zen habits

Embarrassment is an Integral Part of the Growth Process

By Leo Babauta

A well-known climbing coach said that the biggest obstacle in the way of people’s growth as climbers is, basically, fear of embarrassment.

When people want to get better at climbing, they try to do it privately, so that no one can see them doing things badly. They’ll go to the climbing gym when no one is watching, or hang out in a corner hoping no one is looking. But they’re missing out on the biggest opportunity — feedback from people who can see things they can’t see.

And the thing getting in the way is fear of embarrassment.

I’ve found that this is true no matter what you’re trying to learn. No matter what you’re trying to grow in. Fear of embarrassment will stop you from getting real growth and transformation.

My belief is not that we should just get over that fear. It’s that we could learn to see embarrassment as an integral part of the growth process.

I’ll talk about why in a moment. But first, let’s look at a few more examples where the fear of embarrassment stops people from growing:

• Writing a book or blog: This one might be a bit obvious — you want to write, you might start writing, but the fear of embarrassment (or being judged) stops you from writing or making the writing public. But even further, we resist getting feedback from people that might improve our writing, because we’re worried that the writing sucks. Imagine getting feedback from readers and more experienced writers who might help you get to the next level — most people cringe at the idea of showing their “embarrassing” writing to people who might judge them.
• Getting coaching or support from others: Most people avoid getting a coach, or getting real support from other people, because they are embarrassed to admit how their growth process looks. I haven’t been doing the things I said I would, I’m struggling, I don’t like things about myself. We have judgement for all of that, and we are embarrassed to show that to others. This stops us from getting support through all of this struggle.
• Taking your business to the next level: Whether you’re launching a new business or wanting your existing business to get to the next level … it can be hard to see where you’re getting stuck. Leadership is lonely, and we can only see what we’ve already learned to see. To get to the next level, it requires getting feedback from someone who can see what we can’t see. But this can feel embarrassing. We avoid getting that kind of support, and that means we struggle to do anything other than what we already know to do.

Hopefully you can see that this can be applied anywhere we want to grow — personal development, taking care of ourselves, deepening in a relationship, dealing with the overwhelming chaos of life. We struggle to get beyond where we are, because we are too embarrassed to get support, feedback, coaching that might take us to the next level.

Why Embarrassment is an Integral Part of the Process

We hope to grow and learn without embarrassing ourselves. If we can learn in private, and then show how good we are //after// we’re really good at it … then we won’t feel embarrassed. We want to avoid that feeling at all costs, even if it means never learning at all.

But that’s not how it works. We have to be willing to be bad at something before we can be good at it. The growth process requires us to mess up, to learn from experience rather than just reading about it or watching videos. The growth process requires us to be messy and stumbling in the unknown … and then to get some support when we stumble, think we’re doing it all wrong, or feel like giving up.

And that is embarrassing. It has to be embarrassing, because we are necessarily pushing beyond the boundaries of the self-image we’ve created for ourselves. We’ve stepped into a new area of growth, which means we can’t be the person who has everything figure out, who has it all together. We want to be the person who has it all together, but that’s only possible if we are not growing.

So we choose to grow and learn, to transform, but that means letting go of who we think we are, and who we’re trying to get others to think we are. That’s a letting go, and it’s embarrassing.

If we avoid that embarrassment (which is natural), we will avoid the growth. We will not step into the unknown, which is where real learning resides. Where meaningful work resides.

How to Work with the Fear of Embarrassment

OK, so you have a fear of embarrassment (of course!), and you can see how it’s holding you back.

How do you work with this fear? It’s a deep topic, but here are some ways to start working with it:

1. Recognize when it’s coming up. When you’re avoiding sharing with people, notice the fear. When you don’t want to get feedback or coaching or support, notice the fear. When you’re trying to stay safe or hidden, recognize the fear. Just name it “fear” and don’t get too caught up in what the fear is about.
2. Notice the effect the fear has on your life. Where is it holding you back? What is it keeping you safe from? What would be possible if you didn’t have to worry about the fear? How do you feel about all this?
3. Ask yourself if you want something different. What would you like that’s outside of the world created by this fear? What would you like to try instead?
4. Try something different. What else can you try that isn’t constrained by the fear of embarrassment? If you’re learning to climb, you might try climbing in front of other people and letting yourself do it badly. Dance badly in public and have fun! Write badly in public, sending it out to everyone you know, and ask for feedback. Ask for help. Let yourself be in the unknown. Get support from a coach or a group. Ask a teacher to rip your creation apart. Let. yourself be open to the depth of learning and growth.
5. Let yourself be with the fear, with love. The fear of embarrassment will definitely show up as you open yourself to something different, to getting feedback, getting coached, getting supported, getting messy. That’s OK! Fear is not the end of the world, it’s simply our companion in the unknown, in the deep place of transformation. Can you let yourself feel it, and let it simply be there in your experience? Can you give yourself love as you feel the fear?

As you let yourself feel the fear and feel the embarrassment, what will happen is that you start to shed your old self. You no longer need to be constrained by doing things perfectly, impressing anyone, showing the good side of yourself, because you are growing into a new kind of becoming.

What would be possible if you let yourself go through the transformation process? If you’d like to practice deeply with me and others, come talk about being a part of my Fearless Mastery program.

The post Embarrassment is an Integral Part of the Growth Process appeared first on zen habits.

zen habits

Simplify Habits: Get to the True Heart of Change

By Leo Babauta

Creating a new habit like meditation, journaling or exercise isn’t incredibly complicated — at the most basic level, you tie the habit to a trigger that’s already in your life, start small, and find ways to encourage yourself to remember it and actually do it.

But it becomes a much more complicated and much messier ordeal because:

• We have resistance;
• We give in to the resistance;
• We feel bad about ourselves as a result; and
• We make that meaningful, get discouraged, and let that derail us.

This is an almost universal thing, in my experience. No one escapes this trap.

So how do we work with it? We can make things really simple (that’s not to say easy) by getting to the heart of this: the resistance.

In addition, it helps to have a way to deal with feeling bad about ourselves when we give in to the resistance. I’ll talk about that after I talk about getting to the heart of resistance.

The Heart of Habit Change: Resistance

Let’s say you decide to do a morning habit like writing, meditation, yoga, or journaling …

You commit yourself to doing it every morning when you wake up (after coffee of course). You set a reminder. You wake up. Then …

Suddenly, you really need to check your email and messages. That leads to a bunch of other things that need to be done. Then you decide it’s time to check the news, or social media. Now you have to get ready. You’ll do that habit later.

What I didn’t describe above — and what most people don’t even acknowledge or notice — is the most important part. The resistance. If you can deal with the resistance, you can form a new habit. If you aren’t even aware of it, you’ll think there’s something wrong with you, or you’ll keep looking for better answers to fix this problem you have.

No amount of systems, books, answers will fix the problem of resistance. It’s something we can work with, but it doesn’t go away when you find the right answer. It’s simply fear and uncertainty.

If we can learn to work with that resistance, new habits will form.

Incidentally, it’s the same thing when you want to change an old “bad” habit — like quitting smoking or chewing your nails or eating too many chips. We have the urge to do the old habit (smoke a cigarette), and we have resistance to just letting the urge arise and fall. It’s like checking the email instead of meditating — we think we have no choice but to give in to the resistance.

Working with Our Resistance

So what if we didn’t need to give in to the resistance? What if it could be a place to embrace?

Here’s a way you might work with the resistance:

1. Make a commitment to do a new habit (or stop an old one, like smoking). Make the commitment small so your resistance isn’t high — meditate for 5 minutes, not an hour. Set a reminder if it’s a new habit. For quitting, try a small commitment like no smoking after 7pm.
2. When the time comes, and you resist doing the habit … pause. Don’t go to your emails or give in to the urge to smoke a cigarette. Just pause.
3. Breathe. Feel the resistance / urge, and stay with it.
4. Keep doing that. Give yourself love / compassion. Stay with the resistance / urge.
5. See if you can create some new way of working with the resistance / urge. Do you want to do it with someone else? Step up accountability or consequences? Find a way to bring play, joy, creativity to the activity? See the moment of resistance as sacred and full of wonder? Get creative.

There isn’t a right answer here. Play with it. Keep working with it. Our desire for it to be over and to not have resistance is our greatest stumbling block. Keep creating something new, each time the resistance / urge happens. Eventually, you’ll discover something that works. And along the way, you’ll discover something new about yourself.

Dealing with Failure

You hope that this will go perfectly. You’ll work with the resistance and you’ll crush this new habit. Yep! That’s exactly how it will go!

Except that part of it going perfectly is that it will include failure. That’s just a part of the growth process. You fail, you struggle, and you find something new in that.

The difficulty is that people take the failure to mean something meaningful about themselves. It becomes such a big deal. I failed! I must suck. Or I can’t do this. Or I’ll never be able to do this. Or What the hell is wrong with me?

Isn’t it interesting that a simple thing like failure carries such huge emotional significance? We feel bad about ourselves, we get discouraged, and we quit.

What if failure (and feeling bad about ourselves) was simply a part of the growth process? Not a big deal, but something to learn from? How would you approach it then?

I won’t give you the “answer” (because there’s not just one) … but I invite you to get creative. What can you try that will help with this part of the growth process? How can failure be embraced, loved, and be a place for curiosity and discovery?

If you can work with this, you will be liberated.

The post Simplify Habits: Get to the True Heart of Change appeared first on zen habits.