Let yourself enjoy this

Asters ignore your criticism, but they don’t mind your praise. (Image by Manfred Richter)

Whether I’m coaching someone through a difficult math problem or a new approach to their business, I can quickly see what the problem is when they react negatively to my praise.

“Great progress!” I’ll say, pointing out something specific that they’re doing well.

“Ugh, I was supposed to have done this two years ago,” they might say. Or they’ll roll their eyes and say, “we’ll see.”

Yeah, I can be pretty annoying in my relentless Pollyanna-ness. I like to focus on what’s working. This can be very uncomfortable for people who have a lifelong habit of focusing on what is not working. Indeed, they may have been taught from a young age that to focus on faults and weaknesses is virtuous—that it keeps you humble and working hard. However, this approach makes learning really unpleasant. And when something is unpleasant, we tend to avoid it. That makes it hard for us to do something new.

I believe that it’s entirely possible to learn and grow and get really good at something without ever being criticized or shamed. This point was illustrated for me early in my career by Rob Westerberg, a brilliant choir director and music educator whom I had the pleasure of working with in college in an ensemble made up mostly of amateur singers. At no point was our group perfect, but at no point did Rob lecture us or even sigh disappointedly. He shaped our sound and our technique using positive reinforcement (i.e., praise) only, which kept us coming back and kept us getting better. It was always fun and joyful, and we never stopped improving.

Following Rob’s example, this is the environment I have tried to create for my own students and clients. What is going well, and how can we build on it? I haven’t always been successful, but that’s the most important part: Even in looking at my own progress, I don’t let myself get bogged down in my failures. I tell the story in a way that gives me the confidence and enthusiasm to keep going. It works.

The risk, of course, is that we are delusional and everyone makes fun of us behind our back. But I combat that in a couple of ways. First, I make sure I have people around to help me and give me feedback. Second, I don’t assume that I’ve arrived. I keep striving to keep growing and improving. That’s what it’s all about.

Simply put, if you don’t allow yourself to acknowledge your accomplishments and feel good about them, you will probably quit because there’s nothing in it for you. If you manage to stick with it anyway—perhaps because the shame of quitting is even more unacceptable than the pain of continuing—you will not reach some future accomplishment that will make you feel good. That’s because you’ve trained yourself not to feel good about your accomplishments.

The alternative is to let yourself enjoy and celebrate your wins along the way, no matter how minor. You can train yourself to spot tiny increments of forward progress that would otherwise be invisible, highlighting them and allowing yourself to experience a corresponding tiny glow of pride. When you do this, you are rewarding yourself for doing the work. When you reward yourself for doing the work, you set yourself up to want to stick with it. That leads to bigger and bigger wins.

You don’t need to do anything corny like giving yourself the ol’ pat on the back. All you need to do, really, is let yourself enjoy the feeling of learning instead of jumping to, “Yeah, but I still have so far to go,” or “Yeah, but everyone else is so much better and faster,” or “Yeah, but is this really any good? How do I know for sure?” Shhh. Just let yourself enjoy this moment. And then, take on the next challenge.