Be Your Own Coach: The Art of Relating to Yourself
“I long to accomplish a great and noble task; but it is my chief duty and joy to accomplish humble tasks as though they were great and noble. ... The world is moved along, not only by the mighty shoves of its heroes, but also by the aggregate of the tiny pushes of each honest worker.” — Helen Keller
When the alarm sounds in the morning, what do you do? Are you a four-alarm person? Or maybe the five-snoozes-later type? You could be the rare breed who stays away from alarms entirely allowing the body to wake naturally, or you might be among those who wish they could stay asleep long enough to hear the sound of the alarm they had set for a few hours later.
However you relate to the experience of waking up each day, you're not alone. There is a wide spectrum of tendencies and experiences with how we rouse ourselves, and research is still trying to discern what matters and why when it comes to optimizing our sleep and recovery.
While I can definitely nerd out about bio-hacking and sleep-optimization, that isn't what interests me today. I'm much more curious about what goes on in our minds when we move from sleep-state to awake. What is it that you tell yourself in those liminal moments between dream and reality? How do we speak to ourselves? What is the narrative that plays on repeat when we fall into the same tendencies and patterns we tell ourselves we'll change, come tomorrow?
For me, most of the chatter can be easily defeated, but there is one realm where I've faced the most humbling defeats... that liminal space between waking and sleeping, where the choice between snooze and discomfort can be an impossible one to make.
The Science (or the Art) of it All
If you're looking for evidence on why it is better to snooze, or why it might be more advantageous to get up right when the alarm sounds, you're likely to find articles and research that makes either case sound compelling (at least I did, e.g. here, here, and here.)
While the science of it all is still in process, there is a more nuanced conversation to be had, namely: the art of how you relate to yourself.
That inner-dialogue between you and... well, you... that conversation is a look into the art, or practice, of how we tend to relate to ourselves. While we can invest research dollars and case studies into how “x=y” with self-talk, I tend to believe the practice of knowing ourself by observing the dialogue can help give us what we need to be our best and healthiest selves, above and beyond what any data or "science" might prove.
“The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts.” - Marcus Aurelius
This is where the rubber meets the road for me. Ever since getting married, I've had to learn, or should I say, have had the privilege of learning, what it's like to navigate sleeping with a partner and co-creating the rhythms that will be healthiest for both people. With the learning curve, there has also been increased temptation to just stay in bed and cuddle, because what's not to love about that! This combination of change and re-learning paired with competing desires has led to me facing a deep struggle of facing the alarm clock each and every morning. Queue The Clash's infamous line: "should I stay or should I go?"
When you pair this question-mark with the past life of competing as a professional golfer, there has been both an external and internal retraining, a rewiring of my personal norms. The challenge still remains greatest when it comes to the little voice deep inside the head saying: "Quit slacking. You're taking the easy road. You need to be more disciplined. You're not good enough yet."
It may be highly unsatisfactory to read, especially if you came looking for answers, but the important piece of all of this is not in the action of what you or I choose to do in the moment, but in how we relate to ourselves after said action has taken place. I'm a human just like you, and I will honestly admit I have failed more than I have succeeded at overcoming the snooze-temptation these past few years. This has been a hard pill to swallow at times, yet it has been an interesting experiment to live through. Even this past week I faced this dichotomy: of wanting to wake up at a certain time, falling prey to the snooze on the alarm, and then crawling out of bed an hour later and experiencing the disconnect between who I say I want to be and how I end up acting.
Now these are small and trivial actions to examine, yet they still hold weight because it is a form of breaking an agreement with myself. This lack of integrity can create a foul mood that persists throughout much of the day if I'm not able to consciously recognize and sit with the emotion that follows. When I can recognize the inner-dialogue (or more-so the inner-beratement) as it takes place, I'm then able to shift the narrative and choose how I show up for myself in light of the action and resulting feelings.
The goal is to be at a place where I'm able to accept the choice I made, sit with the feelings I'm experiencing, and reinforce what I choose to believe about myself and what actions I want to take in future scenarios that might follow suit (aka, the next morning when I get up).
What I’ve Learned
This inner-dialogue intrigues me because I find myself caught in the throes of being both the protagonist and the antagonist most mornings these days. In this see-saw of conviction and failed agreements, I've learned some interesting insights when it comes to facing my own inner-critic and I'd like to share them with you here.
Insight #1: We all tend to relate to ourselves in one of two ways: a version of support or a version of challenge.
In simplistic terms, we give ourselves either a form of support or challenge, which I'll call self-forgiveness (extending grace to ourself) or self-discipline. Based on our personality, how we've been raised, and how we've chosen to live based on the roles we play in society, we will typically default towards one or the other.
Yet, given the complexity and dynamic nature of our daily lives, we will inevitably need both at different times. Not only do we need a calibration of both, we need to use each emphasis to help us get to a place beyond the feeling in that moment.
Insight #2: Along with the actions of what we give ourselves, we also have postures or stances we hold toward ourself: either self-acceptance and self-belief.
On the far-side of actions is the convictions on which those actions are founded. In health, we can tend to hold the posture of self-acceptance or self-belief, depending on how we are wired. Yet both feelings and ideas are essential to being healthy and whole, whereas just one can leave us imbalanced and misguided.
The level-up for each of us is to improve in the categories that we don't default into, the one that takes intention for us to unlock.
Insight #3: On either side of the fence, the actions fuel the postures. So, to fill in the gap, bring intention to the weaker of the two actions in order to build the weaker of the two beliefs.
As with so many aspects in life, there is a tension between two seemingly contradictory postures. How do we find the middle way? What does living out the Golden Mean entail? How can a balance be found?
I don't believe in arrival when it comes to this framework, but I do believe in its practice. A practice is something you do for the benefit found in doing it, not from the benefit found in where you might end up. The beauty is in the process, as they say. This means we carry with us the postures of self-acceptance and self-belief, and we feed ourselves with what is needed to help lift up the side of the equation that feels most wanting.
The question I like asking is: how are you showing up for yourself? And what do you need to be liberated to your greatest good? In the work I do, we talk a lot about this in terms of support (self-forgiveness or grace) and challenge (self-discipline). So an even simpler question is: Do you need to give yourself more support or challenge?
What this whole idea entails is really a conversation about knowing ourselves to better lead ourselves. If we can't show up and liberate ourselves then we won't do a good job of liberating others. The work always begins at home, and typically the conversation starts in our minds.
“Acceptance is its own brand of courage.” — Jeff Howe
Liberation In A Nutshell
Self-acceptance and self-belief sound nice and all, but they also feel impossible at times. For me, my growth-edge is self-acceptance. I struggle deeply with accepting myself for who I am, right now in this very moment. There's something about my competitive nature that seems to be compelled to try and be the best in everything I do, even when that bar is unrealistic at best.
This is why the Sufi poet Rumi so often speaks to me: "Your defects are the ways that glory gets manifested."
Or his modern co-patriot, Richard Rohr: "Love is saying 'yes' to what is."
The more I think about it, poetry itself is an art-form that almost impresses the act of self-acceptance on the reader. It doesn't always make sense, it can sometimes cause you to scratch your head, and other times it is just too right.
Maybe you're someone who really needs help with believing in yourself and what you bring. I'll leave it to Mike and Alec of The Tonic (newsletter) for a powerful punch of motivation in that department:
"After studying many facets of human nature in his book, Thinking Fast & Slow, Daniel Kahneman concludes, “When action is needed, optimism, even of the mildly delusional variety, may be a good thing.”
To win, you need to get out of your own way.
To get better — to do the hard stuff that MAKES you better — you have to have faith in your greatness… even if you don’t have evidence of your greatness.
You need to decide if you’re going to be your greatest obstacle…
… or your biggest fan.
How?
By leveraging your human ability to believe in something without evidence. Many people do this with their religion or their politics. Why not do it with your own ability to be great?
Because if there’s one thing you should be zealous about — if there’s one thing you should have an undying belief in, regardless of evidence or opinions or commentary — it’s your own potential for greatness."
Action Plan
So what is it that you need? Is it more acceptance of yourself? Or do you need more belief? Does it lead to building the muscle of self-discipline, or are you better served by focusing on growing the capacity to show yourself grace and forgiveness?
Whatever it is you need, I want to offer the simple encouragement to take something from this article with you going forward. The path we follow in instituting any change is to develop our self-awareness so that we are able to lead ourselves more effectively in those moments.
The simplest structure for self-awareness I know is a three-step process:
1- Retroactively (past)
2- Actively (present)
3- Proactively (future)
In order to begin, all we have to do is take the lens of either self-acceptance or self-belief, and then look back on your day or week and ask: "how did I do?" The more we consistently practice reflection in this manner, the more we begin to move into the active self-awareness phase, the place where we begin to recognize our tendencies in the moment as they are happening. Eventually we end up at proactive self-awareness, the place where we know our tendencies well enough to spot them before they even happen.
Beyond a mere action plan rests the motivating force for overcoming our default tendencies. There is always resistance to making change, and a necessary component for overcoming that resistance is a compelling reason why. So... why? Why are you going to bring greater intention to how you show up for yourself? What is that vision of the ideal future you want to step into? Why are you willing to do the hard work of changing a pattern in order to shift your current reality?
There is no magic formula here. These are hard questions, simple tools, and challenging introspection, all leading to a place of ownership for how we show up in the world and what we experience.
The payoff? In a nutshell... liberation.
“If we don't change, we don't grow. If we don't grow, we are not really living.
Growth demands a temporary surrender of security. It may mean a giving up of familiar but limiting patterns, safe but unrewarding work, values no longer believed in, relationships that have lost their meaning.
As Dostoevsky put it, ‘Taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear most.’ The real fear should be of the opposite course.”
— Gail Sheehy
Operating Metaphors:
There are actions (muscles), and postures (convictions).
The goal is to better understand which side we default to so that we can consciously and intentionally strengthen the other.
The two side are:
Actions
Either Discipline or Forgiveness / Grace
Postures
Either Belief or Acceptance
All are necessary to be healthy and whole.
