Introduction
You miss the mark on something that mattered. And in the same breath, almost automatically, you punish yourself for it. The falling short and the self-attack arrive together, as if they were one thing. In this episode we take them apart, because they were never one thing. We look at the difference between the standard you hold and the stick you have been hitting yourself with every time you miss it, and at what happens to your standards when you finally put the stick down.
Key Themes
- The standard and the punishment arrive as one event, yet they are separable
- The punishment adds nothing the gap had not already told you
- Accountability leaves you able to act, self-attack leaves you diminished
- Carrying everything means falling short constantly, by definition
- Exhaustion is the price of the punishment, not of the standards
Timestamps
- 00:00 The falling short and the self-attack arrive together
- 00:45 The assumption you have never questioned
- 02:20 The standard, the stick, and why they are not one thing
- 04:30 The person who carries everything, and the week they skipped the punishment
- 07:30 How much of what follows your shortfalls is information, and how much is punishment
- 09:00 Accountability vs self-attack
- 11:30 Why the two feel inseparable, and where that came from
- 13:30 Separating them by hand, in the moment
- 15:00 What is coming next week
- 15:30 Your reflective question: whose voice does the punishment sound like?
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Transcript
This is the Overachievers Podcast for people who want success without the burnout. You missed the mark on something that mattered, and in the same breath, almost automatically, you punish yourself for it. The falling short and the self-attack arrive together as if they were one thing. In this episode, I want to show you that they are in fact 2 very separate things. Welcome to the Overachievers Podcast with Keith Blakemore-Noble, because success shouldn’t cost everything. Hello, welcome back. I’m Keith Blakemore-Noble, the Overachievers Coach, and welcome to Episode 34, Raising the Bar Without Punishing Yourself. Last time, we questioned the idea that being hard on yourself is what keeps your standards high.
We saw that the harshness and the quality were never as connected as they felt. And I left you with a question, namely, If the harsh voice vanished, yet your standards remain exactly as high, what would actually change? Today, we’re going to take that apart properly. Because underneath the harsh voice, underneath sits an assumption, an assumption so ordinary that you’ve probably never even questioned it. And that assumption is that a high standard and self-punishment are a package deal, that to care this much is to hurt this much when you fall short. So let’s take a look at whether that is in fact true. Oh, a quick one before we go on. If this series is proving useful, please do follow or subscribe wherever you’re listening. Each episode builds on the one before, so it really helps to have them in order and to keep up with future episodes.
Let me separate 2 things which are usually stuck together. There’s the standard, the bar that you hold, the level of work that you expect of yourself, the quality that you are not willing to drop. Absolutely nothing wrong with a high standard. High standards are great. It’s part of why you are where you are. On the other hand, there’s what happens when you miss it. The tone you take with yourself, the replaying it over and over, the verdict that hits not on the work but on you. There’s a sense that falling short means, means something about who you are.
Most people experience those 2 different things as one single interconnected event. Miss the bar, get punished. One motion, one event, one thing. And because they seem to come together, you assume that they belong together, that the punishment is simply what caring looks like when you fall short of your standards. However, I invite you to watch what you’re actually doing here. When you miss a standard, there is a piece of information there. This wasn’t good enough. Here’s the gap.
Now, that information is useful. It’s how you improve. The self-punishment, that adds nothing. It doesn’t tell you anything that the gap didn’t already let you know. All that the self-punishment does is hurt. The standard is the bar. The punishment’s a stick that you picked up somewhere along the way and started hitting yourself with every single time you didn’t clear the bar. You can absolutely keep the bar whilst getting rid of that stick.
Let me illustrate, because it shows up, it shows up in particular ways for overachievers. There is a pattern I think of, and that is the person who has to carry everything. The one who takes responsibility for it all. The one who’ll step in when anyone else, everyone else hesitates. The one whose quiet belief is that if they don’t do it, It just won’t get done. They are reliable to a fault. The person that everyone leans on. And here is exactly what that person does when something goes wrong.
Not just a project, but anything, anything in their vicinity that goes wrong. A dropped ball 3 desks away, or a deadline someone else missed. A problem that was never really theirs to hold. They take it on and then they punish themselves for it, as though a standard they never agreed to had been theirs to meet all along. There was someone I worked with once who was built exactly like that. Every single setback, however far from their actual control, came with the same self-attack. So, I asked them to try something. What I suggested was that for just one week, just one week, anytime something fell short, note the standard, note what the gap was, and skip the punishment.
Just gather the information. No stick, just the facts. They came back, came back a couple of weeks later feeling a bit unsettled, and the reason was the work hadn’t dropped. If anything, they’d actually solved things faster because they weren’t spending the first hour or 2 after every problem beating themselves up for it. They’d assumed the self-punishment was just holding the standard. Take it away. The standard just carried on standing absolutely fine on its own. So let me ask you, think of the last time you fell short of something that mattered to you, something that really mattered to you, and you fell short.
Think of the last time that happened. As you’re thinking of that, How much of what happened afterwards was useful information about the gap between where you were and where you wanted to be? And how much of it was just punishment, beating yourself up for not achieving the result? And as you’re looking at that, just consider the punishment. How much did it actually add? How did it— did it actually help at all? Or were you just beating yourself up? Be honest with yourself about this, because for a lot of people, the punishment adds absolutely nothing. It just creates pain. There’s a distinction here which is at the heart of today, and that is the difference between accountability and self-attack, because they are easy to confuse. Because they both involve taking your shortfall seriously. And you should take the shortfall seriously, absolutely. The difference is accountability sticks with the work.
It says, that fell short, that’s on me, here’s what I’ll do differently to make it work. Accountability is very specific. It looks forward. It leaves you intact and it leaves you able to take action. Accountability is, it’s the mark of someone who takes themselves seriously. The self-attack, however, that does something else. It takes the shortfall and turns it into a verdict about your self-worth. It moves from, I didn’t do that well, To, oh, there’s something wrong with me.
It’s global, whereas accountability is specific to that instance. The self-attack looks backwards, whereas accountability looks forwards. The self-attack leaves you diminished rather than equipped, which accountability does. I’d like you to listen to this, pay attention to this part very carefully. Accountability is the useful one, and it doesn’t require any form of self-attack in order to work. You can hold yourself fully responsible for a shortfall, you can take it entirely seriously, and you can commit to doing better, and you can do all of that Without so much as a single cruel word. The cruelty was never what made you accountable. It just made you feel worse.
You know what? Let’s go on. Let’s dive under this a little bit more. Let’s see what’s underneath this. Why do those 2 things feel so inseparable? Why do they feel so entwined? Because for most, for most overachievers, they were installed together very early on before you could actually tell them apart. Somewhere along the line, you learned that falling short wasn’t just a gap to close, it was a cause for punishment. And you probably learned it from watching how shortfalls were treated. Around you. And so the two became one single event, miss and hurt.
You’ve run it so many times that it just feels like part of who you are. It feels like a natural law, right? Of course, it isn’t a law. It isn’t a law of nature. It isn’t a rule. It is a habit, a habit with a long history. That’s all it is. And for the person who carries everything, the habit has a particular kind of grip on you because that person has never extended the bar to cover things that were never there— sorry, because that person has extended the bar to cover things that were never theirs. If you feel responsible for everything, you fall short constantly.
It’s by definition, you’ve made yourself accountable for outcomes that you do not control. Therefore, you’re always going to fall short. And then out comes the stick for all of it. Every single shortfall, which weren’t yours in the first place, you beat yourself up with a stick for that shortfall. That is an exhausting way to live. And it’s worth knowing that exhaustion is not the price of high standards. Exhaustion is the price of the punishment that you bundled with those high standards, the punishment that was never needed. So here’s a shift for you for the next week, just a little something to try.
When you fall short of something, catch the moment the stick comes out. You’ll notice it by the change in tone, the point where it stops being about the work and starts being about you. At that moment, at that precise moment, separate the two, almost separate them by hand. You can do that by asking, what is the actual information here? What fell short and what would I do differently? Whatever comes up there, keep that part. That’s the useful stuff. And then notice the punishment sitting next to it and see if you can get rid of it. Put it down. Don’t suppress it.
Just don’t pick it up. It will probably feel wrong at first, and there’s a reason for that. If you have believed for most of your life that the punishment was holding your standards up, putting down that punishment feels like letting yourself off, letting your standards fall. It’s going to feel like that, but it isn’t. The standard is still right there where you set it. You’re simply meeting it without beating yourself up. You keep the bar, you set down the stick. They were always 2 separate things.
Next time, we’re going to go a layer deeper underneath the voice itself. And we’re going to take a look at the thing that the voice is protecting, because the inner critic is not random. And it isn’t only cruel. It is guarding something. It’s guarding something about who you believe you have So in the next episode, we’re going to look at the identity beneath the pattern. That’s coming up in the next episode. But for now, here’s your question for this week. Whose voice does the punishment sound like? Not the standard, the punishment specifically.
When you attack yourself for falling short, Whose tone are you using? Whose voice are you using? Whose words and phrases are you using? There is often a very definitive answer there, and it tells you where you picked the stick up. Excuse me. Hey, if this episode has, has hit for you, a review or a rating on your favourite platform really does help others to find the show. And will be greatly appreciated. Also, while you’re at it, hey, why not share the show? Share it with someone who carries more than their fair share, someone who is hard on themselves for the times when what they carry slips. And also, if you haven’t already, do give us a follow or a subscribe. Excuse me. Because the next episode goes to the root of all of this.
Meanwhile, head over to KeithBN.link/TOP You’ll find all of the episodes. Find this episode, and in there you’ll find the show notes along with some additional resources which are worth exploring. Until next time, I’m Keith Blakemore-Noble, the Overachievers Coach, and I’ll be your guide as we explore a healthier way to succeed.
