Alright, folks! So today we’re diving headfirst into the wild world of self-criticism and the liberating idea that sometimes, the truth just doesn’t serve us. Picture this: you drop a glass and suddenly you’re the clumsy villain of your own story! But guess what? It’s time to flip the script! I’m here to chat with you about how our interpretations of our little blunders can spiral into a tsunami of self-loathing, and how we can break free from that cycle. We’ll unpack the notion that how we perceive our mess-ups—big or small—can shape our confidence and overall vibe in life. Trust me, realizing that life is messy and that we don’t need to play the blame game can be a total game-changer. So let’s kick that guilt to the curb and learn to be our own biggest cheerleaders instead! Ready? Let’s roll!

Takeaways:

1. Life is messy and embracing that messiness allows us to approach our emotions and experiences with more grace and understanding, instead of blame.
2. Understanding that our perceptions of truth can often hinder our growth is vital for personal development and emotional resilience.
3. Rather than focusing on whose fault it is when something goes wrong, we should ask ourselves how to move forward and what we can learn from the situation.
4. Shame and guilt are unhelpful emotions that can prevent us from making progress; instead, we should learn to be kind to ourselves and focus on constructive actions.
5. The narrative we create about ourselves in moments of failure can either propel us forward or hold us back, so we must choose our words carefully.
6. We often believe that attributing blame leads to accountability, but in reality, it can create more negativity; let’s focus on solutions instead.

Links referenced in this episode:

1. amandahest.ca/bookacall

Hey, I'm Amanda Hess.

I'm a certified life coach.

But what you need to know is I'm a sensitive woman just like you, and I'm going to help you understand yourself better so that you can approach your life differently and feel really good about it.

Let's go.

Today, I want to start with something I said to a client this week that kind of stopped her in her tracks.

She was beating herself up over something small and defending it really hard.

She said to me, but, Amanda, it's the truth.

I really was that mad.

And what I said to her was, okay, but sometimes the truth doesn't serve you.

And today I want to talk about that because I think it's one of the most freeing things that you'll ever let yourself believe.

What was happening with my client is we were talking about how she is critical of herself.

And this is a very common thing.

This is a very common thing for my brain.

This is a very common thing for most people that I coach.

And she was telling the story of how she had dropped a glass and that the glass had shattered, and she had a voice inside of her head that was saying, I'm so clumsy.

I can't believe I did that.

What is wrong with me?

And what happens is when we're telling the story of that happening, we will tell it in such a way that it seems very factual.

So.

So when she was telling the story, she was telling it like, I messed up.

I am careless.

I am clumsy.

My husband even said to me, you know, you put your glass in a really bad spot, and I oftentimes almost knock it over because of where you put it.

And it seems very harmless to talk about it in that way.

But what I was saying to her, and what I will say to you is that it's not harmless.

And how we do one thing is how we do everything.

So when we tell a story about ourselves, about something that we have done, about a sin that we have committed, be it spilling a glass of water and breaking the glass, or making a mistake in your relationship and doing something that you wish you wouldn't have done, saying something in a fight that you wish you wouldn't have said, right?

When we look at this, we think that there is a difference, but there isn't.

What happened in this case is, if you notice, there's just this hypercritical nature that gets brought in to, I did this thing, and it's my fault.

And I need to own that as my fault, because I'm the one that knocked over the glass.

I'M the one that messed it up, so it's my problem.

It's something I did.

And that sounds so factual.

And in fact, you know, when I'm coaching someone, we oftentimes will separate facts out from thoughts.

And that's a big part of the work, is what parts of this are factual and which parts of this are not factual.

And in fact, just an interpretation by your brain.

Sometimes when we're doing this, we can get into an argument about what's factual and what's not.

But I don't really look at it like that.

I look at it from the standpoint of is me believing this version of this story creating a result that I want to create in my life.

Right?

We look at it.

When I coach you, I'm looking at it through that lens.

Here's the reason why.

I think one of the most beautiful things about coaching, my favorite thing about coaching, the way that I coach, is that we are not having this conversation to air it out.

We are not talking about this to have it go nowhere or bring up old hurt or somehow, if we look at it enough times, we'll feel better about it.

That is not what we're doing.

What we're doing is we are truly results focused.

And so when a client comes to me and they say they're experiencing a ton of anxiety, when they are telling me that they have perpetual overthinking, that every situation has a little bit of a thought soundtrack attached to it, that they find themselves shutting down, being quiet or freaking out and losing their shit, that they are just in this experience of themselves with.

Where it's an inhospitable place inside of themselves.

Where I typically start seeing problems is in the hypercritical nature of my clients.

This is a very common trait.

It's very common in sensitive women, women with sensitive nervous systems, women that are neurodivergent, women that have been through trauma, women that are empaths, women that are in tune emotionally, but that also don't realize that the way that they see things is actually harming them.

I was telling my client on this call that I grew up in a home where everything had to be somebody's fault.

And I've talked about this on this podcast before.

This isn't new, but I grew up in this home where somebody had to be at fault at all times for all things.

And that, in fact, I grew up in a home where we didn't just cry over spilt milk, we cried over spilt water.

That this is what was happening for us.

Inside of our home, that this is how my brain essentially got formed, to look at mistakes, to look at things that went wrong, to look at things that are messy.

And so when I'm helping someone in this area, when we're looking at the truth, and I put that in air quotes, the truth isn't always the truth.

The truth is your interpretation of the truth.

I knocked over a glass of water.

That is a factual statement.

Everything that comes after it isn't the truth.

It's my fault.

I was clumsy, et cetera, et cetera.

Not the truth.

I was even saying to this client that I was, so.

I'll call it persecuted in my family for making mistakes, falling down, spilling things, et cetera, et cetera.

I did that so often that my family started identifying it as Amanda's.

Like, if you made a mistake, if you made a mess, if you broke something, it was an Amanda.

And the other thing that I remember happening in my home, and my husband points this out because my dad still does say it, and I.

And I say it with deep love, but also, like having a deep understanding of what this does.

My dad would always say if something went wrong, that the reason why it happened was carelessness.

And that can all sound very factual.

And the truth is, that's how he was raised, so it makes sense.

But what I have really learned over the years is a few key things that are super important.

Number one, life is messy.

Relationships are messy.

Humans are messy.

We are always going to be messy forever and ever till the day we die.

And so we don't need to cure being messy.

Number one, it's just a really big core belief that I have.

I also believe that relationships are messy and that accidents are accidents, in that nobody means to have an accident.

We don't need to attribute blame.

And in fact, something that I like to say to myself and to others is, what if this is nobody's fault?

And that is not what is needed to solve the problem.

And I will tell you right now, it is never needed to solve the problem.

What we tend to do as a society in the way that we're.

We're brought up, is that we want somebody to have accountability.

Like, that's the most important piece of the puzzle.

Somebody needs to take accountability here.

And I'm like, what if they don't?

And what if we're just taking accountability for the wrong things?

What if placing blame only creates more negative energy and more problems and creates less repair and creates less of a positive result?

Right.

As I discussed before, I am very much Interested in what is the result we're looking for.

So let's look at knocking over a glass of water.

So we knock over the glass, the glass breaks.

There's glass everywhere.

Did anybody die?

Nope, everybody's still alive.

Did anybody get injured in this case?

Nope, nobody got injured.

Does it take a while to clean up the mess?

Yep, it's a pain in the ass.

And I have to get out the vacuum and the towels and a broom.

And we're going to have to make sure we have shoes on so we don't cut ourselves.

But who, listening to this, has never broken a glass?

I would suggest nobody.

We've all broken them many times over the years.

Is it carelessness that causes it?

I don't know.

Who cares?

It's the wrong question to ask.

The question to ask is, is this really a big deal?

And the answer is, no, it's not a big deal.

Now why does this matter?

Why are we talking about a glass of water?

Because how we do one thing is how we do everything.

So let's say in your relationship, you have an affair.

You have an emotional affair with somebody, you have an actual affair with somebody.

Whose fault is that?

It doesn't matter.

That's the wrong question.

What was really going on here?

What was missing in the relationship?

What was missing for me?

What needs weren't being met in the relationship for them?

For me, how did we get to this place is not about how do we attribute blame.

Do you see what I'm saying?

And you might be listening to this and it might be triggering for you because you might be the person that got cheated on, right?

But even inside of that dynamic, which I've coached on both sides of this, even inside of that dynamic, it's not about whose fault is this, Because I see victims of infidelity, we'll call it that, using that against themselves and saying to themselves, well, I did something wrong.

Something was missing in me.

I wasn't beautiful enough.

I wasn't attentive enough.

Something is wrong with me.

I wasn't worth enough.

We start doing that, we just attribute so much blame.

I see this happening when you lose a job.

I see this happening when you have a fight with a child.

We do this, and this is not helpful.

So what if what you're thinking isn't a fact?

What if facts aren't facts?

And what if a lot of the times facts maybe don't matter?

And here's what I mean, we can decide that it's a fact that I was clumsy, that I am a Narcissist, that I am a terrible person, that I am unattractive, that I don't know how to have a loving relationship, that I am lazy.

Right.

Whatever it is, I can believe those things about myself.

But when I believe those things about myself, what does that create?

Well, it creates shame.

It creates guilt, mostly.

Shame and guilt.

What do shame and guilt like to do?

Well, shame and guilt love to go and hide.

So shame and guilt will go and try to disappear.

And what that means is we will try to ride over it, we'll try to shove it away.

We won't want to look at it because it's painful.

If we look at it and we're beating the shit out of ourselves, that's so painful.

So we will never solve it.

Which the reality is, is can I move past this situation and move towards what's next?

No matter how big or how small the problem is that you are looking at what happens next is going to define how confident you are.

What happens next is going to define how you are experiencing yourself after this happens, what you're going to do next.

When we are holding on to things as being blame based, fault based, these things don't serve us.

So even if everybody in the world does agree that it's the truth, that you're a terrible person, you've got to ask yourself if it serves you to believe that.

And the answer, my friend, is always no.

A lot of times what we think is, oh, but actually though, then if I think I'm a terrible person, then I'll do better.

I've never seen that work, not one time.

Instead, what ends up happening is our confidence devolves.

We are messy in the way that we interact with other people.

We are not able to hold ourselves up and we need other people to do it for us.

We don't want that.

Whether you are the person that made the actual mistake or, or not, we don't want that.

It doesn't help you, it doesn't help the situation.

Nobody grows, nobody gets better through that.

Instead, we need to learn how to have our own back.

And that means that the story we tell about ourselves, we need to be the protagonist.

We need to be the protagonist.

Yeah, I spilled water.

It happens.

Yeah, I made a mistake.

I really up.

It happens.

But I'm the kind of person that sometimes makes mistakes like everybody else.

And I can move forward, I can take the next steps.

I cannot make it mean anything about me.

I don't need to have this devolve inside of my own mind.

This is available to you.

This is available to everyone.

Instead of I need to place blame on myself or others.

How do I move forward?

What do I need right in this moment?

How do I regulate my nervous system?

How do I handle myself emotionally?

What am I gonna think about on purpose here to move forward, create more love, create more connection, create more growth, create more of what I want in my life.

We move towards something purposefully.

So my friends, this is what I've got.

Short episode.

I gotta jump on a client call.

But listen, if you wanna talk this through, we can do it on a discovery call.

It's always available to you.

You can go to amandahest ca bookacall.

I would love to talk about it with you.

A judgment free space to really explore what if what you think about yourself is an effect.

All right, see you here next time.

Bye for now.

Thanks so much for listening today.

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I'm excited to see you back here next week with a brand new episode.

Until then, take care friend.