The Dangers of "I Should Have Done Better" and How can we Train Our Brain to Move Forward After a Mistake?

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"Forgive yourself for not knowing what you didn’t know before you learned it."

Maya Angelou

"I should have tackled that conversation better", a friend confessed as we were sitting and chatting together over a cup of coffee. She was sharing her experience of having a confrontational feedback dialouge with her colleague. She felt like she hadn't been able to express her thoughts and concerns properly and wondered if she had become too defensive or emotional. After hearing her entire story, I knew that she was being too harsh on herself. While there were certainly areas of improvement in her conversations, she was zooming in on her shortcomings with a big, negative, and critical lens.

I had a smilar experience with one of my coaching clients a few months back. As a Regional Sales Manager, she was supposed to deliver an online training to her teams in Asia. I knew she had prepared well for this event. However, on the day, there were some unexpected technical glitches, which disrupted the flow of communication for a few minutes. Even after the glitch was sorted, her mind kept going back to the problem and made her feel less confident for the remainder of the presentation. She later shared with me that she kept feeling guilty for not figuring out all tech earlier. “I should have double checked. I should have prepared for this.” Because of that one incident, she had dismissed her performance for the rest of the presentation. That one “should” had left her feeling guilty and regretful.

“I should have…” these three dangerous words are not unfamiliar to me. I have heard these from my coaching clients, my friends and family umpteen times. I am no exception to this. I used to be addicted to “Should” thinking.

“I should have planned the weekends better”

“I should have stayed on top of the kids homework”

“I should have given more time to call my family members over the holidays”

Can you relate to this thought process? Have there been situations in the past when after taking a misstep or making a mistake, you just could not shake the feeling of guilt and regret and kept thinking to yourself, “I should have……”

If yes, I hear you and I understand you. You are not alone in feeling this way. Most of us, sprinkle the self-judgemental "Shoulds" over our efforts and actions more than we sprinkle salt on our food. We are often forgiving of others if they make the same mistake, but we uphold ourselves to the highest standards with very little room for errors. We tend to judge ourselves, whenever there is a slightest aberration from our self-expectation of flawless behaviour. Isn't it?

So, why is it important to highlight the dangers caused by one little S-word. Here’s why:

1. As long as we are human, we are going to sometimes, mess and miss things. In those moments, using the judgemental ‘should’ generates all the emotions of guilt, regret and shame.
2. Guilt and regret can keep us stuck in the past and not look for solutions for the future. They stop us from noticing the lesson buried in that event. 
3. These thoughts are unproductive and drain our energy and stop us from moving forward.

How can we train our brain to move forward past mistakes and navigate with self-judgemental thoughts?

Today, I want to share with you three steps that can help us tap into our emotional intelligence to move forward after making a mistake.

Step 1 – Create Awareness.

Try this experiment today.

You know those buzzers on talk shows or game shows. Whenever you say a swear word or a taboo word, the buzzer goes on. Install a similar buzzer in your head. Set a buzzer in your mind for the word “SHOULD”.

Start to develop more awareness of the number of “shoulds” you use in your language. Every time you are filled with a self-judgemental or a self-critical thought, let the buzzer go on. Identify and acknowledge that thought. Perhaps even indulge it and say 'thank you for letting me know'. After all, the thought is making us aware of the area we want to do better! Our goal is not to eliminate, but crete more awareness of these thoughts.

Step 2 – Complete the Thought – A mindset reframe from “Should” to “Could”

Recently, I had an interesting conversation with one of my clients during our coaching session. She was feeling bad about something she had missed doing, which is quite natural.

“I should have created more time for myself to work on my visibility and network within the organization.” “I should have reached out to my mentors and manager more often." She observed. After she let out all her past regrets, she took a pause and looked at me and said, “Anyway, what next?” I smiled and said back to her, “That’s exactly right. What’s next? Now that you have acknowledged all these things that you missed out on doing, what’s the next step we can take?”

When I said this, I saw a flicker of feeble smile in her eyes. That was her AHA moment. In that moment, she knew that no matter what she had done so far, she could complete that thought by thinking about what she could do next.

We don’t have to stay stuck in the “Should” thought. Any time we have one of these inner conversations, we can complete that thought, by saying out loud to ourselves “What’s next?”

Instead of thinking “I should have done this better”, we can reframe the narrative to “How could I have done this better?” and "What can I do to improve this next time?"

This approach helps us navigate the situation with curiosity. We can deal with a mistake from a place of learning something new about yourself and about others and about life.

Step 3 – Learn to practice Self-Compassion

Self-compassion is the practice of being kind to ourselves. Is kindness reserved for those gentle souls who sit only on meditation and yoga mats? Or is there a place for self-kindness in boardrooms and competitive high intense work environments?

You guessed it right. (I hope.)

Research done by Dr. Kristen Neff shows that greater levels of self-compassion have been shown to correlate with increased happiness, self-confidence, motivation for improvement, physical health, and life satisfaction. Greater self-compassion also reduces anxiety, stress, depression, and shame.

In my coaching practice, I meet a lot of successful leaders. Leaders who have reached where they are today by striving, by hard work, by pushing themselves out of the comfort zone and by holding themselves accountable to higher levels of performance. This is all great and amazing, with only one problem. Many of them feel burntout, unhappy, anxious or stressed. Without appreciation for what we have done, our drive to do more and do better, can easily leave us feeling like an unsuccessful imposter. It can negatively impact our growth, our confidence and well being.

Since discovering the work and website of Dr. Neff, I have found myself using “Self-Compassion” exercises and practices for myself and for my clients, again and again. A simple practice that has stuck with me is “Being my own best friend”. And I definitely needed a lot of it in 2020. Everytime I was harsh on myself for not being productive, I had to be my buddy and encourage myself lovingly to move forward. Every time I yelled at my kids, I had to be kind to myself and forgive my human limitations and learn to be more patient with myself and my kids.

By being our own buddy, by being kind, we can encourage ourselves to perform better, nudge ourselves outside our comfort zone, and continue to strive to reach higher while still appreciating where we are.

One of the biggest roadblocks to becoming the boldest, bravest and most brilliant selves is holding ourselves prisoners to our guilt and regret. So today, I want to leave you with these two final thoughts.

Forgive yourself for everything that you should have done better or differently. You were doing your best you could.

And

Promise yourself to take the lesson and try differently next time. You are going to do your best.

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That's all for today. Thank you for reading this till the very end. If you liked reading this, you might enjoy the earlier edition on "Colouring Outside the Lines".

Please do share your thoughts and tips on how do you navigate the self-critical, self-judgemental narratives in your head.

As always, I would love to hear your stories and struggles. Together, we can help each other become BOLD, BRAVE and BRILLIANT.

Until next time, take good care of yourself and don't forget to be your own best friend.

Nidhi