So many PhD students and academics struggle with perfectionism and imposter syndrome. By having such unrealistic standards, we make it much more painful and, ironically, much less likely that we'll actually meet our goals. In this episode we talk about how self-acceptance can help you be a lot kinder to yourself and find a gentle and effective route to success.
This is the blog I mention in this episode.
If you are interested in the circus too, in Birmingham I trained with Circusmash and FPS Fitness!
Transcript
Hello and welcome to episode five. Hope you are all having a good week. Take a moment before we start to think about your week and tell me something - actually, if you're in a position to say it out loud, I want you to say it out loud - tell me something that you are really pleased that you've done this week.
Often we focus on the stuff that we haven't done. We focus on the things that we're finding difficult. What have you done this week that you are really proud of? It doesn't have to be submitting a paper or anything massive. It can be I actually got up when I intended to get up for two days this week, and that's quite good.
Anything at all? Tell me things that you've done this week. For me, I've stuck to my exercise plan this week. I was quite realistic about my exercise plan, so I'm quite chuffed with that. So I kept it manageable and I stuck to it. And I've also planned the outline of the course that I'm developing at the moment, which is gonna help you guys so much and I'm super excited about it. And I'm looking now at a massive piece of cardboard that's, I don't k now, a metre and a half square, something like that. It was from a cardboard box, from a dresser that we just bought, where I've plotted it all out in Sharpies and I'm really excited to get recording and share it with all of you.
So those are things I'm really proud of this week. I hope you've taken a moment to be proud of things too.
Now the other thing that I've decided this week that all links into the topic of today's call is that I am going to rejoin the circus. That sounds crazy. I wasn't technically in the circus, but for about three or four years back when I used to live in Birmingham, I was part of circus organizations doing mainly aerial silks.
So my mom calls it climbing the curtains where you climb up, they're usually like three or four meter high silks, and you do tricks and stuff up there. I was part of Circus Mash and FPS Fitness. If you're want info, look them up. They're amazing and I had a wonderful, wonderful time. Got an injury, haven't been back, and that was about a year now. I've had lots of good reasons for not going back, so I'm trying not to beat myself up too much about that. But I am starting a new class in where I live now tonight. So, not tonight when you're listening to this, but tonight when I'm recording this and I'm super excited and I'm going to be sharing my journey of returning to circus. Now, in next week's episode, I'm going to be talking about why joining the circus was one of the best things I ever did for my academic career, which sounds weird to say so tune in next week if you want to know more about that. But what this really got me thinking was about the need in everything we do to accept where we are now.
I don't want to give you any false impressions that I was really, really good at silks, but I was okay. I was somewhere between an improver and an intermediate, I would guess. I would show people videos of what I did and people who were naive to the circus would be like, Oh my God, you are amazing. People who knew circus stuff would go, Oh my God, look at your bent knees. So I was in that kind of territory where I looked good, as long as you didn't know too much. A bit of a Monet - I looked good from a distance.
And one of the things that I've really realized is that I need to really accept where I am now, if I'm gonna get back into it - I promise this is going to become relevant to academic work in a minute, go with me - I've got to really accept where I am now in order to train, because if I try to go straight back to doing the tricks I was doing 18 months ago, A, I probably won't be able to, B I'll probably injure myself and C I'll probably fall because that's the downside of silks, there's nothing holding you up.
And so I'm heavier than I was. I'm not as strong as I was. I'm not as flexible as I was and I haven't rehearsed the moves for over a year now. And I'm working really hard on accepting where I am. Now, I want you to imagine, that I go to my circus class tonight, and I have literally no idea how it's gonna be, so this might happen. Let's hope not. I'll tell you next week!
Imagine I walk into that to the circus and the trainer says, Here you go, these are the moves you're gonna do. And I'll be a bit like, do you want to know anything about where I'm at? No, no, it's fine. We're doing these tricks tonight. Just crack on. I'll be like, but, but I, I don't think I can actually do that. And the trainer says, No, no. Stop making excuses. Everyone does these tricks. Off you go.
But I haven't even told you about my injury. I really damaged my ribs a year ago and couldn't walk for like a week. Really? And they say just get on with it.
I would probably leave at that point, but imagine I tried. And I fail. I couldn't do it. And then the trainer says to me, Well, you could do it if you weren't so lazy and you'd been training since last year, like you said you would, you're just obviously going to be lazy forever. I wouldn't go back to that circus.
You translate that to any sort of personal training or gym experience, you wouldn't go back to that training space. You wouldn't put up where somebody talking to you like that. And you'd also understand that not only is it not nice, it's a stupid way to train somebody, to make up a program and say, do this because that's what everybody else does without taking any time to think about what you're actually good at, what you are less good at, what you still need to learn and work on.
What I'm hoping tonight is that they will be compassionate to where I've been, because I do feel an element of guilt that I haven't carried on with my conditioning through my injury and that sort of thing. That they'll be compassionate and non-judgemental, that they'll help me figure out where I'm at, help me figure out what things I can still do, and build my confidence around those and hopefully gimme some praise. I do love stickers and praise and all that stuff. And they'll help me figure out which things maybe are tricks that are not for at the moment, but help me figure out how I can get back.
Because I also don't want them to just go, Ah, well yeah, you know, you probably just need to do all the beginner things now. It's fine. You know, you're kind of old, you're kind of heavy. You're not really circus are you? Just put a foot lock on and do some little tricks. You'll be fine. (That's one of the most basic things you can do in circus). I don't want them to do that either, because I want to improve. There's nothing wrong with where I'm at, but I want to improve.
That's what I want in a teacher. I want them to understand where I'm at and to support me to improve. But isn't it funny how when we think about how we talk to ourselves, we don't take that approach.
How many times have you told yourself you should be better at something by now? I should have learned how not to procrastinate by now? I should have learned how to get a paper written by now. I shouldn't find this difficult. I've done this before, or I shouldn't find this hard. Everybody else does it. And at the same time, we sort of think, Okay, maybe I shouldn't be beating myself up, but if I stop beating myself up, then I'm just going to accept that I'm a bit rubbish at doing this and I won't progress.
So what this episode is really about is the importance of that acceptance, of self-acceptance, figuring out what happens when we don't accept ourselves, how we are. And how much better it can be if we do, and how that can help us not only be happy now, but also to progress. And we're going to finish up with some tips as to how you can develop more self-acceptance.
And two things I want to say now. One, this is part of a conversation that I've been having with an academic called Dr. Sarah Allsop, who works the University of Bristol. She runs the Grateful Academic. If you haven't seen her blog before, check it out. There's some amazing articles in there, some of which she wrote and others which other guest bloggers have. A version of this podcast today is going to be a blog on there soon so do go and check that out.
The other caveat that I'm putting right up front here is this is very much still a work in progress for me. I'm aware my mom listens to this podcast, so does my partner. So do my friends, and they will laugh at some of the things I'm going to be talking with you about because I am still really working on some elements of self-acceptance, and I'll tell you some stories about that as we go through.
But let's start. What's the problem with a lack of self-acceptance? Why can't we just bully ourselves into achieving our goals? Well, there's several. The first is we make unrealistic plans. So when I was at the worst of my lack of self acceptance, about maybe three, four years ago, I would just make super unrealistic plans about how I was going to have this amazing routine and I was going to stick to it every morning, and I was going to work this time and not that time, and I would always get everything done on time and I'd do all these things and it was totally unrealistic.
It came from a place where I thought I was only acceptable, if I could do all those things. That actually the version of me that's real, the version of me that gets overwhelmed, that over commits, that procrastinates, all those things that that was bad me, and that as long as I could be good me and not do any of those things, then I would be okay.
I'd make these crazy, unrealistic plans that were entirely based on me being someone other than who I have clearly proved myself to be and then I would beat myself up for not sticking to them. And it was a really painful cycle. And that leads to the next issue. The next issue is that when it is a really painful cycle like that, you start to blame yourself hugely.
So instead of going, Oh, maybe I'm making unrealistic plans, you go, No, no. It's just because you didn't get on with it, you're just lazy. You just need to get on with it next time. Come on, this is your fault. You're in control of this. You can do this. This is perfectly easy stuff. Get on. And so you start doing this sort of self blame and inducing shame, and we all know that good positive action never comes from emotions like shame.
It also becomes this negative soundtrack. This is the part that I'm really still working on because I don't feel a lot of the shame that I used to and I'm much more accepting that I am the way I am and that sometimes I will go super fast and plan an entire course in a day like I did yesterday and other times I will faff about and not get a great deal done.
I'm much more accepting of that, but I still am trying to get rid of the negative soundtrack that I've sort of imprinted into my brain where I apologize a lot, I tell myself that I'm useless quite a lot, and it becomes this sort of refrain in your head that is hard to turn off. I'm good at not taking it seriously now, but it's still there.
It makes it super hard to change your behavior when you're doing it from a place of not really accepting how you are. It's that unrealistic exercise plan.
The final thing, and this was the bit that I've noticed changed the most, is it makes you really defensive to criticism. I remember being in a meeting with some very senior members of my school. I was Head of Education at the time and it was during pandemic, so it was super stressful for everybody. We were trying to, on the fly, reprogram everything, sort of work out how an earth we were going to deliver our programs and so on. And some of the staff with every good intention in the world were saying, It would've been really useful to know about this bit sooner. We need to be more consulted on that bit, da, da, da.
And what they were saying was totally justified. But because I was still in a place where I was telling myself, You should have done this sooner. You are so lazy, I got super defensive.
It wasn't really because of what they said, it was because of what I was making it mean. I was making these perfectly valid comments, mean that they thought I was bad at my job. Worse, I made it mean that they didn't like me, which felt even worse.
But it made me really defensive to that criticism whereas, I've noticed as I've worked on this, that I'm much better at going, Yeah. Would've been way useful, wouldn't it? Yeah. Sorry. Didn't, and people take that so much better.
I've even noticed it change interactions in my family. I have adhd, so I sometimes quite often forget routine tasks. I forget setting up dentists, booking my dog into the vets for his annual checks. And this morning I got a message from my Mum saying, Have you booked Marley into the vets yet?
And once upon a time before I did more work on self-acceptance, I would've reacted with, Mum, for God's sake, I'm a grown woman. I'm perfectly capable of doing this, back off, stop nagging me. And she's adorable. She's the best person in the whole world and all she's trying to do is help me.
Now, because I'm so much more accepting of the fact that I do find that challenging, my reaction was yes. Thank you. Appreciate the reminder. I'll do it today and I am actually going to do it. By the time this comes out, I'll have done it, Mum. Okay. [Note from Vikki – she has booked it! Yay!]
But that has come from self-acceptance. Before that, I was super defensive to criticism, and I want you to think how you react when people criticize you for something that you criticize yourself for. I bet it's similar.
That was one of the reasons I wanted to do this episode is because it's been so powerful for me and I see so much lack of acceptance in academia that I wanted to try and help you guys with this too, if you were experiencing similar things.
So let's backtrack a second and think about what self-acceptance really is. For me, self-acceptance has two main components. It has one component where you accept that you have strengths and weaknesses and you understand them. Now, this is the bit that I've made the most progress on. I absolutely know that my strengths are around ideas, creativity, enthusiasm, the ability to make stuff up as I go along, the willingness to make a fool of myself and not worry about what people think. So I have a ton of strengths. My weaknesses are generally around routine tasks, sticking to organizational tasks, a tendency to get overexcited, overcommit, a tendency to get overwhelmed, a tendency to struggle to get going on something. So I have pretty good understanding of my strengths and weaknesses. I understand environments that make them better. I understand environments that trigger them.
So in terms of accepting strengths and weaknesses and understanding what they are, I'm doing pretty good on that after two or three years work.
How are you on that? If I asked you to list your strengths and your weaknesses, could you do that? Would you be able to explain why their strengths, why their weaknesses? Would you be able to explain in which contexts your strengths work best and in which contexts your weaknesses become most pronounced?
If not, that's something you might wanna spend a bit of time pondering on, because that's the first step to self-acceptance. What are we accepting? The second thing, and this bit's still a work in progress for me, is accepting that you are valuable regardless of your strengths and weaknesses. Now, I believe that cognitively very strongly, but there's still part of my brain that says, Yeah, but you'd be better if you were more organized. So I've still got niggling bits of non-acceptance that I'm still working through, and that's okay because we're all humans and we are never going be perfect at all this stuff. The process of working on it is almost as valuable as actually achieving the thing you're working towards.
So to what extent do you believe that? Do you believe that you have value regardless of your weaknesses, or do you still think you need to be better in order to be successful in academia, you need to be better in order to get your PhD to get your promotion.
Now, one of the pushbacks I always get when I talk about self-acceptance and I've pushback on myself, is people who believe that self-acceptance is going, Yeah, I am. What I. And there's nothing I can do about it. I don’t know why I'm talking like that now, but you know what I mean? That kind of like, yeah, take me or leave me.
This is what I am. You might think that because, you know, I've self accepted a tendency that I get overexcited and overcommit and overwhelmed, but I'm just not going to bother to constrain my focus because that's my tendency. That's what I'm like and I love myself and that's all good. What I've learned is that the opposite is true. When I hadn't accepted that I'm someone who gets over excited overcommits and then gets overwhelmed.
I'd make all those unrealistic plans and I wouldn't ask support and I wouldn't tell people I was struggling and I'd procrastinate loads because I was feeling shame about it.
Whereas actually a place of acceptance is much easier to develop from because I'm more realistic about what I can expect, I am cautious. I hear myself when I'm like volunteering to do something and then go, Oh, hang on. because I know you Vikki Burns. I know you and what you're probably going to do, let's think about this before we commit to that.
I've just moved to a new area back where my family home is based and I did not agree to take on a Brownie pack with my little sister, which I'm very proud of because it was a very tempting offer. It would be super fun to work with my sister on it, but I know, I'm starting a new business, I'm establishing a new home.
I want to get back onto my fitness routine, and I don't want to over commit. So I said no. And I did that from a place of self-acceptance that I understand myself, and I understand that that would, at this stage in my life, be a route to getting overexcited and overcommitted. And I said, no. And she understood, which was lovely.
So when you accept, you're much more likely to be able to have those conversations because I didn't think this was bad, I wasn't super apologetic to my sister. I wasn't like, Oh my God, is there a way I could possibly do it? I was just like, Sis, no. Would love to, you know I'd love to, but I know me and I can't.
So self-acceptance isn't fatalism. If you know where you are and accept that position, you can support yourself compassionately to develop from there. It’s what I'm hoping will happen at Circus tonight. That they all suss out exactly where I'm at, what I can do and what I can't do, and help me develop a realistic training plan that I can follow to get back in the air and enjoy flying again. And I will hopefully be sharing that journey with you guys so you can laugh at and enjoy and cheer me on as I succeed and fail and enjoy the process.
So if you are thinking that you criticize yourself a lot, that you spend a lot of time telling yourself that you should be better or should be further along, I've got some tips that might help you.
The first one is accepting that criticizing yourself is a really hard habit to break. I've been working on this stuff pretty consistently for a few years now, and I still do it. My partner still says to me, Oh, you're being really mean to yourself today, Vikki.
You will likely still have thoughts about how you wish you didn't have your weaknesses and how much better you'd be if you didn't have those. But, you can learn to take them less seriously. You can learn to focus on them less. You'll notice they appear less often and you'll notice that you snap out of it more quickly.
So now whilst they do still pop up for me, when somebody says, usually my partner, you're not being very kind to yourself right now, Vikki, I'm more likely to go, Oh yeah, no, you're right. Okay. What else is true? This is also true. And snap myself out. So, whereas in the past I'd have been like, Shut up, just leave me alone, now I'm like, Oh yes, thank you for reminding me that that's what I'm doing because yeah, that doesn't help, does it? And I snap out of it much more quickly.
One approach to that. I was talking to one of my friends, Nick, about this stuff and he told me that he reminds himself I'm an imperfect human just like everyone else.
And he had it written on a post-it note and I loved that. I am an imperfect human just like everybody else. We sometimes expect a level of perfection from ourselves that we don't expect from anybody else.
We are all humans. We all have strengths and weaknesses, and we all can add value and be valuable people with all of those strengths and weaknesses. So thinking of ways, whether post It note, note to yourself, whatever it is, of reminding yourself of that can be really, really useful.
Third tip is try and notice when you start comparing yourself to others. Notice when you think, Oh, so and so's so much better at this than me so and so's further along. Because one thing that can make it really hard to accept ourselves is seeing other people being good at the thing that we are not so good at.
I have lots, as I've talked about before, lots of highly organized people in my life and I used to spend quite a bit of time going, Why can't I just plan a menu for the week where I know what I'm gonna eat and look in some recipe books and things, because that's what my friend Cheryl does and she's amazing.
And why can't I just do that? And I know except that I don't do that. That's fine. We'll talk about food planning another day. But it took stopping, comparing myself for that to really sink in.
So one little thought that I want you to keep in your head on that is I'm on my own journey. A conversation I had with a lot of my project students, dissertation students, PhD students when I was an academic. You are on your own journey. It's easy to look across and see other people progressing faster, getting papers published, finishing their experiments, whatever it might be, and thinking that that means something about you. So the little mantra I'm on my own journey can really help.
Another tip, is to think of yourself as a small child. You were that little child once and you had strengths and weaknesses then too. I was a somewhat bossy child, I think it's fair to say. And you know that had it’s challenges. My family will tell you.
But you need to remember, if you are criticizing yourself, you are criticizing that little child. I wouldn't walk up to a five year old and say, You're so bossy. Stop being so bossy.
I'd think of ways to focus on the strengths that that showed and support her to work on the weaknesses, but to understand them and to know that she has value, even if she's bossing around everyone in the playground. One day you will look back with the same nostalgia and kindness on the you of today. So remember to speak to yourself in a way that is kind and compassionate.
The final one is to take a breath and ask yourself, how would I react if this was true, and that's okay? So maybe it's true that you should have started writing sooner. Maybe it's true that your first draft was rubbish and needed completely rewriting. Maybe it's true that the lecture you delivered wasn't very clear and the students fell asleep. What if all of those things are okay? How would you react differently if you just said, Yeah, I should have started it sooner. Yeah, my first draft was rubbish. My lecture was boring. It just was. What would you do?
You'd probably think, Okay, what can I do now then? How can I get some more support? How can I get further training? How can I practice a bit more? You might explore, what was it that meant I didn't start this task earlier? What led to me writing a rubbish first draft? So you'd look at it with some curiosity. You'd try to figure out how to move forwards quickly now.
To finish, I would really encourage you to try and figure out what are your strengths and weaknesses and try to spend some time thinking why that's totally okay. Why you are completely whole and completely human and completely valued and valuable with all of those strengths and weakness. and how you can use that acceptance and that understanding to plot your next path forwards.
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