Life After Lectures, Part 2

Today, Kadija Samura and I continue our conversation about life, career, and navigating the transition from academia to the corporate world. We’ve included the highlights below and the full conversation in this podcast.

In part 2, we pick up where we left off in our conversation about managing discomfort when facing new challenges and learning. Being aware of where you are in the competence curve (Four Stages of Competence) can help to ease anxiety that you’re doing something wrong or not learning quickly enough.

Four Stages of Competence

[Caroline] The first stage is Unconscious Incompetence – when you’re first starting to learn a new thing, you don't know what you don't know. Then as you learn, you realize just how little you know and how much learning is ahead of you, which can feel daunting – this is Conscious Incompetence. As you actively build up your new skills and knowledge, you see progress, but it doesn’t come easy. It takes a lot of effort. That’s Conscious Competence. Finally, you reach the Unconscious Competence stage – you’ve integrated the new skill so that it comes easily and without that awareness of effort, like riding a bike.

[Kadija] Or driving. I love that. 

Limiting Beliefs

[K] I'm going to study that because learning can feel like such a  a slow process, so I loved your analogy of building muscle when I run into limiting beliefs. Where we are right now is influenced by our personal histories and backgrounds. 

For example, I immigrated to the US from Sierra Leone when I was fairly young, nine years old. I had some of my formative years in Sierra Leone and some in the United States, and that has shaped who I am today. And there have been times in my 20s when I’ve recognized that parts of my personal narrative are influenced by my childhood beliefs, and I don’t have to continue all of those beliefs today – that was a powerful thing to experience! Instead living for my future, I was living for my past. That blew my mind. So I would love to hear how you let go of limiting beliefs that don't serve you anymore.

[C] I wish I could say that I’ve got it all figured out, but it's an ongoing process! I had to do a lot of letting go during my burnout recovery last year.

Cycle of Learning

[C] I learned about the cycle of learning several years ago while facilitating a leadership training program. It starts with Awareness: Where am I now? How are things going? That’s followed by Intention: Where do I want to go? What's my goal? And then it’s time to take Action. That's essential, because if you don't take action, nothing will change. The last step is Results: looking back and reflecting on the results. How effective was my Action towards achieving my Intention? Then you go back to through Awareness stage, and repeat the cycle with a new Intention: What do I want to continue and what will I do a little bit differently next time? 

Using Hypothesis and Experiments

[C] Another framework I often apply to personal development is the experimentation framework, based on the scientific method. You start with a hypothesis, which is especially helpful in complex or ambiguous situations where you don't know what the right answer is. Many people get stuck and just stay put when they face uncertainty, but one way to get stuck is to acknowledge that while you don't know the right answer, you can choose a hypothesis. This framing allows you to start experimenting so you can get more data – it's okay if your hypothesis isn't right because you can always change it. It feels the stakes are lower if you frame it as an experiment, because your hypothesis doesn’t need to be correct or perfect. It’s just a starting point. I think this can be really helpful to manage a limiting belief of perfectionism, that if something is not perfect, then it's not good.

One thing that helps – this is simple, but not easy – is to lean into the limiting belief that you have and ask yourself, What am I making this mean? What is the story that I'm telling myself? And then continue to go down that path: Why are all these negative feelings coming up and what are they telling me? Is that actually true?

[K] Yeah, I agree. It’s also helpful to ask, Where is the evidence? That has been a game changer for me when I get intrusive thoughts that I’m a failure. I used to practice saying it out loud and now it’s easier to just flip the switch. A good analogy that I heard was to think of those thoughts as a salesperson trying to sell you something you don’t need. You have to keep saying, No thanks, I'm good to the thoughts that you don't want to continue to ruminate on.

[C] That reminds me of a technique in meditation called labeling, where you note whatever is going on in the moment – I'm breathing, I'm thinking about this – which allows you to create emotional distance or detachment. And by this I don't mean not caring, but recognizing the difference between your feelings and you – you are not your thoughts or feelings. The feelings may come from beliefs that are related to security or esteem. I'll be honest – for me, it's usually about esteem: I'm only worthy if I do X, Y, and Z. 

The biggest gift you can give yourself is to recognize how great you are just for who you are. It's so easy to do that for others, but not for ourselves. We hear all of our own mental chatter and our brains react to stressful situations as if they are life-threatening danger, and it shuts down certain functions like logical thinking. But when it's not a life-or-death situation, we can diffuse those strong emotions and restore our ability to see things more clearly.

So if you face the scary thing and see that it's not really so bad, then you can move forward.

Taking Life by the Reins

[K] Absolutely. I think what we’re really talking about is taking life by the reins, because if you let your mind control you, if you sit back and think I don't know what to do, this is so scary and big, then those thoughts will overtake you. I would really love your perspective on this: when you are trying to take life by the reins, how do you know you're doing it right? What tangible steps can you take?

[C] What does taking life by the reins mean to you?

[K] For me, it's deciding to do the very best that I can every single day, to walk toward my goals. Right now I'm in a career-building phase and I have all these incredible things that I want to do. And I have a lot of love for certain things, like education. I love Africa and Sierra Leone – that's my home – and thinking about how education applies there. But I also have a passion for things like the neurodiverse community and technology. I'm in an exploratory phase. 

So taking life by the reins means setting goals, like my goals for the next six months. Sometimes I overwhelm myself by setting too many goals and end up exhausting myself. I break my goals down into an actionable plan where I take steps every single day. But sometimes, when I get tired, I get sluggish and when my calendar sends me a reminder, I don't take any action. So, I equate taking life by the reins to intentional action. What do you think?

[C] If you look at this through the lens of forming a hypothesis, you are setting daily goals that you believe are a reasonable amount to get done. But what happens in reality is that life gets in the way. Some days we're just tired.

Self-compassion and taking rest

[C] Sometimes there are also other types of blockers, like mental blockers. So it's helpful to examine your thoughts and feelings and be really honest with yourself – Am I tired? It could be mental or physical exhaustion. Or sometimes you just can't get into it in the moment. That's not failure. That's your body or your mind telling you it’s not the right time to complete the task. So you can simply adjust your hypothesis for that day, instead of feeling like you failed or didn't do enough.

Sometimes it is a limiting belief that’s causing you to feel resistance. You can examine that as well. Is it coming from fear? What am I afraid of, and if it were to really happen, what would I do? And then you realize that you can figure it out or even know what you would do in that scenario, and maybe it'll slow your progress a little bit, but you can overcome it.

Or, you realize it’s not really something that would actually happen. Is it true? Is there any evidence to support that? No? This might be fear of success. I don't know if I can handle this. That’s very common. Just when you get everything that you wanted, and you start to think it won't last or you self-sabotage because it feels scary to become this new version of yourself.

[K] I like the idea of recognizing when you are tired and taking a step back. One thing I struggle with, in particular when I am tired, is feeling like a failure. I think to myself, You have to keep going, You have more in you! There’s a sort of toxic motivational thinking that when you're tired you're just getting started. In some ways, it's true that you have to learn to push yourself, but sometimes it becomes a cycle of trying to do too much, which causes you to fail and then fulfill this idea that you're not good at doing things, and it ties back to learning how to rest and knowing that it’s okay to not be doing something all the time. 

My calendar looks exactly the same every single day, and I have these expectations to do things in that manner, but that's not how life works.

[C] If you can take a step back to observe the patterns, maybe even tracking how each day went, what you were feeling, what things got in the way, then you start to see that you go through life in phases or chapters. It's not always predictable. The ups and downs, the ebbs and flows, are perfectly normal. You have to find the right balance, because there is a lot of growth that can come from pushing past discomfort, but discomfort and pain are not the same thing. In yoga, we say no pain, no pain. It’s okay to feel uncomfortable, but it should not be a sharp pain.

Pain is your body telling you that something isn’t right. It’s not good to ignore it, unless perhaps you’re an elite athlete under the supervision and care of professionals.

As you were talking earlier, it got me wondering – is there any living organism or machine that just keeps producing and outputting without needing some kind of energy source? I don't think so. I couldn't think of anything that just keeps going forever without needing energy renewed or replenished, not even machines. So who am I to think that I’m any different from all the other 7 billion plus humans in the world, that I don't need rest and should be able to just push through, or I’m supposed to be super human?

[K] I have consumed a lot of motivational speeches over time and adopted this belief of just pushing through muscle through the pain, you are a beast. And I realize that to be normal and happy, it's important to take time off. I love that my conversation with you is affirming that, because rather than feeling like a failure for not being able to produce as if I'm a computer, I’ll probably do a lot better in life if I take time for restorative rest.

Getting thoughts out of your head for clarity

[C] That brings up another thing that I believe pretty strongly, which is that you have to get your thoughts out of your head in order to see them more clearly. Simply saying things out loud or journaling them makes it possible to see them for what they are – I am holding myself to an unreasonable standard.

It doesn't always feel like that when you’re just dwelling inside your head. I’ve found that in some ways, my own mind is a dangerous place to live. So I try to get things out of my brain as much as possible and then see them for what they really are.

[K] Absolutely. Journaling is such a powerful tool for doing that, or having conversations like we're having now. I hear myself talk, and I'm like, wait a minute. That sounds quite toxic, as a belief to hold. So I really love the balance that you're speaking of. You need to replenish, take the time. 

Wrap-up/Closing Thoughts

As we wrap up,what would be three items that you want to leave anyone who's listening to this or that you would want to remind me of from this discussion.

[C] The coach in me wants to ask you the same thing! One thought that has come up for me as we're talking is from a book I love, The Four Agreements. One of the agreements is always doing your best, because if you do your best, then there's nothing to ever feel guilty or bad about, and a lot of the suffering we feel is when we look back and think, I should have done more. So always try. 

Second, observe yourself. Whether that's through meditation, talking to someone else, or writing down your thoughts, when you take that step outside of yourself to be able to see things from a slightly different perspective, hopefully there’s less judging, and if you can look at yourself in the same way you would look a good friend or family member, you don’t usually feel the same level of guilt and and shame.

The third idea is asking yourself, What can I learn from this? There won’t always be something that you need to change about yourself. It's not about finding where you are defective, which was my mentality for a time – What can I fix about my broken self? Instead of that, what are some different choices that I could make that are going to better serve me towards what I really care about.

And idea 3.5 is asking yourself, Why am I doing this? I used to have a sticky note on my monitor that said “WIFM?” (What’s in it for me?), what is the purpose of everything that I'm doing? Am I doing this because I think that I'm supposed to, but it doesn't actually bring me any joy or get me closer to things that I really want? Then let it go.

I'm constantly letting go of things, physical and emotional and mental, reassessing. I love Mari Kondo’s approach. She says to thank objects for what they provided you and then say goodbye. It doesn't mean it was worthless, but maybe you've moved on and it is done serving its purpose. You're rejecting something but you're saying thank you and goodbye. 

[K] Moving on to the next thing. I'm like that a lot.

[C] So what about you? What are your top three takeaways?

[K] I'm gonna take one of yours, which is that you're not defective. I’m familiar with the feeling that there's always something to fix about yourself, and the work is never done. It's a positive motivator to always strive for your best. But when it's overdone, you just feel horrible all the time. I'm still navigating this feeling of being defective – it's simply not true. I need to first hold space for the wonderful person that I am. 

So for anyone who's navigating their mid-20s, which can feel so tumultuous: You're not defective.

My second one would be learning to embrace change. And to learn the skills that you may not have had the opportunity to learn yet or you previously felt you couldn't learn. For example, one of those skills for me is math. I used to run far away from math until I got to a certain point in my college career where I told myself, you can run away or you can decide to keep going. 

And lastly, be kind and have grace for yourself, because if you don't, no one else will. And recognize what having grace for yourself means without being an enabler.

[C] That's so important. I love all of those and especially that we're not defective. Growth and development are not about fixing what's wrong, they’re about adding to what you already have and evolving.

[K] Yeah. Certainly.

[C] You have so much wisdom. And it’s partly because you actively seek it. You're a lover of learning and knowledge, so I really enjoy hearing all the things that you've learned because they are helpful reminders to me too.

[K] Thank you. I appreciate the wisdom that you're willing to share. And the ways in which you've seen yourself grow, the things that you've let go of that I would have never thought of in that way. I think taking wisdom from other people who gracefully offer it is one of the best things you can do to learn. But also, it’s so exciting to collaborate on this because we're providing perspectives that are like mine – fresh out of grad school – and yours, that’s a bit calmer and has so much to offer.

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We hope you learned or were reminded of something from these conversations that helps you navigate the challenges and ambiguity in your life!