How to overcome your own biggest barrier
“Fear is the mind-killer.” Frank Herbert, Dune
You know that thing you know you ought to do, but you don’t do it?
Yes, you know the one.
Why don’t you do it?
We all have at least one. Some of us have quite a list. Whether it’s a work thing, a team thing, a commitment thing, a health thing, a relationships thing; whatever it is, we invariably try to ignore it, but it keeps coming back, because we know, deep down, it’s something we should tackle.
And because most of us are our own harshest critics, this unresolved issue can sit there, on our shoulders or in the back of our heads, sometimes for years, slowly stressing us out.
Resolving these types of issue is an essential capability, in both leadership and in life, because ultimately, we are the biggest barriers to our own success. Our own resistance can be the toughest opponent we ever face, and fear of our own internal critic is the main reason we don’t get past it.
It doesn’t have to be this way.
During the early part of my career, I worked in IT trying to teach people to use computers instead of typewriters. And as a twenty-something impatient tech nerd, it was exasperating at times, and it probably showed. So, I asked my boss if I could go on a course that included some coaching training because I thought that might help me become more personable.
What I hadn’t realised is that coaching is a practical subject, so not only would I need to practice coaching on my course-mates, they would also need to practice on me. And I would therefore need to offer up things I needed coaching on.
After a few weeks I ran out of mundane challenges for them to “help” me with, and rather than go for anything more serious – like stopping smoking, speaking confidently in public, or sharing my vulnerabilities – I found myself scrabbling around for increasingly trivial things to offer up to my colleagues.
I rationalised it as those topics being too weighty to share with novices like me, while suspecting I was really just too embarrassed, but the true reason was one I only came to understand much later.
The real reason was because I already knew what I needed to do. And I also knew that didn’t want to do it. I didn’t feel I had the self-discipline or the courage, and I didn’t want a pointless, painful conversation with someone just to show me that, or to give my own internal critic another round with my ego as the punching bag.
I didn’t consider there might be another way.
But here’s the thing, whenever I offer up a business problem or a case study to a group of leaders, be that an executive team or a CEO peer group, I know from experience that left to their own devices they will invariably come back with a single solution. It’s usually the first decent idea that gets tabled, it gets kicked around and refined, but by that point, creativity has shifted from what could we do, to how we would do it.
If I want to get multiple options, which invariably produces a better outcome, I either have to split them into separate groups, or to specifically ask them: “OK, that’s one option, now what else could we do? What other ways can we come up with?”
There are always other ways.
This is the key to overcoming our own resistance. One of the main reasons we don’t do the things we know we need to do, is because we think we know what it would involve, and that’s not a path we want to take – the stress is too great, the personal cost too high, the risk to our egos from that self-criticism too big if we fail.
We’re stuck with one “how”, and it’s that “how” that we don’t want to do. What we’re missing are those questions: “What else could you do?”; “What other ways can you come up with?” As simplistic as they sound, they are incredibly powerful.
So, think about that thing, forget what you think you should do, and ask yourself, how else could you tackle it? What other ways might there be? And however long it takes, and however hard it might feel, keep generating alternatives until you have at least a handful that you could tolerate taking forwards.
And that critical voice? Trust me, once you’ve shown yourself you can find a path that works for you, you’ll find your harshest critic actually becomes your greatest cheerleader.