How to Stop Getting in Your Own Way
Many of the folks I work with in Tech are battling a familiar foe: themselves.
There’s an inner war underway, whether we call it self-criticism, imposter syndrome or perfectionism. Your head is screaming one thing, your heart is running in the other direction, and your gut is going queasy.
The opposite of this inner war is alignment. Alignment means all of you is pointing in one direction. It’s a wonderful thing to witness. But it’s not easy to achieve. It often involves some kind of understanding that feels like stepping back from the current, urgent problem.
Coaching is a great way to foster alignment. But you can do it on your own, too. Here’s how.
In one of Oliver Burkeman’s talks in the Waking Up app, he discusses the idea of being best friends with yourself.
He explores why, for many people, this term is more powerful than self-compassion or self-love, which can evoke a certain kind of New Age narcissism or secular self-absorption.
Burkeman makes some important points about why this phrasing is useful:
Firstly, everyone has a best friend they can refer to. If I ask you how you’d respond to a friend who’s just been through a break-up, or just completed a marathon, you don’t need to think twice.
And so translating this to yourself means applying something you already do to another relationship. Not trying to adopt an alien standard of saintliness, for which you have no reference.
It also means recognising that there are different parts to yourself that you can befriend. Attributing all of your thoughts and actions to one unchanging self is exhausting, because it’s not possible. Conversely, there is so much relief in recognising that there are many parts to each of us, with different origin stories and worldviews.
Burkeman also reminds us that friendliness isn’t always about saying yes. Sometimes, saying no is the better thing to do for a friend—like when they want to order that 6th cocktail. Friendliness easily accommodates this idea of being firm to be kind.
When you can cultivate a curiosity about your warring parts—what they want and how they’re going about it—then your head, heart and gut can start moving in the same direction.
Inner alignment unlocks a lot of the external impact we crave. A lack of alignment is like fretting a song perfectly on the guitar with 3 strings out of tune; no matter your technique, it’s going to sound like a train wreck.
There is a deep peace possible when you are not constantly clipping your own wings. Not the dreamed-up peace that arrives when outside conditions finally align, but a weighty, inner coherence. This doesn’t mean things are always peachy, but that there’s a confidence in meeting life as an equal without some hawk-like, authoritarian oversight.
When it comes down to it, you’re going to be in your own company for the rest of your life. You spend hours talking to yourself each day. You wake up with yourself each morning and go to bed with yourself each night.
Why not try infusing a little more friendliness? It’s entirely possible that a small shift in attitude could do more for your self-understanding than years of overthinking and self-monitoring.