Quick Spoon: You can be kind to yourself AND ambitious
Being kind to yourself doesn't mean lowering your standards.
In this People Soup Quick Spoon, Dr Amanda Super challenges the idea that self-compassion and ambition are somehow incompatible.
Amanda shares what she learned from comparing her experience of her Master's degree with her doctorate ten years later, after developing self-compassion.
She was still ambitious. Still driven. Still wanting to achieve.
But she wasn't doing it at the cost of herself.
So perhaps the question isn't whether we should be ambitious or self-compassionate.
Perhaps we can be kind to ourselves AND ambitious.
As Ross reflects:
“Self-compassion doesn't necessarily mean asking less of ourselves. It might mean changing the way we ask it.”
Try this:
Think about something you're currently working hard to achieve.
Ask yourself:
“What would being kind to myself look like in this context?”
And then:
“Can I take one small step towards that?”
This Quick Spoon comes from Ross's conversation with Dr Amanda Super about self-compassion, ambition, boundaries, recovery and being human at work.
#PeopleSoup #QuickSpoon #SelfCompassion #Psychology #Leadership
Transcript
[00:00:08] Amanda: 100%, [00:00:10] absolutely, and in fact, your ambitions may be more likely to be realized as a result of being self-compassionate, because you recognize your needs more fully.
[:[00:00:23] Whereas, when I came out of my doctorate, because I had developed self-compassion in the intervening 10 [00:00:30] years
[:[00:00:47] Hi there, and welcome to People Soup [00:00:50] Quick Spoon, real conversations about work, leadership, and being human. I'm Ross McIntosh, and here's your Quick Spoon
[:[00:01:09] [00:01:10] Perhaps we'll stop pushing ourselves. Perhaps we'll lose our edge
[:[00:01:16] She compared her master's degree, which she described as nearly finishing her [00:01:20] off, to her doctorate several years later She was still ambitious, still driven, and still wanting to achieve. But she wasn't doing it at the cost of herself, and I think there's something [00:01:30] really interesting in that
[:[00:01:38] So here's something to try. [00:01:40] Think about something you're currently working hard to achieve
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