A NEW APPROACH TO FEEDBACK VALIDATION

For anyone who is out there trying to do something, put something out there, create something new, offer out their skills or expertise, feedback can be super alluring and super terrifying. It’s almost like we have this push pull relationship with feedback and validation that means we want it, but it also has the potential to crush us.

I want to talk about what feedback we actually need to get, how we interpret that wisely and how we can build resilience and wisdom about what feedback means.

I want you to scan back in your mind to a time when you received some tough feedback, maybe something that has lingered with you and become a belief you now have about yourself.

MY EXPERIENCE

I can vividly remember being 21 and living on my own in London. I was finishing up my youth work degree and my placement mentor had me over for dinner. After dinner we sat in their living room and they pulled out a piece of paper with a list of things they wanted to feed back to me about how poorly I was doing. They told me:

-        You are struggling to manage your money

-        You are struggling to prioritise your uni work

-        You are struggling with pulling your weight in the centre. 

-        You are struggling to stay grounded with your singing opportunities 

OH. MY GOD.

I was absolutely floored. And devastated. And SO embarrassed. Some of that stuff was probably true, but also I was 21. At university. In placement. In the biggest city I’d ever lived in London. I was getting a lot of singing opportunities at the time which was exciting for me. I was away from my family in Canada. Um, YEAH. Of course I was struggling with all of those things! Yeesh. It stung so hard and I was so overwhelmed by the casual setting and the heavy ‘pulling in’. The feedback was so hard to hear and for many years after, I heard that feedback ring over me in so many other roles I had.

“Am I sucking with money?”

“Am I pulling my weight here?”

“Am I being cocky?”

“Does everyone else think this about me…?”

What was one persons observation into a period of my life actually became a new set of beliefs about myself.

And with that set of beliefs became behaviours to try and counteract them or manage them.

People pleasing

Staying quiet more

Overdelivering

Burning out quickly

Sacrificing myself to the cause

Frugality to the point of punishment.

Does this ring any bells? Can you think of a time in your life or work that you have received feedback and it has become a belief about yourself?

It’s for this reason that I think it’s important that particularly as women, we begin to understand what feedback is, when it’s important, how we interpret it and how we can use it in the service of our own callings or aspirations rather than have it silence us or stop us from doing the things we would really love to do.

The idea isn’t to fob off or be cold and robotic towards criticism – shutting ourselves down. That’s totally unhuman, impossible, and unfair. We cannot deny the part of ourselves that wants to be seen, to be acknowledged, to matter to other people. We should honour that part of ourselves that desires respect and appreciation. And that is why it’s imperative that we begin to speak a new language and develop a new set of behaviours around feedback and validation.

WHAT WE NEED TO UNDERSTAND ABOUT FEEDBACK AND VALIDATION

There are 5 things that I believe are really key to understand about this:

1)     It really matters who you ask.

Not everyone is important to get feedback from and our expectations around this are everything. The most important people to get feedback from are people who are connected to the success of your work - customers, clients, stakeholders, etc. If we are asking our close family members for feedback on something they have no interest, knowledge or stakes in, we are doomed! Can you think of a time when you have asked the wrong person for feedback on something that was really important to you and you were hugely disappointed or deflated? What would it have meant to ask someone more integral to the idea or work?

2)     You get to decide if the feedback matters, or how you interpret it.

So much of this process is about cultivating wisdom about what feedback is actually important to take on board. Something Tara Mohr talks about a lot in Playing Big is the idea that "feedback only ever tells you about the person giving the feedback, it doesn't tell you anything true about the work itself'. I love this, because it then gives me the freedom and autonomy to decide if the feedback is important for me to consider. I want you to look up your favourite book from your favourite author on Amazon and read the 5* reviews and also read the 1* reviews. You will find both, but neither of them tell you anything true about how good the work of the author is. It only tells you about the person giving the feedback.

3)     It’s perfectly OK not to ask for feedback.

There are times where it is totally irrelevant to ask for feedback. Sometimes what is important for us is to run with our intuition or our gut and not get sucked into the opinions of others. Often what happens is that asking for feedback in those highly intuitive times can halt our traction and we can lose momentum. If your gut is speaking to you about doing something - keep at it. There may be a time for feedback down the road, but when your intuition is leading you - be led. Can you recall a time when you have felt really in your flow and you have found yourself halted by someone else's feedback - either asked for or not?

 4)     Women are more attuned to feedback.

As women we are highly switched on to other more subtle types of cues (body language, facial expressions, tone etc) and so when we are getting feedback, we are taking in the entire situation and person – not just the words. It's not surprising then that feedback often comes far more loaded for women than it does for men. We also tend to laser focus in on feedback and dwell on it longer. This comes from likability being the only currency for women before we had any rights or access to our own finance or laws that protected our safety. We relied on being liked to get us by, so any threat to our likability may still feel very viscerally painful or scary for us - including feedback. What is your experience of likability? Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you have had a visceral reaction to negative feedback given to you because it jeopardized your likability?

 5)     Finally - If you want to do something that sets you apart or is your truest, most important work – it will always be met with both praise and criticism.

There is no escaping it, so we neeeeeed to get super comfortable with accepting that it’s going to come and sometimes it’s going to feel real good and sometimes it’s going to sting but ultimately, having a firm footing in our own sense of pride and commitment to our idea must be at the centre because that’s the only truth that we know about the work. Then we can hold both the validation and the criticism that may come more lightly.

WHY WE NEED TO STOP FEELING EMBARRASSED BY OUR AMBITION

How do you feel when you think about the word ambition?

What feelings or image or emotions come up when you think of it? 

 Now take a moment to think about an ambitious woman. What feelings come up for you then?

It seems we’ve painted ambition with a dirty brush. By taking the toxic elements that we perceive about ambition and skewing its meaning, particularly when it’s used in the description of a woman.

For this very reason, I KNOW so many women who find it hard to admit they have ambition. This admission comes with a fear of being judged for having ambition because our society has historically never allowed women to voice, let alone celebrate, their desire to achieve and do more.

As if wanting more for this one life that we’ve got is greedy, needy or will make us unlikeable in some way.

In fact, there have been studies conducted by leading research institutions such as Harvard and Columbia University, dissecting the perception of ambitious women. The research shows that culturally, ambition is seen as a positive trait in men yet criticised in women. 

When presented with two case studies (one male, one female) with exactly the same goals, ideas and personality traits the female was found to be more scrutinised and rejected.

I see the repercussions of this culture affecting so many women in my line of work. In my programmes, I see women who are terrified to admit that they have ideas, aspirations and goals that they’d like to make a reality.

 The truth is that they have every reason to be afraid of owning their brilliance and their desires. This is because we

a) Have never made women feel safe to have or share their ambitions or to grow and desire their goals without attaching a negative connotation to it, and 

b) We have neglected to create support systems that enable women to do this without feeling like they have to compromise other areas of their lives when they do.

Unfortunately women have good reason to be fearful of coming across as ambitious. We have demonised women’s aspirations and appetite for more by reducing it to mean that she’s ‘bossy’, pushy, untrustworthy, competitive, maybe even undesireable to a potential partner or a bit too big for her boots.

And yet we see other virtues of womanhood celebrated and elevated much more for being the ‘traditional’ values of womanhood that don’t allow women to move outside of the roles created for them by society – things like self-sacrifice, and caring for everyone else.

So what happens for women who face that fear with their ambition?

Well, we go into self-protection mode.

We end up hiding, feeling embarrassed, dumbing down our ideas, people-pleasing, apologising or not taking credit for our efforts, handing things over to other people when we’re capable and want to do things for ourselves, doubting our abilities, feeling resentful and worse than that – this resentment often leads women to judge each other and being competitive or bitchy.

We fall into the trap that society has set up for us and it keeps us small and scared, not realising this is exactly the intention of society and it’s a cycle that continues on and on.

 This needs to change.

We need to normalise, accept, celebrate and give each other permission to thrive in the ways that we want to.

To break this cycle that society has set up for us, we need to find supportive spaces to be more fully ourselves where we can own our ideas and goals as well as find cheerleaders to encourage us as we pursue the things we care about. 

It has to start with us.

And we have a responsibility to both own the desires and ambitions we have for ourselves as well as make sure that we are a safe person and place for other women to share their ambitions with.

When we own our ambitions and become safe places for other women to thrive how they want to, it releases other women to do the same. 

It’s our way of saying: “there is plenty of room for us all.” 

We all have different ideas of what fulfilment and desire looks like but the desire for them as a group is how we can help each other to be brave.

Ambition comes in many forms and we should just accept that it goes hand in hand with the stereotypes we’ve been given. As soon as we realise that ambition does not equate to the stereotypes then we can actually allow ourselves to be really inspired by each other.

This is how we can challenge these cultural tropes that paint women with ambition in a negative light.

There will always be those that are intimidated, threatened or resentful when they observe or encounter a woman who openly displays her ambition. There’s no getting around the risk of potential criticism or the opinions of others but it’s important to remember that other people’s responses to your ambition usually have nothing to do with you.

Their responses to us only really ever tell us about them.

 And so the questions I want to leave you with today are:

-        Are you willing to be loyal to your own curiosities and ideas? Are you ready to be loyal to yourself and your ambitions?

-        Where can you bring those ambitions and dreams to that feels safe and empowering?

-        How are you going to champion other women who are taking the risk to stretch and grow as well?

I hope this gives you some permission today, to be ambitious in whatever way you need to. To know that your ambition is not embarrassing or threatening – it is important and necessary for us to witness and own it.

NEWSFLASH: THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS CONFIDENCE

No, this isn’t clickbait, I promise.

I have genuinely come to this conclusion:

There is no such thing as confidence.

For such a long time I bought into the idea that confidence is something that you can build or grow or develop. Now I’m not so sure.

There’s something that rattles me about the idea of “being confident” that I wasn’t able to pinpoint for ages. It felt like, particularly for women, that word was everywhere - orbiting around us on magazine stands and by-lines; pointing out what was missing: 

“12 Steps to More Confidence”

“Why Confidence is Your Biggest Career Asset”

“The Confidence Gap & How to Close It”

“The Key to Building Your Brand: Confidence”

It all sounds compelling.

“Of course! That’s what I need: more confidence.”

“When I get more of that, then I’ll be able to do the things that feel stretchy; then I’ll be able to put myself forward or share my ideas or step out of my comfort zone.”

Pursuit of confidence has become this holy grail achievement for women of the world who are interested in offering more.

But what if it’s not the holy grail?

What if confidence is simply not ‘a thing’?

What if it’s a myth that has us circling around and around and never actually taking any action because the markers for confidence are really murky? How will I know if I’m confident? What does it feel like to be confident? At what level of confidence will I be ready for X Y or Z? Who knows? It’s all a bit illusive.

I’ve done a great deal of research and observing on this and I want to offer a few more reasons that build on this idea:

 1)    EVERYONE YOU ADMIRE IS DOING THEIR WORK A LITTLE BIT AFRAID AND WITHOUT ANY CERTAINTY.

I have worked with many incredible women doing brilliant things in the world. I have built charity projects and a business of my own from scratch. What I can attest to is this: in every circumstance where there is a high risk of vulnerability, criticism or rejection - fear and self-doubt is rife. When I think of the women that I admire, I have been relieved to hear them speak to their own self-doubt and how they still struggle with feelings of being an imposter in their work. There isn’t a thought leader or innovator that you look up to who is immune to this and there isn’t a thought leader or innovator out there that isn’t putting themselves and their work out there with any concrete assurance that what they do next is going to connect or have traction.

We have to do things scared.

What is significant is that it’s only through the process of trying, sometimes failing and processing the learning that we develop resilience and wisdom to build our capabilities and way forward.

The way I see it is that instead of pursuing this illusive confidence in our ideas or abilities -  what is more human, more natural, more self-supportive is to understand how to manage and create a healthy relationship with our fears and self-doubt, because they are not going away.

2)    THE ONLY WAY THROUGH IS THROUGH. AND THEN THROUGH AGAIN.

If only we could escape our self-doubt or feelings of inadequacy, right? If only there was a magic formula that we could ignite when we needed to display confidence in our abilities or activate self-belief.

The reality is that the only way through this stuff is through. And then through again.

Because how we build capacity as humans, how we learn, how we grow and develop is not by bypassing feelings of self doubt, but by moving through them. Once we realise that self-doubt is universal and that fear is our brains way of trying to keep us safe from emotional risks, we can show up for ourselves with more empathy and resolve to give things a go.

This isn’t a linear process. We don’t learn about our self-doubt once and have it mastered. Understanding and managing self-doubt (which will show up in a bunch of different ways throughout our lifetime) is a life-long journey and a muscle that we have to chose to build by deciding that it’s worth moving towards things that feel most true to us, even if certainty of an outcome is not available.

3)    THE PURSUIT OF CONFIDENCE ACTUALLY KEEPS WOMEN SMALLER, FOR LONGER.

Like any message we absorb in our culture, there are some particular patriarchal benefits to this idea of pushing women towards this confidence myth.

If women are taken up in the pursuit of mythical confidence and don’t learn the unsexy but important work of managing self-doubt and uncertainty then they will remain distracted, deflated, left-out and will likely give up on the things that they truly want to do.

It serves the capitalistic society that dominates all that we do if we as women chase the unattainable under the false pretence of confidence mastery. It keeps us busy, burnt out, concerned with other peoples’ opinions rather than working through our fears and finding ways to embrace how self-doubt shows up. There is real power and autonomy available for women who are able to dismantle their limiting beliefs and do the brave work of updating them.

5 SUBTLE WAYS WOMEN ARE SELF-SABOTAGING

I’m here for some straight talking today, folks. If I could write this whole blog post in CAPS and be sure it wouldn’t hurt your eyeballs, I would.

In all the work I’ve done with women of all ages and backgrounds over the last decade, there have been some emerging themes of self-sabotage that I have seen with my own eyes; some particular ways that I see brilliant women like you and I tripping ourselves up repeatedly over and over again.

Firstly, I want to lovingly say that this is the stuff of being human. These ways that we minimise ourselves, hand over power, get swept up and let fear lead the way – these things do not make you faulty – they make you human. The first step to being able to move beyond them into a truer sense of who you are is owning them; acknowledging that this stuff is real for you. That’s a biggie. So I want you to read this with an open mind, willing to see where it is that you might recognise yourself.

Let’s jump in. Below are five ways that I have repeatedly seen women sabotaging their own fulfilment and desires and holding back the progress of the sisterhood:

1)    Assuming there is not enough room for you.

Somewhere along the way, we have been fed the lie that when we see someone else doing something we would love to do that it automatically disqualifies us from doing it. Somewhere along the way we have picked up the message that there is not enough room for our version of the same thing. Somewhere along the way we have decided that if someone else is doing it, they now have the monopoly and they must be doing it better. In addition to that, we often fold in the double whammy lie that if we do decide to do something similar that people will think we are copying, we’ll be unlikable, talked about and thought of as a fraud or second rate. So we shut the idea down immediately, tuck in back in our safe zone, we retreat and let resentment and jealousy wash over us.

When we think like this, we are operating out of a scarcity mindset. This is the mindset that says that there is not enough space for us all to move around and be ourselves. This is the mindset that has us moving through the world believing that everything is a race, that competition is rife and that spaces for creativity, fulfilment and innovation are limited.

What we need are women who are willing to see past these lies, who give themselves permission to learn, try and grow and create environments for others to do the same. When we assume there is a limited amount of room for women to do the things that they are drawn to, we make the world smaller for ALL women when in reality, we have an unlimited amount of space to expand and stretch as we need to.

SOME WAYS WE CAN COUNTERACT THIS:

Acknowledge your own desires. Write them down and then tell a trusted friend. Do some light market research. Practice your craft or your offering. Arrange to meet up with someone who triggers jealousy or scarcity in you. Reach out to them and tell them how brilliantly they are doing.

2)    Recruiting other women to your pain.

The second way I see women self-sabotaging (and this is a biggie) is by recruiting other people to our pain. We’ve all been there on one side or the other. Wounded people tend to want to rally other people to their cause. If we have been wronged by another woman, misunderstood or failed – the temptation is to bring our people along for the ride. We want solidarity in our pain, to have an ally. Real alliance does not look like taking down the sisterhood because of our own fears or pain.

A few months ago I was faced with this. Someone I love had been hurt by another woman and they were in pain. They were so consumed with their own discomfort over it that they wanted me to join them. They really tried to get me in there in the pit with them. There was even a moment when they couldn’t see past themselves and tried to give me my own (personal) reason to join them in their annoyance, but I could see what was happening and I was able to call it out. My friend responded so bravely and quickly realised what she was doing. We talked it out so she felt understood and seen without adding more pain to the mix.

Don’t look for solidarity in bringing other women down. Stop trying to find someone to dislike the same people as you. One of the most powerful ways that patriarchy can thrive in our world today is when women turn on each other and recruit each other to sides. We can disagree, we can find fault, we can be hurt and hurt back, but let’s not try to grab each other in from the sidelines to join in our pain. This is the kind of sabotage that ripples out and breeds insecurity like a disease.

SOME WAYS WE CAN COUNTERACT THIS:

Give other women the benefit of the doubt when you hear things about them. Deal with your own pain. Redirect conversations that would tempt you to get involved in petty talk or that try to drag you into mutual disdain for someone. Challenge negative talk. Be obnoxiously supportive of other women.

 3)    We are not taking ourselves seriously.

Another subtle way I can see women self-sabotaging is by seriously underestimating themselves. I can see clearly where this comes from: if we take ourselves seriously, invest in things, put ourselves out there and it doesn’t work out – then we have egg on our face and everyone will know. If we stay in the shallow, never invest fully, never talk about our offerings with any intensity or authority then we stay safe. No one can shame us.  

The thing about not taking ourselves seriously is that we never move from that place. There is nowhere to go from here. We are stuck. And that stuck-ness will eventually spill out into resentment, frustration, grief and heartache. We will never realise our fuller potential. We will never fail and learn. We will never find the true fulfilment that comes from giving things our best shot and growing along the way.

If you are not investing in your own betterment, if you are shying away from opportunities that will bring discomfort, if you are downplaying what you do or hiding it away from the world – fulfilment is going to be a really hard reach for you. There is rarely any comfort to be found in growth. Take yourself seriously. Take your own growth and fulfilment seriously and watch how you evolve.

SOME WAYS WE CAN COUNTERACT THIS:

Invest in yourself; even something small. Take a course, join a facebook group, book into a workshop, tell people about your products or services. Eliminate minimising language from how you talk about what you do: “my little business” or “just my side-hustle”. (You can also grab my FREE 30 Days of Visibility Instagram prompts to help you talk about the things you have to offer, build community and communicate the ideas you have stored up).

4)    Making our minds up about what other people will pay for, engage with or buy.

We are SO good at assuming we know what people are thinking. We are EXCELLENT at making up whole scenarios and thought processes about how we will be perceived, what other people’s buying habits are, their budgets, their interests, aren’t we?

Some of us are so quick to write off our own ideas, sabotaging them before they get out of the gate that we have never let our ideas out into the air to breathe so they stay within us, choking us up. Let me tell you, there is a whole WORLD out there of people who need to hear what you have to say, who may need to hear things from your perspective to find healing, who may need to engage with your product to find a solution to their problems.

The ever-expanding ways that people are able to consume or connect with things in the world today means that we just cannot write off who might be interested in what we have to offer. If there is something burning in your soul that you feel drawn to put out into the world, you owe it to yourself to set it free. We cannot control who buys it or who can afford it or if it will sell – we simply have to be true to the thing that we are being called to do.

SOME WAYS WE CAN COUNTERACT THIS:

Do your research! Ask your target market about the things you are considering offering. Use social media to build community and offer value to the people in your orbit. GET SOME INFORMATION! Stay curious and open to possibilities. Stay true to your pricing. Don’t look around at what other people are charging for things (they could have major issues around this stuff as well!) – figure out what you want to offer, how much it costs you to make or produce and what you want to be paid and then ASK FOR IT!  

Finally… 

5)    Being consumed by perfectionism.

Oh my goodness, I get this one. I totally do. I am a recovering perfectionist. It is hard work. It has cost me a lot to be consumed with perfection and striving.

Let me give you a little example: Just this year I finally decided to turn my e-course ‘Down to Earth’ into a book to sell on my website. I spent ages going through the content, compiling it and converting it into a PDF. I agonised over fonts and settings and colours. Finally I let it out into the world and a bunch of people bought it! I made some money from it!

Then I went through it again recently and you know what – there’s a whole paragraph missing on one of the pages. A whole freaking paragraph, just sitting there, half written.

Two years ago this would have crippled me and kept me up at night – hopelessly obsessed that people would think I was a fraud, that I was unprofessional, that I wasn’t to be trusted (the drama of my inner critic is obscene). Two years ago me would have taken it down from my website right away and had it redone and made a big public apology to all my readers and resent it to them again.

This time, I just cringed and then laughed. Of course there was a mistake in it! It was 80 pages long and I’m not a professional editor. It’s one tiny paragraph and it doesn’t take anything away from the overall goodness of the book. It’s still on my website, still for sale, in all it’s imperfect glory.  

If you are waiting around for the perfect website, perfect branding, perfect whatever before even dipping your toe in the waters of the thing you want to do then can I please encourage you to stop and just start. This perfectionism is a guise for hiding. This need to get everything just ‘so’ before you present it to the world is wasting your precious life minutes and is just fear showing up in a different outfit.

SOME WAYS WE CAN COUNTERACT THIS:

Set yourself deadlines for doing things and STICK TO THEM! No more pushing back timings because of polishing things endlessly. If something feels too big and you’re really not ready, find a smaller way to get it out there in the time being. Go for good enough when you can. Don’t be a slave to an algorithm. Try and inject some spontaneity into your day. Look back and reflect on how far you have come. Make a point to celebrate small milestones. Remember your own humanity and the humanity of others. Give yourself a freaking break.

Do you see yourself in here anywhere? Is there a part of you that might be self-sabotaging and wants to move through it? Leave me a comment and let’s chat it out. I am SO here for women who want to move through some of these sabotaging behaviours and mindsets. I need these reminders in my life too. It is not easy to look this stuff in the eye and own it but we desperately need women in our world who know how to evolve with grace and dignity. We need women in the world who can see their own BS and decide that they are done with it and ready to shed the skin they are in and become truer versions of themselves.