Negative Self-Talk

I was flying back from Montreal a couple months ago in the middle of one of the stormiest seasons of my professional life. It felt like the proverbial stuff was hitting the fan. Personnel changes, lagging sales, and various other challenges that all added up to a big pile of you know what.

As someone driven, my reaction to all this was to power up and GO. I traveled, I interviewed, and I dealt with my stress by working out harder than I have in a long while.

But there I was on that flight coming home from Montreal. I hesitate to share this, but I felt like giving up. I felt like an absolute failure.

The sentences above were actual conversations in my head. A part of me felt like this was deserved, and perhaps necessary, given the reality of where things stood. I could not have been more wrong.

In discussing humility in his new book The Ideal Team Player, Patrick Lencioni sheds light on this subject by suggesting that negative self-talk is actually a sign of a lack of humility. This thought was helpful, so I used it to strike a balance between holding myself accountable and maintaining a positive mental framework. Here is how I began thinking of things:

I need to take accountability and make no excuses. As the leader, I can't blame the sales team. It is ultimately on me. I was doing this. But...

If / when I begin to morph into negative self-talk, I immediately fail the team by making my "stuff" more important than their good. This is selfish, not humble. To quote C.S. Lewis, "true humility is not thinking less of yourself; it is thinking of yourself less."

By giving into negative self-talk, I was putting myself ahead of the those I was leading. This was obviously not my intention, but it was happening and I needed to snap out of it. Thankfully, it was easy to realize how unproductive all the negativity was.

So what did I do? The trip home from Montreal actually occurred about two weeks prior to our family vacation. A little "Revenge Time" and rest helped improve my attitude immensely. It cannot be stated enough, making time to get away and rest is vital for all aspects of our health.

I am not immune to negative self-talk and I suspect you are not either. Nothing good comes from it, as my recent experience details. I obviously did not give up and things are picking up again. I am apparently not a failure.

Nor are you.

Remember, don't give in to the resistance.