How Bad Are We?

On the two kinds of self-scrutiny and why one of them sucks

In this week’s video, I dig into a coaching request from someone I call Laura, who is in a new university job and struggling to finish the final chunk of her dissertation. I chose Laura’s request in part because it’s a great example of what tends to happen when smart people slam up against the mysterious wall of internal resistance: our brains go into overdrive trying to assess the situation and arrive at some kind of answer.

In many areas of life this brain-overdrive setting is to our advantage, but it often backfires when it comes to internal resistance. That’s because we’ve been taught to examine our behaviour within a framework that doesn’t actually shed any light on the situation. In fact, this type of self-scrutiny tends to make the problem worse.

Watch the video to find out what goes wrong in our brains’ usual approach, what I recommend you do instead, and why it will make a difference for you.

I’m currently releasing a new coaching video every week that responds directly to one person’s question or request. If you'd like a chance to be selected for your own bespoke coaching video from me, all you need to do is give me a bit of info about your situation here.

If you're selected for coaching, I won’t use your real name, and you're welcome to pre-disguise any details you'd like. I select questions based on what I think is likely to help the most people in my audience. If your question is not selected the week it is submitted, that doesn’t mean it’s out of the running for future videos.

Know anyone else this video might help? Send it along! And if you have any questions, drop them in the comments!