Coaching is Magic

Hello lovely friends.

Fun topic for today: COMPARE AND DESPAIR wooooo!!!

Seriously: listen up because this REALLY matters.

What is Compare and Despair:

It's when you apply for a job + mentally measure your credentials against someone else's assuming the job will obviously go to them (and feel terrible).

Or when you are stuck in your research and look at someone very prolific and think about how much they'e done and how little you've done by comparison. (and feel terrible).

A fun one is when you have really little kids, like still nursing, still wiping butts, still cutting their food and never sleeping through the night and you look at colleagues with kids a few years older who seem to be much more put together and judge yourself for being such a hot mess (and feel terrible).

Notice a pattern ?

We do this, and it feels like crap, and yet we stew in these painful and self-deprecating thoughts.

"Well, it's just that she did a fellowship ....."

"She has kids the same age as me but she already is an assistant professor"

"She already has a house and two cars and I'm still eeking by on a fellow's salary".

Isn't it fascinating ? Notice how we NEVER compare ourselves to anyone less fortunate than us and come out ahead. We never look at how far we have come since medical school, all the things we are doing well, all of the reasons we might be the more desirable candidate. Why do we this to ourselves?!!!!

And more importantly...can we stop?!

Spoiler alert: Yes we can stop.

As to the why:

A prevailing theory is that compare and despair comes from the primitive parts of our brains, evolutionarily designed to protect us by constantly telling us all the things that might go wrong and kill us out there in the world.

In today's world though, the primitive thoughts actually work against us. They went from helping us, to being "thought errors" that set us even more behind.

How? Whelp, comparing yourself to the other candidate creates insecurity when it is confidence that will be more likely to get you that job. Feeling inadequate about your research is not the driver of inspiration and dedication needed to move you along with your work. Feeling badly about your financial situation is not nearly as effective at helping you to improve it as is seeing the value you bring the world and all the possibilities that exist for you to make more money.

The solution is recognizing when do our thoughts serve us, and when (true or not true) they get in our way.

This is what coaching does. Once we develop this ability to recognize thoughts that don't serve us, we work on creating thoughts that align with what we want to create. It takes practice and awareness and it is totally possible.

Coaching helps us improve our mindsets, so we can perform better at the interview, stay motivated in our research, be kinder to ourselves so we parent better instead of worse.

Does it work?

Yes!!!!. With coaching and practice, we retrain our brains and create dramatically different results that align with what we truly want. We come to the interview confident in what we uniquely bring to the table. We share our research with the world sooner, proudly. We parent more calmly and forgive ourselves when it doesn’t work perfectly.

That is why coaching is magic! And why I can't stop shouting it from the rooftops!

xoxoxox

Karen