Organizational and Leadership Development | Coach | TEDx speaker | Author | understandingyourself.net
Have you ever wondered how parents, managers (more in Indian, Asian cultures) use criticism, comparison and shaming to "motivate" children/employees to excel? I think the chain of (incorrect) assumptions goes something like this: Excellence needs hard work >> Hard work can only happen if one is dissatisfied >> Dissatisfaction cannot happen if you feel you are good enough. Hence the secret to excellence is to always make you feel you, your efforts, your results are never good enough. Also known euphemistically as "tough love". Now there are two possibilities: The people just give up. Tap out of the shame game. Feel like losers. Hopefully vowing to not pass it on. Doing the minimum possible to survive. The bigger problem is if it works. The shame propels you to keep working harder and harder. But no matter how much you achieve, nothing on the outside can ever be good enough because the actual problem is on the inside. The feeling we end up exuding under the name of "pursuing excellence" is the "fear of shame". Our fans, our children, our loved ones...all live under the cover of shame, thinking it is "excellence". The indicator being that we can be wildly successful by external standards, but internally we are angry because what We do, what others are doing never feels enough. There is this sad inability to appreciate. We label it as "having high standards". This self-hatred can either be directed inwards or outwards. Consequently there is this constant need to put ourselves down and feel shame, or put others down (for 'justified reasons' of course eg. "Hate the haters", "Gossip about the lazy ones", "Hate the aggressors") to feel better. There is a lot of success, but little happiness. We think all this self-hatred is what excellence looks like, feels like. Not realising that our excellence strategies are simply coping mechanisms. We simply don't know any better! This leads to the biggest misunderstanding that compassion, unconditional acceptance naturally lead to "mediocrity". Making them criminalized. Shaming becomes normalised. Idolized. As long as you shame the "right" person for the "right" reasons. The circle is complete. The only way to break this circle is to examine and question the chain of root assumptions. And detect where the gap lies. Followed by the much harder work of first hand observation of what's really going on inside. P.S. Not to say that non-Asian folks are better off. They just take a different path.
Brilliant piece! Would love to see you write something on the alternate way to excellence
You have described the chain reaction veery well. This pattern has made " I AM NOT ENOUGH" , the number 1 limiting belief. The problem is with this kind of brain wiring, what ever one does, it will never be enough and success will be a mirage. Just more burnout.
Real Reality
Very well put and hits the heart at the right spot!
Leadership & Talent Development | Organisational Development | Diversity & Inclusion | Experiential Education and Training | Business Storytelling | Executive & Career Transition Coaching | Wellbeing | TEDx speaker
1 年Excellent piece, Vijayraj. Multiple psychologists I have spoken with have stated that "achievement is just high performing anxiety". I've seen so many people who, like you demonstrated, "suffer from achievement". Obviously there could be a few exceptions to this rule whose achievement is not driven by anxiety or shame and who might be intrinsically wired to achieve. I may have encountered one or two in this category. I think my friend Anup Talwar is in the latter category. There are others who were not 'made to feel shame' but life events or social conditioning infused them with the belief that they must achieve and stand out to feel validated. I was very lucky to have received a lot of unconditional regard as a child and it resulted in an innate sense of self-worth which was not dependent on achievement or social acceptance. That annoyed some people when I started working because they realised that I could not be manipulated using shame. So they relied on the next option they had - threat and denying. And like you said, I found a way to walk away from their power games and started a play my own game. And now I try to help others play this new game.