Taming the Mismanaged Mind

You may think your mental suffering is due to your bad boss, your toxic workplace, or your unfortunate circumstance. And while these things can affect your well-being, there’s nothing that can make you suffer as much as your unmanaged mind. The unmanaged mind leads to “wrong thinking,” and wrong thinking leads to suffering.

As James Allen said, “Suffering is always the effect of wrong thought in some area.”

Your unmanaged mind is the home to your inner critic. Your inner critic is responsible for your suffering and is worse than any boss you will ever have. Your inner critic micromanages you and makes you doubt yourself. Your inner critic tells you that you could have done better and reminds you of all the things you’ve done wrong when you were learning. Your inner critic ruminates on a grammatical error after you’ve sent the email. Your inner critic doesn’t recognize success. It’s never enough. There’s always more you should be doing or could be doing.

How to Tame the Unmanaged Mind The tips here will not only help you personally but will help you as a leader to coach a team member to tame the unmanaged mind, eliminate the inner critic, and reduce unnecessary suffering.

1. Notice the story

2. Challenge your narrative

3. Stop feeding the beast

4. Practice responsible language

Notice the story

Your unmanaged thoughts become the story, or the narrative from which you experience life. In other words, the story you tell is the life you live. You can’t fix what you can’t acknowledge, therefore the only way to shift the narrative is through awareness. ?If you don’t yet have the ability to notice your thinking, pay attention to your conversations, especially the ones about yourself.

How do you talk about yourself? Listen to the first two words, “I am.”? I’m so stupid. I’m so clumsy. I can’t dance even if I tried. I’m not this or that. Listen for clues that indicate a victim mindset, for example, “This would only happen to me.”

As a leader, listen to the language of your team members. If they constantly berate themselves or tell a story where they are often the unfortunate victim, you’ll need to offer some coaching support. This isn’t about telling people to “be more positive.” It’s about helping them shift their reality.?There’s a saying in Narrative Coaching: “Your story is the source of your suffering.”

Challenge the narrative

Ask a coworker, colleague or friend to challenge your narrative. Many moons ago I had an assistant challenge me. She heard me beating myself up for a mistake, and she said, “Stop being so hard on yourself! You’re learning!”

Our upbringing often influences us in ways we don’t realize. My assistant told me that her father always encouraged her and when she failed, he would always ask, “What did you learn?” This was a total contrast to the criticism I experienced growing up.

The point here is to recognize that your team members or colleagues may have had to overcome a lot of family dynamics and criticism which lives on unconsciously. You can rewire yourself and help others to rewire when they understand that so much of our behaviors are programmed before we were fully developed.

Stop feeding the beast

The unmanaged mind is a beast that wants to live. The beast lives on negativity, self-sabotage and criticism. As a leader, pay attention to those who engage in self-sabotage, and beat themselves up verbally. This habit is often guised as a joke, or as “self-awareness.” Underneath is often a hope that others may say, “Don’t be so hard on yourself,” or “That’s not true at all.” ?Don’t allow your team, employees or colleagues to feed the beast! Here’s why: Eventually harsh criticism turns outward toward the team, the boss, or the organization. The inner critic is fueled by the mismanaged mind, which eventually leaks out in behavior and language. ?

Practice responsible language

The unmanaged mind makes you believe you’re a victim of circumstances instead of a creator of your reality. It only takes a few conversations to easily determine the mentality of a victim or a creator. When we speak responsibly, we take ownership of our experiences, including our interpretations, emotions, and relationships, and we can easily identify our choices in any given situation. In contrast, the disempowered view life through the lens of having no choice—being a victim of circumstances, needing others to change but not recognizing the opportunity for self-change. You can get a good dose of irresponsible language by reading through Facebook posts during an election year. ?

How do you identify irresponsible language?

• Complaining
• Excuses
• Blame
• Resentment
• Disrespect
• Arguing
• Lack of curiosity / know it all

Conclusion

If your story is the source of your suffering, your story can also be the source of your salvation. If suffering is the effect of wrong thought in some direction, then "right thought" can reduce or eliminate suffering. I'm known for saying "conflict is not the problem, mismanagement is." So, the mind is not the problem, the mismanaged mind is.

As leaders we manage processes, priorities, and results. What if the next frontier is to tame the mismanaged mind?

?Marlene Chism is a consultant, speaker, and the author of??From Conflict to Courage: How to Stop Avoiding and Start Leading ?(Berrett-Koehler 2022). She is a recognized expert on the LinkedIn Global Learning platform. Connect with Chism via?LinkedIn ,?or at?MarleneChism.com

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