: still see him once a fortnight. Okay, the next failure
Speaker 2: I want to share concealing my miscarriage from my Inventium team.
Speaker 2: Back in twenty thirteen, So, when I was eighteen years old,
Speaker 2: I was diagnosed with polycystic ovarian syndrome or PEACOS for short.
Speaker 2: PIACOS is one of the leading courses of infertility, so
Speaker 2: I never assumed that I'd be able to have children,
Speaker 2: even though I was sure that I wanted to have
Speaker 2: one during this life time. So when I fell pregnant
Speaker 2: very easily in early twenty thirteen, I was beside myself
Speaker 2: with joy, and in the nine weeks that my body
Speaker 2: spent growing a little person, I spent hundreds of hours
Speaker 2: imagining the life that this yet to be born human
Speaker 2: would have. When we went for a scan at nine weeks,
Speaker 2: the obstetrician told us that the feeders had stopped growing
Speaker 2: several weeks ago. Two days later, I went in for
Speaker 2: a DNC to have this little person removed from my body.
Speaker 2: The grief hit me like a landslide, but because no
Speaker 2: one at work knew I was even pregnant, I went
Speaker 2: straight back into the office as if nothing had happened.
Speaker 2: What I learned from this is that hiding something as
Speaker 2: life shattering as a miscarriage helps no one. I've since
Speaker 2: talked openly about it with my team on various occasions,
Speaker 2: and hope that doing so normal as is the experience,
Speaker 2: so that we no longer have to feel shame about
Speaker 2: miscarriages and hired our grief to people who we spend
Speaker 2: so much time with. The last failure that I want
Speaker 2: to share is putting unrealistic expectations on myself in my
Speaker 2: role as a mum twenty fourteen to present. In February
Speaker 2: twenty fourteen, my daughter Frankie came into the world.
Speaker 1: My life and priorities shifted.
Speaker 2: Enormously as most of my energy pre Frankie had been
Speaker 2: poured into my work. A couple of years into this
Speaker 2: new role, I became more aware of the expectations I
Speaker 2: placed on myself as a mother. Because I was a
Speaker 2: working mum, I felt an edit to overcompensate. Whenever I
Speaker 2: was with Frankie, the unwritten rule I had was to
Speaker 2: be one hundred percent present and interacting with her one
Speaker 2: hundred percent of the time. It was exhausting, and I
Speaker 2: was constantly falling short of this expectation and beating myself
Speaker 2: up about it. If I took my daughter to a
Speaker 2: cafe for breakfast and I spent a couple of minutes
Speaker 2: having a quick read of the weekend paper, I would
Speaker 2: immediately tell myself off and redirect my full attention back
Speaker 2: to Frankie. I identified with being an overachiever in my
Speaker 2: working life, and naturally this expectation had transferred itself to motherhood.
Speaker 2: I always felt like I could be doing a better job,
Speaker 2: paying more attention, coming up with more stimulating activities, and
Speaker 2: baking better cakes.
Speaker 1: No just kidding, I don't really bake.
Speaker 2: And when I did direct my attention somewhere other than Frankie,
Speaker 2: such as inter reading the weekend paper, I would feel
Speaker 2: guilty for the pleasure that this gave me, because surely
Speaker 2: the most pleasurable activity when you are a parent is
Speaker 2: spending quality time with your children all the time. It
Speaker 2: took me another few years in a conversation with my
Speaker 2: therapist to realize that this behavior was not normal. In
Speaker 2: schema therapy, I score high on unrelenting standards. This is
Speaker 2: to find as the underlying belief that one must strive
Speaker 2: to meet very high internalized standards of behavior and performance,
Speaker 2: usually to avoid criticism. Easy to diagnose, harder to change.
Speaker 2: So here's what I learned. I know that I can
Speaker 2: have ridiculously high standards for my work, but I was
Speaker 2: completely unaware that these standards were also imposing themselves on
Speaker 2: my role as a mum. So over the years, and
Speaker 2: at least on some days, I've slowly started to relax
Speaker 2: the expectations I have of myself as a mother. I
Speaker 2: now sometimes allow myself to just do my own thing
Speaker 2: well Frankie does hers and as I talk to you
Speaker 2: about this, So, I worry that this may make me
Speaker 2: sound like a bad mother. I worry that maybe I'll
Speaker 2: be judged by other mothers who are one hundred percent
Speaker 2: present for their children one hundred percent of the time,
Speaker 2: because they.
Speaker 1: Exist, don't they.
Speaker 2: And I find it really hard to balance my overwhelming
Speaker 2: need to be the best mum in the world with
Speaker 2: also being kind to myself, which doesn't come naturally.
Speaker 1: It is a constant battle, but one in which I
Speaker 1: think I'm.
Speaker 2: Making progress slowly, and in spite of all this, surprise, surprise,
Speaker 2: Frankie is still thriving. So that's my failure resume. And
Speaker 2: here is my challenge for you. Set aside, say thirty
Speaker 2: minutes this week to write your failure resumet think hard
Speaker 2: over the last few years, what have been your biggest
Speaker 2: failures It worked maybe in your non work life as well.
Speaker 2: And then I challenge you to share it with a
Speaker 2: few people close to you. Maybe you might even want
Speaker 2: to share it via your socials like I'll be doing
Speaker 2: with mine, which is scary, I know. And if you
Speaker 2: do decide to share it, make sure you tag me
Speaker 2: in the post because I'd love to read it and
Speaker 2: I hope you find this process helpful. You can find
Speaker 2: me on the socials, on LinkedIn Atamantha Imba and on
Speaker 2: Instagram Atamantha I and on Twitter at Amantha. How I
Speaker 2: Work is produced by Inventium with production support from Dead
Speaker 2: Set Studios, and thank you to Martin Nimba who does
Speaker 2: the audio mix and makes everything sound better than it
Speaker 2: would have otherwise. I'll see you next time.