Thick Skin Response

Getting annoyed by the “little stuff of life” and being overly affected by criticism, failure or hostility

The 18/40/60 Rule: “When you’re 18, you worry about what everybody is thinking of you; when you’re 40, you don’t give a damm what anybody thinks of you; when you’re 60, you realise nobody’s been thinking about you at all.” Don’t be embarrassed. Don’t allow any sense of social awkwardness stop you from doing what you want to do. And if you do get embarrassed, so what? It is a small price to pay if it helps you achieve your goals. Ask: “would it be so bad, if…?” What would be the consequence? Be willing to take calculated risks even though you might end up “flat on your face.”

Check your “life defensiveness index”. Life attacks us and we find ways to defend ourselves from these assaults. We construct barriers to protect our egos. But some defences are more useful than others. Don’t go through life on the defensive. Do you:

• talk more than others in meetings: you need to justify your position
• interrupt others: you are unwilling to listen to views different to your own
• dismiss new ideas: you want to stick with what you know
• respond badly to feedback about your effectiveness: you feel others are “attacking” you
• relive previous arguments: you want to remind others that you were right and they were wrong

If you are being defensive, you are making life more difficult for yourself than it should be. Accept that you aren’t perfect. You aren’t always right. Recognise that others have good ideas, and ideas that might be different to your own.

The power of self belief. Self belief is not the phoney self-esteem built up by the charlatans running self improvement workshops as part of pyramid selling scams. It is that deep seated conviction in yourself - your significance and value in this world. Accept doubt. Doubt your life plans, choices and decisions. But not at 3am in bed, when you can’t get to sleep. In the morning, write down each fear and doubt and attack them as practical problems to be solved. Self belief has doubts but it doesn’t let doubt take over your life. Maintain that fundamental belief that you matter and that you can achieve something worthwhile in life. Lose that conviction and life will be difficult, and success almost impossible. A combination of temperament and disappointing life experience can undermine self belief. Build and reinforce your self belief by:

• reminding yourself of your uniqueness in this extraordinary planet in which we find yourself. No one else is exactly like you or with your potential.
• seeing life as a challenge, accepting it might not always be easy but always being willing to give it your best shot. “The line between failure and success is so fine that we scarcely know when we pass it; so fine that we are often on the line and do not know it.”
• taking on and overcoming adversity. This is the tough message. But self belief comes from facing life’s trials and tribulations. But make it

Accept that criticism is inevitable. The absence of any personal criticism indicates a lack of drive to achieve anything new or different. Anyone who attempts to make a difference will meet some kind of opposition. Criticism is difficult, but know how to manage it. You need to deal assertively with others’ aggressive put-downs. But don’t be defensive in responding to every perceived slight.

Make your internal critic work positively for you. Each of us possesses an internal critic, that part of our brains that is our judge and keeps making demands on us. It can be “cruel and merciless” and it is a common source of low self esteem. It blames you when things go wrong. And when things go well, it still says that’s not enough – you were lucky that time and you need to do better next time. The internal critic keeps telling you that you are inadequate. It also remembers your past failings and mistakes. But it is there for a purpose. The internal critic should motivate you by keeping you aware of life’s threats and challenges. It should help you avoid making a fool of yourself and embarrassing yourself in public. It should stop you getting you “out of your depth”. The trouble is that the internal critic isn’t rational. It therefore needs to be challenged and questioned. So keep checking the accuracy of each critical message it sends. Don’t assume it’s always right. talentdevelop.com

Spend time with positive and up-beat individuals. Avoid the cynics who sneer. There is a collection of people, motivated by a mix of envy and disillusionment, who enjoy tearing down others’ dreams and destroying their achievements. It is this group who scoff at anyone with ideals and aspirations and who delight in others’ misfortunes. Reinforce your self-confidence by gravitating towards those forward looking and optimistic individuals who want to get on with life. Stay clear of those cynical individuals who take satisfaction from pointing out life’s hazards and difficulties and reminding others, in a subtle way, of their failings and shortcomings.

Conduct a pre-flight schedule. Treat your worries and self doubts as the kind of checklist an airline pilot works through before take-off.

• what might go wrong?
• what will I do if the worst happens?
• what skills can I call on to manage the situation?
• what back-up plans are in place to manage the situation?

Keep your analysis practical. Airline pilots don’t panic in reviewing the potential hazards. They know it makes good sense to conduct a thorough review in advance of take off to minimise risks and rehearse contingency plans if the worst does happen. Don’t assume every life situation needs a full pre-flight review. But when you do feel under threat work through the issues objectively.” Let your advance worrying become advance thinking and planning.”

Don’t look good if you end up feeling guilty. We need to feel in control, to appear to others in control, and that we are “in the right”. And if we screw up we can find lots of reasons to “save face”. Our excuses are a variation of: “I didn’t do it”; “I did it but it’s not so bad” or “I did it but I have a good explanation”. Excuses preserve our self worth. They allow us to escape our negative feelings. But there is a price to pay. Excuses distort reality. By lying to others to others we lie to ourselves.

Check the stories that your emotions are telling you. Identifying why you’re feeling what you’re feeling isn’t always easy. Our emotions are often stories to help us make sense of what is happening around us. And sometimes (maybe often) we get it wrong:

• “it’s not my fault” This is the victim story in which we experience ourselves as completely innocent. We’re good and right and others are bad and wrong.
• “it’s all your fault” Here we over-emphasise others’ wrongs. It is others - the “villain script” - who are operating around the worst of motives and intentions.
• “there’s nothing else I can do” This is the “helplessness” script. I’m feeling and behaving this way because I have no other options. This is the script to explain why we’re stuck and can’t do anything to change our situation. There are no other options.

Challenge the illusion that what you’re feeling is the only right emotion under the circumstances. Look at the facts. Don’t jump to premature conclusions. Review the facts to check how else they could be interpreted. Look inside to evaluate the intensity of your feelings. If you’re getting hot and bothered, feeling aggrieved and thinking it’s unfair, what might this be saying about you rather than the situation?

Only ask yourself a question if you’re willing to answer it. Don’t play “what if” games in which you imagine difficult future scenarios unless you’re prepared to follow it through. Don’t throw up hypothetical questions. These questions turned over and over again in your mind paralyse action. Asking yourself tough questions is good but only if you’re willing to provide an answer which makes a difference to your life.

Don’t “sandbag” to anticipate failure. When planning future goals, keep reminding yourself of previous successes. Use this memory to maintain a positive belief that you will be successful again. Don’t handicap yourself by putting yourself down. You may “sandbag” to manage expectations, your own and those of others around you, to protect your ego in the event of failure. But you will also be making failure more likely to occur.

Keep track of your time horizons. Where are you spending most of your thinking time: in the past, present and future? Don’t let your past become your future. Move on. Don’t rewind past experiences to relive previous hurts or grievances. Your past is exactly that: it is past. Appreciate what is good about your upbringing, your early life experiences, school years, relationship, and so on. And if it wasn’t so good, put it behind you. Don’t live there. Live in the present, preparing for the future. And don’t live life imagining what might be. Don’t conduct “if only” thought experiments in which you live out your life within a fantasy scenario, one in which you play out the fulfilment of your dreams. Think big about life’s possibilities but keep grounded in the realities of life.

Don’t put all your emotional eggs in one basket. Don’t invest all of yourself in one single life activity (your career, your relationships, your hobby, etc). Make sure that your sense of self worth, who and what you are, stems from a range of different life projects. Don’t attempt the impossible, stretching your capabilities across too many different competing goals. But don’t allow your self esteem to be determined by success or failure in only one arena of life, with the expectation that success in one aspect of life will transform your deep-seated feelings about yourself, or that failure will confirm your worst fears. There is no one outcome which if achieved will make you feel unconditionally positive and at ease with yourself. Your beliefs about yourself and what you are capable of results from a combination of factors, not least the sense that you are doing the right thing for the right reasons.

Manage your moods. Take control of your own emotions. Don’t be at the mercy of the ups and downs of your feelings. Be alert to extreme emotional responses, events and situations which trigger a big reaction from you but not from others. This is saying something about you rather than the situation.

“Don’t believe everything you hear, especially in your own mind.” Your thought processes trigger your emotional responses. Master how you think and talk to yourself:

• don’t draw a conclusion (probably negative) from only one aspect of the problem. Look at the whole picture to see the upside as well as the downside.
• don’t over-generalise, assuming that one failing, mistake or life problem has massive consequences for other areas of your life. It might do, but usually not.
• don’t think “black-and-white”. Few situations are either all good or bad. See the shades of grey.
• and don’t “catastrophise”. A failing in one aspect of your life does not make you a bad person or mean that you will keep failing. Failure means that there is one specific area of life where you

need to improve your performance. Don’t see a failing as a damming indictment of your entire life. Accept that you are a mix of contradictions, of virtues and strengths as well as shortcomings and limitations.

Would you talk that way to anyone else? Listen to what you are saying to yourself. Keep alert to your internal conversations and the dialogue you conduct with yourself. What is the balance of positive to negative messages? If your “internal chatter” is primarily negative, stop it. You wouldn’t talk to anyone else in that manner so don’t speak to yourself in that way.

“The little and big jars.” Write down your life goals, each on a separate strip of paper. Put the strips of paper in one jar. Label it “the big stuff”. On another set of strips, write down all the little things – the annoying, frustrating and irritating things of life that have really got to you in the last month. Put them in the second jar, “the little stuff”. And each time you find yourself reacting out of all proportion to an event, write it down and put it in the “little stuff” jar. Every few months, empty the jars. Check the “big stuff”. Is it still important? And what are doing to pursue your goals? Then work through the strips of paper in the “little stuff” jar. How full is the jar? Are the issues still bugging you? If not, remove them and enjoy the process of binning them. If yes, put them back in the jar.

Put mistakes into perspective. Everyone makes mistakes. Most mistakes are mistakes only with the benefit of hindsight (few people intentionally set out to make a wrong decision or embark on counter-productive actions). Know how to put mistakes behind you. Don’t keep reminding yourself of what went wrong or replay “what if” scenarios. Don’t keep punishing yourself. Instead, identify the learning to see what you need to do differently in future.

Come to terms with rejection. Rejection isn’t nice but it is inevitable from time to time. Remember that most of the time rejection doesn’t make your current life situation worse; it is only holding back the speed with which you achieve an improved situation. If you can live with rejection, you will have mastered a fundamental law of life: most people crave acceptance and live in fear of rejection. www.jugglezine.com

Keep to the principle, don’t make it personal. If your emotions are in the driving seat, then you may be at risk of moving away from the fundamental issue at stake to an attack on the individual. The three step guide:

• step 1: whatever you first think you might want to say, don’t say it
• step 2: what is the second thing that comes to mind? Don’t say that either.
• step 3: this is more likely to be a response that finds a solution rather than sounding like retaliation or opening up a heated argument.

Show “grace under pressure.” It is easy to maintain your composure when everything in life is going well. But it is your response to crisis and emergency which indicates and builds your character. Don’t let the tensions and frustrations of life undermine your credibility and standing with others. However difficult, keep tears and tantrums private, shared only with family and close friends, never with work colleagues.

Control your temper. Anger, directed for the right reason at the right target, indicates the forcefulness of your intentions. Most of the time anger makes you look foolish and weak.

Confront and tackle under-performance. Don’t hesitate, prevaricate or procrastinate when faced with those individuals who are not pulling their weight and making a fair contribution. Initial shortcomings, delays and mistakes, if ignored, will escalate into major problems of delivery with the potential to drag you down. Don’t allow any sensitivity put off the “evil day”, that moment when you need to go “eyeball to eyeball” and say, “We have a problem with your performance. Things are not going well.” Some individuals have the potential to drag you and your team down. Don’t let them damage your life.

“Put wood in the stove before you ask for fire.” There is no guarantee of success in life. Instead, there is a set of possible outcomes, each with different levels of uncertainty and risk. Invest personally in your plans. Don’t zig zag from one project to another to avoid the kind of commitment that might be embarrassing if your plans fail. Be determined in staying with what you believe is right. Keep putting your “wood in the stove”.

Even a paranoid can have enemies. Your thin skin keeps you alert to the slights and insults of work-a-day life. It also makes you see problems where none exist. Accept also that you will have enemies. There will be “friends” who will undermine you behind your back; adversaries who are direct in their opposition to your plans; and there are the “loose cannons”, those unpredictable individuals who cannot be relied on. This is life. Manage relationships constructively where possible but recognise the fundamentals of conflict. But don’t take it personally.

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