Not good enough: How to stop feeling frustrated at yourself



03/06/2020 9:37 AM


Sometimes it happens. A deal is off, your boss carpets you, a project stalls... In such cases, you can doubt your professionalism. What to do? Find the cause and deal with it.



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Are you trying to change the world?

The business sector is saturated with exorbitant ambitions. Now it’s not enough just to make a good product or provide a good service. Everyone wants to change the world with an innovative proposal. Carry out a thousand revolutions at once. Try to stop considering yourself obligated to change the world, and you will throw off your excessive burden and make life easier for those around you. Try to leave a good impression about yourself and think less (or better not think at all) about how to change the world. Most likely, you cannot do it.

Are you comparing yourself to others?

We don’t even notice how our brain, being the brain of a mammal, constantly compares us with other people and decides who is more important. When it's someone else, we get a serving of cortisol. Under natural conditions, the release of the “stress hormone” serves as a warning that you need to retreat and avoid conflict. In this situation, people have a sense of threat due to the fact that someone is higher in the pecking order. You may not think about it consciously, but the animal mind with such persistence suggests that it is necessary to correct the existing situation, as if your life depends on it.

Comparison can result in exhaustion. Your historical mammal mind craves for exclusivity. Any such event stimulated the production of “hormones of happiness” in your childhood, which formed new neural connections. In turn, these connections formed your expectations about your survival. When dreams of exclusivity do not come true, you are endangered. Downturns will have a less devastating effect if you know the reasons for their appearance. Cultivate the habit of being attentive to your own and others' desires for exclusivity.

Do you have an imposter syndrome?

Maya Angelou, the Pulitzer Prize winner and the owner of five Grammys, admitted: “I have already published 11 books, but every time I think: “Now they will figure me, because I’m fooling everyone”. Dr. Chan, director general of the World Health Organization, said: “A lot of people consider me an expert. How can they all believe that? It’s extremely obvious to me how much I don’t know”. This is how imposter syndrome manifests itself. Hundreds, thousands, and possibly millions of people have it.

You need new skills to work, but you don’t have them

The world is booming, employer expectations are rising, and yesterday’s graduates are stepping on your toes. Sometimes we really lack the skills and knowledge to do some work.

But what if you can learn literally everything? If the abilities to acquire new skills, develop in different directions, form a new identity are infinite and last throughout life? What if every day you wake up with a renewed brain? In fact, our brain is extremely adaptive. Find motivation to study and start working on yourself.

Are you tired?

Sometimes there are fatigue, stress and burnout under the guise of disappointment. There are many ways to deal with them: it becomes easier for us with a 5-minute hug, exercise, mindfulness and meditation practices. Test them one by one and just relax. And then everything will surely work out.

Based on "It Doesn't Have to Be Crazy at Work" by Fried Jason and Heinemeier Hansson David, "Habits of a Happy Brain: Retrain Your Brain to Boost Your Serotonin, Dopamine, Oxytocin, & Endorphin Levels" by Loretta Graziano Breuning


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