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11 Ways we get stuck

Fear of failure

Embarrassment sucks — how to deal

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Stuck moment: Oh no, oh no, oh no. I can’t believe my sister thought it was okay to repeat that joke I made about my brother and his fiancée before they started dating. Right in front of her! WHY? We just sat down to eat. How am I supposed to look her in the eye now?

Embarrassment sucks. It really, really does. Everything about it: the blushing, the flushing, the dumb realization that there’s no way to play it cool. It seems like everyone’s staring at you, judging you, and the moment will be burned into their memories forever.

But it’s probably not as bad as you think.

Getting embarrassed is normal human stuff. It happens because we’re self-conscious. We have an idea of how to look good or do things right, and we feel like we’ve fallen short, by way of some mishap or misfortune that catches us off guard.

Something you say comes out horribly wrong.
A jealous coworker makes you target practice.
A case of bad judgment turns into undeserved public humiliation.

Sure, some people may laugh (they’re thinking, Phew, glad it wasn’t me!) and it will be salt in the wound, but generally people will sympathize. Because they too know how it feels to be embarrassed. We’ve all been there.

While embarrassment might jangle your nerves, there are ways to muster up the mental and emotional strength to put it behind you and be better prepared for next time.

IN THE MOMENT

  • If you embarrass yourself, get a jump on it. Defuse the awkwardness by addressing it before someone else does. A self-deprecating joke is a sure tactic, but if you’re too flustered to be witty, default to an immediate “oops” or “sorry” statement (“Oops, that was embarrassing!” “Sorry about that — obviously not what I meant to do.”) Smile and move on.
  • If someone else embarrasses you, go to your zen place. It takes a lot of control, but don’t get defensive. The more neutral your reaction, the less power you give up — and the more obvious it will be that you don’t deserve to be treated that way.


YOUR NEXT STEP

When we’re lucky, we recover in the moment. Other times, we have to deal with feeling clumsy and red-faced and find a way forward. Our printable chart, After First Blush, will guide you to a good follow-up for your embarrassing situation. Use it to trace your way to the beliefs and tips that will help you finesse the situation.

DOWNLOAD THE PRINTABLE: After First Blush: Embarrassed and ready to move on? 8 tips to try when embarrassment strikes

embarrassment tips

#by the Unstuck Team#negative thinking#fear of failure#humanity

How to take the fear out of feedback

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Eh, feedback. Like death and taxes, other people’s opinions of what we do are a fact of life. Whether on the job or in the thick of wedding planning, people who care for us will sometimes offer hard-to-hear truths about our behavior. And that can trigger a flood of fear and negative emotion that blots out the positive opportunities that the feedback offers. Consider that:

Feedback is a chance to gather perspective other than your own on how you’re doing.

Feedback is a chance to course-correct before it’s too late.

Feedback is a chance to plan to succeed.

It’s not something you want to miss out on, but many of us usually do in one of three ways.

The Bristler: Feedback is a personal attack on your character. You reject criticism automatically, reacting with anger, defensiveness, or blame. You miss out because…

• You avoid holding yourself accountable for mistakes, and so you don’t learn from them.
• You lash out at the folks who dare to offer criticism, alienating them and damaging relationships.

The Wallower: Feedback destroys your faith in yourself. You crumble in the face of it — responding with tears, apologies, and/or hasty promises to make amends. You can’t hear any praise because all you can see is how you’ve failed. You miss out because…

• You’re too caught up in self-blame to engage with the feedback in a critical way, not receiving crucial information that could help you improve.
• Your emotional reaction shows others that you’re too fragile to handle criticism. People learn to not count on you when things are tough.

The Stonewaller: Feedback is just a sign that you’ve been misunderstood. You shut down, simply waiting out the conversation instead of participating and asking questions. You miss out because…

• You’re so busy protecting your ego that you can’t see how it may be blocking you from identifying areas for growth.
• You dismiss outside perspectives, showing others that their opinions don’t matter. This leaves you isolated.

How to engage with feedback
You don’t have to love feedback, but it doesn’t have to be a one-way ticket to misery either. Inside every observation is a golden nugget, an action to take that pushes you closer to success. Think about it this way: Someone has taken the time to think about how you could do things better, and then taken the time to tell you. It’s for you, about you, and intended to help you.

When you accept that there’s something to learn in almost any piece of feedback (even if it stings at first) your feedback conversation becomes infinitely more valuable. And it is a conversation in which you:

• Ask clarifying questions to better understand the feedback and how to apply it.
• Show people their opinions matter and foster closeness by hearing them out.

Your response is where the magic happens, so get really clear on what went wrong and how to improve. If your tendency is to act as a Bristler or Wallower, try not to react on impulse (anger or tears). Instead, take notes or record the conversation so you can mine it for those golden nuggets after cooling down.

Here are seven questions that can help you get to the heart of your feedback:

1. What are the opportunities in the criticism?
2. What affirmations or appreciations were shared?
3. What actions were suggested?
4. What does this feedback teach me about how I’m perceived?
5. How does that match with how I want to be perceived?
6. In what ways did the feedback surprise me?
7. In what ways did the feedback resonate with my own notions of what I need to work on?

DOWNLOAD THIS PRINTABLE TIP CARD: 7 questions to ask after feedback

Next week: “The best work advice I ever got”
Last week: Unstuck Heroes: How to shop for a better world

#relationships#by the Unstuck Team#on the job#fear of failure

The perils of perfectionism — and what to do about it

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Stuck moment: I’ve painted myself into a corner again! I missed the deadline, kept asking for extensions — which means that there’s zero wiggle room for mistakes. The pressure’s really on now but, if I can’t hit it out of the park, why bother? 

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For the perfectionists of the world, there’s an urge to wear the trait as a badge of honor. We accept no errors, brook no excuses, turn up our noses at anything less than first place — and surely, we believe, this makes us the ideal kind of person to get things done.

And yet, our perfectionist ways all too often become the sword we fall on rather than the flag we proudly hoist. Our unwavering standards of flawlessness (for others and ourselves) can come at a steep cost, taking a toll on our relationships, peace of mind, and our ability to finish what we’ve started — or, in some cases, to start at all. If we leave perfectionism unchecked, we fall into a vicious cycle of self-sabotage, setting ourselves up to fail with too-high expectations, and then beating ourselves up when we don’t meet them.

Are we talking about you? Here are 13 unhelpful tendencies that result from a perfectionist mindset. If you relate to six or more, definitely keep reading.

Perfectionist tendencies that can undermine personal progress:
• procrastinating until the ideal time or set of circumstances,
• only doing things that you know you can do well,
• trapping yourself with all-or-nothing thinking,
• pushing yourself too hard,
• fixating on mistakes instead of solutions,
• feeling that you’ve failed if you ask others for help,
• beating yourself up when you fall short of too-high expectations.

Perfectionist tendencies that can undermine your relationships:
• continually re-doing things at the expense of budget and deadline,
• pushing others too hard,
• playing mind games (i.e. trash-talking) to exert control,
• judging those who don’t meet your standards,
• secretly taking comfort when others “fail,”
• not rewarding or praising others for a job well done.

If perfectionism is your Achilles heel, whether you’ve ever thought about it that way or not, you’re not alone. We talked to four different perfectionists (in various stages of reform), who share important lessons they’ve learned in pursuit of letting go, even a little bit. 

Learn from their experiences, and download our printable tip card Stop the perfectionism! 4 reformed perfectionists share their advice.

Dan Barber, 48, Orillia, ON
Profession: Pastor
Perfectionism level: Almost nonexistent

Dan knows that others can find his exacting standards impossible to meet. “Sometimes perfectionism leads to black-and-white thinking,” he says. “It’s easy for me to think that my way is the right way — what would be right about being disorganized? But, when I place those expectations on my two teenagers, I can sabotage the relationship by placing cleanliness and organization above my relationship with them.”

Dan’s #1 lesson: Balancing the “dark side of perfectionism” requires remembering that your needs and wants aren’t necessarily the center of the world. Dan says, “When you can focus on loving your family and your friends, perfectionism can take a back seat to that.”

What you can do: Before you tag someone who doesn’t meet your expectations with the label of  “inferior” or “careless,” pause for a moment to appreciate what they do contribute. Gratitude will warm you, and make you less judgmental.

Has your perfectionism got you stuck between constant conflict and doing it all yourself? The Unstuck app can help. Use the free Unstuck web app here or download the free iPad app.

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Kristin Toth Smith, 39, Seattle, WA
Profession: CEO, Code Fellows
Perfectionism level: Low

Kristin is a veteran of the messy, unpredictable start-up world, but her perfectionism used to keep her on the sidelines of risk. She didn’t want to try anything she couldn’t already do super well because looking silly wasn’t an option. But she realized, “If everything I’m doing is in my comfort zone, it’s not giving me enough satisfaction. And I’ll get impatient with others who can’t do it well, because I don’t have enough to focus on for myself.”

Kristin’s #1 lesson: After joining online deals site zulily, Kristin got a crash-course in perfection as a work in progress. When her boss asked if she could complete a project in eight weeks that ought to take eight months, she forced herself to say, “Let’s find out!” By doing this, she says, “I gave myself permission to be wrong, as long as it was getting better every day. You just have to take the first step, and see perfectionism as something to achieve down the road. And then say yes to bigger and bigger challenges.”

What you can do: Lose your fear of looking foolish with your own invigorating anthem. Pick your favorite dance tune — if it has a silly dance routine associated with it, all the better. Some ideas: Taylor Swift’s Shake it Off, D.A.N.C.E. by Justice, or the Bee Gees' Stayin’ Alive. Turn it up in your bedroom and bust out your moves. Don’t shy away from the funky chicken or your own signature step or shimmy. Keep going until you feel truly freed of your inhibitions. Then, whenever the need to appear flawless has got you boxed in, tune into your anthem (even just in your head) to release yourself.

Is your perfectionism stopping you from chasing your dream? The Unstuck app can help. Use the free Unstuck web app here or download the free iPad app.

* * *

Christa Harrison, 20, San Antonio, TX
Profession: Sophomore, Texas A&M University
Perfectionism level: Intermittent

Christa says that her unrealistic expectations for herself are largely based on media images and narratives of the perfect life. “Deep down, I’m looking for that perfect image for myself, my house, and my life,” she says. “It drives a lot of what I do.”

Christa’s #1 lesson: What’s most helped her shed the straitjacket of perfection is realizing that it’s mainly pride and insecurity that make her care about others’ opinions. “It’s my ego that caters to the opinions of everyone I care about, and it’s my ego that thrives on praise received for not making any mistakes,” she says. “This awareness can be liberating.”

What you can do: Let go of other people’s unhelpful ideas of what’s right. For each unrealistic expectation you place on yourself, ask:
• Whose standard is this? Society’s? My parents’?  
• Does it fit with what I want, or what I believe?
• Who am I afraid of disappointing if I don’t go for it — myself or someone else?
• If I don’t meet this expectation, will I still be on track with my goals and dreams?

Has your perfectionism got you stuck operating with borrowed ideals? The Unstuck app can help. Use the free Unstuck web app here or download the free iPad app.

* * * 

Colin Reid, 31, Brooklyn, NY
Profession: Graduate student in English
Perfectionism level: Elevated

For Colin, perfectionism isn’t just about controlling the outcome, but also perfecting the process. When he feels that he’s going easy on himself, or failing to execute things in exactly the right way, he beats himself up — especially when he’s writing. “When it comes to writing a sentence, I want every sentence to be very chiseled,” he says. “I’m impatient seeing my own imperfections. I brood over them and make a torture chamber for myself.”

Colin’s #1 lesson: To push past his fear of failure, it helps Colin to remember that his heroes — whether sports figures or writers — achieved great heights while making plenty of mistakes along the way. “The ones that were perfect, we never heard of because they never got anything done,” he says. “They never wrote the poem, they never played the game.”

What you can do: Check your fear of making mistakes by learning to enjoy the process for its own sake. To get into the right mindset, choose an activity for which you usually have a habit and wing it instead. Skip your usual running trail and take a path less traveled. Cook dinner by taste and touch. Notice what’s new and different about this approach, and the fresh ideas that it stimulates.

Does a fear of making mistakes have you sabotaging your chances of success? The Unstuck app can help. Use the free Unstuck web app here or download the free iPad app.

DOWNLOAD THIS PRINTABLE TIP CARD: Stop the perfectionism! 4 reformed perfectionists share their advice

Next week: Empathy: The single best way to get unstuck
Last week: How to work like a human

#by the Unstuck Team#negative thinking#fear of failure

Unstuck is about going for it in spite of our fears

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When something really matters to us, often we’re afraid we’ll mess it up. But what if we don’t know it matters — we just know we’re afraid? Afraid to say hello to him. Afraid to travel abroad. Afraid to sing at the karaoke bar. We probably think we’ll fail. And we don’t want to fail because it matters. And if it matters, then it’s worth trying.

#favorite quotes#by the Unstuck Team#fear of failure

What do you do when the system stops working?

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Stuck moment: You love when things run smoothly — some say you’re a master at it — and right now it’s the opposite of that. As far as you can tell, nothing has changed. Still, you’ve started over…several times. Checked and rechecked. Even referred to the manual. Why. Won’t. This. Work! 

Such is the frustration of Perplexed Planners. So full of determination to make it work that they can only see what is, not what could be. And that’s a major handicap when it comes to solving a problem. 

We’ve all been there from time to time, but not always in the same way. There are at least three shades of Perplexed Planners. To find out your tendency, take our mini-quiz below. We’ll follow up next week with tips for each type of Planner.

MINI-QUIZ:
Think of a time when a tactic that’s always served you well stopped working. It might be how you communicate with someone. How you complete a work project. Maybe it’s your method for tracking your budget. What did you Feel, Think, and Do at that time? Pick one answer from each group. This works best when you answer quickly, following your gut instinct.

What did you Feel when you were perplexed?
A. Uninspired.
B. Like a failure.
C. Afraid you’d be found out.

What did you Think when you were perplexed?
A. I wish this came with instructions.
B. Ugh. Do I have to learn something new now?
C. This will take me forever to fix.

What did you Do when you were perplexed?
A. Declared it broken and stop trying.
B. Nothing. I didn’t want to mess things up more.
C. Stayed quiet about it as long as I could.

If you chose mostly A answers, read about By-the-Book Planners, below. Mostly B’s, you’re likely a Perfect Planner. C’s are Peerless Planners. If you had a mix of letters, you’re a hybrid, which means you’ll find parts of yourself in all three types.

A. By-the-Book Planner. There’s a reason rules are made, and the primary one is to be followed. There’s comfort in knowing what to do and what to expect — because it usually works for you. Why reinvent every time when you can sail smoothly ahead instead? But when the waters get choppy, you may find you’re not equipped to improvise.

You need to believe in your creative abilities. Perplexed Planners get stuck by the clutter, and in your case, it’s the rules that are clogging up your brain. It’s hard to think creatively when you’re clinging to one right way. Embrace the idea that there’s more than one answer to any given problem.

B. Perfect Planner. Details are your friend. You coax and cajole them into shape like few can — and that’s impressive. Whether it’s an annual report or a dinner for 12, everyone knows you’ll make it just so. That’s why a change of plans can be so disruptive. You’re not sure how to adapt and still keep the system in shape.

You need to believe in the possibilities of failure. When plans go askew, your mind heads to that scary place where everything goes wrong. Your thoughts swim with possible errors and the unknown. And you don’t want to take a chance on making any of it come true. But if you don’t try, things aren’t going to get better.

C. Peerless Planner. You’re known for being head and shoulders above the crowd. It’s a point of pride, and you’ve definitely earned it. But this can make the words, “I don’t know,” difficult to utter. You might lose your status as the person with all the answers. And that leaves you stuck pretending.

You need to believe that everyone needs help. Whether or not you feel the confidence of a virtuoso, it’s important that others see you as one. Faced with a kink in the system, your certainty may plummet. And the worst part is imagining what others may think of you. Instead, consider this: The mark of a true expert is knowing that you don’t know everything.

PRINTABLE TIP CARD #22: What kind of Perplexed Planner are you?

Next week: 12 ways to clear the clutter that’s keeping you stuck
Last week: Unstuck Hero: How a grilled cheese sandwich saved the day

#by the Unstuck Team#Perplexed Planner#creativity#fear of failure#hazy