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Katie and Carol discuss Tip 11 from Skirt Strategies: 249 Success Tips for Women in Leadership.
In this episode Katie and Carol give you practical suggestions for moving forward and letting go of the negative emotions around fear and self-doubt created when we don’t perform at our best.
Tip #11 – Don’t beat yourself up over something you did. Look forward instead.
Many of us lie awake at night, replaying our own personal bloopers show. Been there. It’s a lack of self-confidence.
Instead of beating yourself up, visualize those thoughts swirling down a toilet. Bye bye. Then replace them with something positive, like a productive outcome. We will give you reinforcement.
Try that exercise next time you are in beat-up mode.
PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION
Hello and welcome to the Skirt Strategies podcast, the podcast to help you get the support, validation, and skills you need to accomplish your goals and really succeed in a male-dominated world, all without having to give up your incredible female strengths.
It’s another podcast of Skirt Strategies for women in leadership.
Katie: We’re going tip by tip through the fabulous book, Skirt Strategies: 249 Success Tips for Women in Leadership. To give you a little insight, we’re doing a deep dive on each one of them so if you are digging that book or even if you don’t know anything about what book we’re talking about, it happens to be very self-explanatory.
Carol: And it’s available on Amazon. Go get it.
Katie: Skirt Strategies and today is Tip Number 11: Don’t beat yourself up over something you did. Look forward instead.
Carol: I love this tip. It’s a reminder and I just think I have to be reminded of this constantly.
Katie: Constantly as women.
Carol: I beat myself up over way too much stuff and it is things that nobody else notices.
Katie: That’s why we put it in here. Think of a time dear listeners, when you lay in bed at night or maybe got woken up in the middle of the night because you couldn’t go back to sleep because your hormones were waging in some sort of whacko way and you start thinking about what happened that wasn’t ideal or you start thinking about what you might see as a stupid move you are beating yourself on the forehead for, “Why did I say that?”
Carol: “Why did I do that? Why did I say that?”
Katie: Is it as big a deal as you are making it?
Carol: You know I’m going to say no. It’s never as big a deal as we think it is in our minds and we blow it up and we go over it again and again and again and what would I have done differently and how come I didn’t do that in the first place and I’m going to tell on you – I don’t know if you played this over in your mind a lot but I have heard you tell the story – and that is one of the first times I saw Katie speaking, she came out from the bathroom and had her skirt tucked into her pantyhose. I don’t think I saw that. Other people did and you recovered. Did you go over that in your mind later? Like, could I have done that better? I think you actually recovered very well.
Katie: Thank you. I think we did bring this up recently in a podcast for a different application, like whether – I don’t remember if it was embarrassing moments or what but I did not want to draw attention to it because I wasn’t sure how many people saw it so I just yanked my skirt where it was supposed to be and kept going. Was I mortified on the inside? Uh-huh, yes.
Carol: Ooh and I have one. This still – 30 years ago I did some modeling and it was at a shopping center and I happened to be on a runway. My button, my top button to the blouse popped open and I was exposed, you know my bra was exposed and I was mortified, just absolutely mortified. Interesting – my comeback for that was – because everybody was looking at me and I just – I went and I buttoned it, and I looked at everybody in the audience and I put my finger up to my mouth like a “Shhh”, just like, “don’t tell.”
“Everybody saw that now everybody don’t tell.”
Katie: Oh that’s a great move.
Carol: It really did feel like a good comeback but at my age at the time I was mortified, horrified –
Katie: It damaged your character.
Carol: I don’t think I ever modeled again.
Katie: Good for you. That’s a good example. Recovering – we do talk about this sometimes in public speaking, how do you recover from things that you did and maybe this is a nice follow onto a previous podcast about public speaking because we fear things going on and so we fear stumbling or we fear saying the wrong thing or I have said things before that came off as a bad word instead of the –
Carol: The word you were hoping came out.
Katie: And I look around and people, they either get it or they pretend they don’t get it and I beat myself up over it. So it kind of translates into this tip, which is don’t beat yourself up other something you did.
Carol: So how do you get those horrifying thoughts out of your mind? I also don’t sleep well so in the middle of the night, wake up, “Oh my god I can’t believe I did that.”
Katie: Well do you wonder whether people that are to-the-core self-confident have those thoughts?
Carol: I do wonder.
Katie: I do wonder because I think people look at you and they say, “You are self-confident.” People say that to me and I am self-confident but there’s always that little talk inside my head, “Well I don’t know everything.” And maybe it’s a fear of exposure. I like having the image of not being perfect because to me it’s an out.
Then if something I do – well here’s what I do. And if it’s in the middle of the night it seems like nothing else is going on but whatever is in my head or I’m trying to fall asleep so it seems like a much bigger thing.
I tell myself two things: number one, just embrace it and it is what it is. Wait until the morning and then reassess it because it almost always is a nonevent in if morning. It seemed bigger in the middle of the night.
And then the second thing I do, if it’s still kind of around in the morning, is I think about what would I think of someone else if they did that? So for the most part it’s me being a big mouth. Like I said a joke that I thought was funny and it was maybe a little bit over – I wonder if it was over the edge. So I made some people laugh and maybe it was at the expense of someone but when I look back at it the next day and I say if somebody said that about me I wouldn’t have known that she was joking. I wouldn’t have said it was at my expense. So then I say, “If they took it the wrong way it’s their fault.”
Carol: Put the blame back on them.
Katie: Yeah because I’m not that – I’m a little edgy but I’m not so edgy that I’m going to tell somebody something really painful.
Carol: No I’ve heard you be edgy before and it could – if you don’t have a sense of humor – you probably would be offended and too bad. That person had no sense of humor and you can’t really bring them up again.
Katie: There is nobody that listens to us that doesn’t have a sense of humor.
Carol: That’s right. Everybody.
Katie: Because we’re all pretty cool.
Carol: Well so I love those coping mechanisms. I like the idea of telling yourself would you be offended in that case? I also use Myron Kaeding and the way she looks as these things is it’s a very Zen-Buddhist type, “How does that thought make you feel?”
Katie: Which, the thought of beating yourself up?
Carol: The thought of beating yourself up. How does it make you feel? Can you live without that thought? And how would your life be if you didn’t have that thought? It really gives you a pause to just let go of your thoughts and if your thoughts are torturing you, why do you have to have them? It’s just a thought.
Katie: Oh that’s true.
Carol: And you can do this with other parts of your life too. If there are things in your life that are torturing you, is it something you have to hold onto? Oh yes I have to hold onto that thought because it is the core of my being. I have to have that thought because it makes me who I am.
Well if you didn’t have that thought –
Katie: Are you any less you?
Carol: Are you any less you? Would you be any worse off? Is there a reason to hold onto that thought?
Katie: Well it helps me to talk about it so this is kind of therapeutic for me for those times when I do it because when I am in the middle of the night, and I’m thinking, “Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.” I can say, “No, it’s not.” I can recall this conversation that you and I just had.
Let me switch to a parallel thing that will come back to this – do you need to have positive feedback regularly?
Carol: I like it. I don’t have to have it.
Katie: Okay and what would I mean by have to have? If you don’t, do you start to behave a little more insecurely or not?
Carol: Do I have a lot of self-doubt if I don’t have it?
Katie: Yeah.
Carol: No.
Katie: Okay so I think that I, in certain situations, I will miss it. Maybe it’s the situation. Maybe it’s situational.
Here’s an example: I’m co-working – I’m on a project right now that has to do with some leadership training with somebody that I haven’t worked with before and it’s been very enjoyable. And it’s hard to work with somebody else when you do a lot on your own, right? But I knew I would benefit from it.
Carol: Right and I do know this about Katie. Just go to a speaking engagement with Katie and it’s interesting.
Katie: What? Where are you going with that? And do you know where I’m going?
Carol: No, go ahead. I think I do.
Katie: You better hold onto that thought because I’m going to dig into that in a minute because I have no idea what it is.
So with her, and she’s professional and she kind of has the same sort of background but she and I have never worked together. The two of us – picture us – you know maybe across the table working on something, we’re really – it’s more symbolically we’re shoulder to shoulder, looking forward at this product that we’re creating and doing together.
And so because of that it’s not a lot of, “Oh good job. Oh you did that well.” It’s not a lot of this feedback, going back and forth because we’re so caught up in, “Let’s make it a really good training product.” And so I realized the other day and I think I have been trying to give her positive feedback because I think that’s what I need and we just haven’t been in positive feedback mode because I’m ready for that.
Here’s an example of a situation, it’s kind of new. I’m readily for some positive feedback. So for me, those are the vulnerable areas where it’s an area of growth for me. It’s an area of something new. I kind of need to hear, “How am I doing?”
Carol: With somebody else new you want to know that you are working well with them.
Katie: Right. So that comes back around to am I more likely to beat myself up over something because it’s relatively new, I’m not so good at it, or I don’t know if I’m good at it or not because I’m not hearing from somebody other than what’s happening in my own head. The bottom line question of this being, “Can positive feedback overcome this beating up over something you did?”
Carol: Interesting.
Katie: I think maybe it can. So the more you are being stroked, the less likely you are to harbor on those feelings.
Carol: To beat yourself up over something minor that happened, even major.
Katie: Next question then, “How can you surround yourself with positive feedback?” And one of the interesting answers is, “You ask for it.” You could ask people.
Carol: That’s true. Interesting. I’m right in the mid of this. I have requested from the people who pay me, to give me an evaluation. I haven’t had one for years.
Katie: Really.
Carol: Yeah. I’m supposed to get one every year and I think they just think, “Yeah you are doing a great job. We don’t have time. Keep going.” And I finally sat them down and I said, “I want to know how you feel about the job I’m doing and you need to get this done.” I set it all in motion. I gave everything they needed to get it done. I told them, this is because I heard from a board member, just recently, that he absolutely loved the job I was doing. He absolutely thought I was perfect for the job and he just gushed over –
Katie: Isn’t that nice?
Carol: It was so nice and I realized, at that point, that I had been having all of these self-doubts because I don’t hear that.
Katie: Well what a great lesson?
Carol: It was a great lesson. It was like, “Dang. You know what? I think they love me. I think they really love me.”
Katie: A board that I’m on we have done executive director evaluation two times in the last three years, if you guys want to borrow our template.
Carol: I would love – I have a template. They just haven’t been doing it and then they wanted to go out and do a 360 with my staff and I’m like, “That’s fine for you but this evaluation is for me to know what you think, not what my staff thinks,” because I already know what my staff thinks. We work together daily.
What I don’t know is how do my bosses think I’m doing. If I need to correct something then let me know. I build this stuff up in my head and I beat myself up over something that I don’t think they even know I’m beating myself up over, so positive feedback is really important and for those of you who have people that you work with, understand that positive feedback is very important for them because they beat themselves up too.
And women do it worse than men. I’m convinced.
Katie: Why is that?
Carol: I don’t know but we will have a the undercover man –
Katie: We are going to have an undercover man in the future episode about this and we may even get it into this episode but I think it’s good to have a man’s perspective on this because sometimes we beat ourselves up over what we think a man is thinking about us and it couldn’t be further from the truth. So I think it would be good to have a man’s perspective.
Katie: Well, where’s the value in beating yourself up? Maybe I may have just discovered the critical question? Where’s the value in beating yourself up?
Carol: Why do we do it?
Katie: I don’t know. There is probably fear behind it.
Carol: Uh-huh. It is fear based. There must be something in your DNA that makes us do this because we all do it.
Katie: It’s got to be self-confidence. It’s got to be self-image. Or if you are a perfectionist, you want to be doing something better. It could be very person related. So I was just thinking, what is the value in it and are we changing anything by the beating ourselves up and how can you move beyond it?
I heard somebody once say, “When you find judgmental thoughts, rather than being frustrated by them – this is very visual and conceptual and I don’t know if it will make sense or not but – when you have those, “Oh I wish I hadn’t said that.”
Instead of the pushing away, pushing away, look at it instead of embracing it. I said that. Listen to what I did. Maybe find something positive in it like, “I’m sure the rest of the people saw me as strong and outspoken because I took the risk at saying something.”
“Yeah I may have offended somebody. It happened.” Can you hear the different self-talk and the embracing than the, “Oh I can’t believe I’m beating myself up.”
So if you can get to that embracing phase and just kind of hug it, and then let it go. Maybe you’ll be more likely to flush it down the toilet figuratively at that point.
Carol: Easily at that point. Pema Chodron? Do you know who she is?
Katie: No.
Carol: She’s a Buddhist monk I believe. She talks about embracing thoughts, embracing those difficult thoughts and more in a meditative way. Take that thought into meditation, embrace it, love it for what it is, let it be with you, let it sit with you, and then let it go because you’ve worked through it.
Katie: Has anyone ever said, in talking about loving it, has everybody ever said to you that part of what you just did was part of what they love about you? So I’ll use the example of me again, big mouth, if I said something to be funny and it may have been edgy or over the line, are there also people that say, “God I love that about you.” And now it’s like, it’s part of me. That’s my character. Let me be clear. I don’t go around leaving a trail of bloody bodies behind me, at all.
Carol: You don’t. You use your sense of humor and I can see where people without a sense of humor might be offended by some things you say.
Katie: And I could use it to shut people up.
Carol: And you do.
Katie: And I do. If there’s somebody that deserved it. In a workshop for example, if somebody is being a sniper so to speak, then I will sometimes call them out publicly but I will sometimes call them out publicly. I’m very careful about that because these are clients that are usually in there but sometimes a team needs that. They need to hear a dynamic kind of stifled. So what was I getting at?
The positive – the loving of it – as part of embracing it, is it seen as, that’s part of me. There is a skill in that. I mean that’s one way of looking at it.
Another way of looking at it or another thing to consider I should say is where does the lessons learned of this come into parenting, those of us that are parents?
I have two daughters. You have amongst you and stepdaughters, actually I have three daughters if you count stepdaughters and you have five if you count stepdaughters, so girls especially need that safe environment to develop their psyche and their personality. I think that’s because they are in a culture, a society that’s so unfair about women’s images, so unrealistic. So think about the potential for lack of self-confidence that’s in our girls. Think about that potential.
So when we parent, how can we keep from having those nights of beating themselves up or hating what they said?
Carol: Or just how they look or you know they’ve gained some weight or something – the self-image thing – I think it’s having the conversations with them, making sure they understand those are air-brushed women in those magazines. Those are not real women and that real woman has cellulite on her legs just like every other real women.
And then being sure to have that conversation and being sure to have the conversation that they are wonderful and fascinating just the way they are, that positive feedback.
Katie: Give them love, embrace them, and positive feedback and a safe environment. It just goes back to that, how do you parent? The tough love certainly has a time but boy when it comes to this, what goes through their heads, their poor little heads. Oh I would not like to be –
Carol: A teen again. No kidding. I had that thought. I was with my girls this weekend, and of course they are experimenting with partying.
Katie: You could have said a lot of bad – worse things than that.
Carol: Yes there are in college and it’s just a little nerve wracking, watching them go through that.
Katie: Well one of mine is at that same college, in the same sorority.
Carol: So they have each other to tell on each other.
Katie: I started thinking, you were talking for just a minute about the image that’s around us and how it all leads back to we kind of beat ourselves of because the image around us in society is so high and perfect and then I see somebody that is a role model of mine that doesn’t look perfect. I love her and of course she doesn’t look perfect. Her hair is kind of a funky style or she’s a little overweight. To me that’s nothing.
So then I apply that to myself, why would I be so worried about how I have to look? I like to be put together for me. I won’t tell you what I’m wearing right now because we’re not on camera so I didn’t put myself together, right? So I like that feeling, if it makes me feel good when I’ve got an outfit on that makes me feel good.
Carol: I was watching on the Today Show, they had – which has changed a lot but they have Bulldog, who is a rapper? Have you heard of Bulldog?
Carol: No.
Katie: Many of our followers probably have but maybe the younger ones, but Bulldog wears a three-piece suit. He’s a nice looking guy. He’s, I won’t say what ethnicity he is because I will get it wrong but I’m thinking Puerto Rican or something.
And he’s got dancers. So he’s performing and it was kind of a good funky song and he’s got four women that are in – it had a little country theme to it so they had on short cowboy boots and cut off jeans that were about as high as they could go and still be on morning TV and something that was showing a busty top and they were dancing. They were very talented.
And they were beautiful. And they were all smiling. He has these – the proverbial good looking women that all she’s doing is dancing and looking good and the manly looking guy. I know a lot of women who have an issue with that image.
Is it condescending to women because – and then the other side of me, but we’re more beautiful than men might be. We can be more beautiful than men might be so isn’t it great that we are women. Is there a part of that that we can highlight and embrace as long as these women aren’t bringing down the entire gender in some way?
I know this is a bigger conversation.
Carol: It is. I think about it and I think of what we are doing to our women right now is really semi-criminal. I guess it does have to do with beating yourself up other something because I don’t have to have that thought but I do think – I can’t tell a college student from a hooker anymore. And nobody can because the skirts are the same length. The high heels are the same height. The cleavage that’s being shown. So you really can’t tell. So we’ve taken on a hooker look for women and I’m not happy about it. Maybe because I’m 50 and I don’t look like a hooker anymore.
Katie: There are 50-year-old hookers.
Carol: Yes I could and I could wear those shoes too. Then I’d look like a transvestite. I’m really tall.
Katie: I don’t want women to look like men. I’m not saying that. That’s kind of where you and I are going with this. Where is the balance of the femininity in the workplace that’s appropriate? We’re trying to push the line out on that just a little bit. When I was an engineer many years ago I didn’t wear a suit but I almost always wore a blazer and it was almost always black, brown, or blue.
Carol: So manly.
Katie: So manly and that was how you looked professional. Now women wear pretty things. Some ruffles. I like that change.
Carol: I do too and I think that’s what we are pushing for. I actually don’t like the high heel pencil skirt. Everybody looks good in it. It looks very professional. I guess if you’ve got to do it you’ve got to do it but I like the idea of having some flowing garments that are feminine and just not that tough look. And we’re not there yet.
Katie: Well of all people that should be wearing high heels, I should be, and I shouldn’t say should. That’s silly, right?
Carol: Right.
Katie: But my feet hurt in anything higher than about an inch.
Carol: Well mine do too. I guess that’s from wearing high heels all my life.
Katie: I don’t think I ever really did. I’ve just got bad feet.
Carol: Well on that note, don’t beat yourself up over that Katie.
Katie: You saw right where I was going. Are you going to tell me what you were going to say earlier?
Carol: Oh I was totally over that. No I was just going to say that we’ve done some speaking engagements together and Katie is used to doing them on her own.
Katie: Oh when I interrupt you like this?
Carol: No it’s more that you leave me backstage and I have to interrupt you and push myself into the conversation because Katie can go on and on and on. And I love her for that.
Katie: Well I’ll tell you. Working with this other women right now, it’s hard to have two people talking regardless.
Carol: Totally understood.
Katie: Well let’s leave it at that because ladies we are going to let you use this as a therapeutic moment and don’t beat yourself up over something you did. Look forward instead and that whole looking forward concept is maybe one of the other tips. Leave it behind you and look forward.
Carol: Use it for the lessons it taught you and move on.
(Music plays)
That’s it for this episode of the Skirt Strategies podcast. Thank you for joining us and please be sure to leave a question or comment at Skirtstrategies.com. Remember that success comes when you lead using your natural female strengths.
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