Hello, I’m Dr Andrew Holmes, one of the research staff developers on Prosper, based at the University of Liverpool. I’d like to welcome you to this workshop on self-confidence and reaching your full potential. This session will explore the different elements of self-confidence and their relation to thoughts, behaviours, and emotions, and identify ways of boosting confidence to achieve your goals and reach your potential. Self-confidence is extremely important in almost every aspect of our lives, from the decisions that we make on a daily basis, to the careers we pursue, and the relationships that we establish. Even more so, self-confidence is a key component to preserving and reaching your potential as a researcher and employee. The outcomes for today’s sessions are understand self-confidence and the elements that underpin it, identify techniques for boosting your confidence and reaching your potential. Before we get started, I’d like you to take a moment to think about how you would describe self-confident people. Have a think about any self-confident people that you know and what traits stand out for you about them. What do they do? How do they behave? How do they think or feel? Pause the video now and take a minute or two to consider these questions. Self-confidence is defined as an individual’s trust in his or her own abilities, capacities, and judgements, that he or she can successfully face the demands of a task. Others have described it as simply believing in oneself and having a positive view about our skills, abilities, strengths and weaknesses. This influences how we set goals, communicate, feel, and think about ourselves. There are quite a few related terms in this area, so let’s quickly define them. Self-efficacy is an individual’s beliefs about their capacity to influence the events in their own lives and handle future situations. It reflects confidence in the ability to exert control over one’s own motivation, behaviour, and social environment, and is seen as more of a forward-looking belief. Self-esteem is how we feel about ourselves. The way we look, the way we think. This can be a favourable or unfavourable attitude towards oneself. It’s associated with an individual’s worth and worthiness as a present-focused belief. Self-esteem is one of the basic human motivations in Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, strongly related to self-confidence, where individuals need esteem both from others and from themselves in order to achieve their own potential or self-actualisation. Self-confidence encapsulates both of the above terms. It refers to an individual self-evaluation of abilities and prior experience and their expectations of future performance. It reflects one’s beliefs on both past and the future. Please note, as self-confidence and self-esteem are two closely-related psychological phenomena, we will refer to them here as similar concepts. One model of thinking about self-confidence is to consider our motivations via Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. In his 1943 paper, Abraham Maslow stated that people are motivated to achieve certain needs, and that some needs take precedence over others. The most basic needs are physiological the biological requirements for air, food, drink, shelter, etc., and safety. The need for security, order, and control in our lives. At the top of the hierarchy is self-fulfilment. The realisation of a person’s full potential. The desire to accomplish everything that one can. To become the most that one can be. In the middle of the hierarchy are psychological needs. The need for being social and feeling like you belong, through friendships, intimacy, and trust. Most relevant for this session, psychological needs also include esteem needs. Both the desire for reputation or respect from others, to have some form of prestige or status, and to have esteem for oneself. When people’s esteem needs are met, they feel confident and see their contributions and achievements as valuable and important. However, when their esteem needs are not met, they may experience what psychologist Alfred Adler called feelings of inferiority. These days, Maslow’s hierarchy is viewed as more of a rough guide than a fixed route. You don’t need to fully satisfy the needs of one level before moving on to the next. There are other needs that don’t fit within these defined areas on the pyramid. Maslow himself later suggested seven, and then eight total needs, and stated that the order of needs is not rigid, but instead may be flexible, based on external circumstances or individual differences. He also thought that many behaviours fulfilled multiple needs. It’s not a perfect model, but the hierarchy still shows the importance of self-confidence for happiness and self-fulfilment. What’s the consequence of having low confidence? I’d like you to answer this one. Pause the video and take a couple of minutes to write down some possible consequences of having low confidence. Feelings of isolation, self-doubt, and fear of failure can darken the door of even the most confident researchers working towards careers and goals. Low confidence may result in many factors, including a fear of the unknown, unrealistic expectations, criticism, being unhappy with personal appearance, feeling unprepared, poor time management, and a lack of knowledge. A broad review of the correlates of self-esteem found that high self-esteem is associated with better health, better social lives, protection against mental disorders and social problems, successful coping and mental well-being. Children with high self-confidence perform better at school, and later in life have higher job satisfaction in middle age. Self-esteem is also strongly linked to happiness, with higher levels of self-esteem predicting higher levels of happiness. High self-confidence has even been found to increase chances of survival after a serious surgical procedure. Authentic self-esteem promotes not co-dependency and fragility, but independence, enterprise, resilience, adaptability, and a growth mindset. We’re now going to explore nine top tips for boosting self-confidence. These were compiled for Prosper by Daniela Baltic, who is a higher education consultant and one of Vitae’s senior fellow research developers. The first tip is around clarifying your goal. You might be confident in some areas of your professional career, but may be less so on others. Self-awareness of strengths and areas for development is the first step in ensuring that you can be specific about what you want to achieve and ensure measurable outcomes. Take a minute to reflect on the following questions and write down your answers using positive language. What is your goal? What specific area of your life do you want to become more confident about? Why is this important to you now? How will you know when you have achieved your goal? Pause the video now for a couple of minutes to reflect on these questions, and then resume when you’re ready to continue. Research suggests that visualisation can activate the same neural circuitry in the brain as doing something in reality. Utilising the power of future mental imagery, imagine that your desired outcome has already happened, referencing that future date as having already occurred. Again, pause the video and take a minute or two to reflect on this. Think of something you are worried about in the future. Fully immerse yourself in visualising confidence in the future event. What does your body feel? What do you do? What are your thoughts? What behaviours do others see? What do they hear? Pause the video now and resume when you are ready to continue. We all have recurring thoughts and narratives or mental scripts that can be disempowering, can interfere with our ability to take action and impact on our self-confidence. It’s important to become aware of the thoughts and beliefs that might be limiting and sabotaging you. Again, take a couple of minutes to reflect on this. Write down some answers to the following questions. What recurring thoughts do you have that you feel are holding you back from achieving your goals? How have your limiting beliefs held you back from achieving what is important to you? Pause the video now and resume when you’re ready to continue. Affirmations are positive statements that can help overcome self-sabotaging and self-limiting beliefs. Studies show that using affirmations can remind you of your values and strengths, and raise confidence and improve self-esteem. For example, before a high-pressure event such as going into an interview, take a moment to think and note your strengths and best qualities. A good way to do this is to modify negative statements about yourself by thinking about what you want to achieve instead and writing them in the present tense. For example, if you habitually think that you are too nervous to deliver presentations, you can rewrite it in a positive affirmation. I am well prepared and confident that I can give a great presentation. Another example would be changing I am so disorganised, to become I have been disorganised, I am much more on top of things now. Professor Amy Cuddy’s 2012 TED Talk is one of the most viewed TED Talks of all time. You may have seen this before and may be aware of Amy Cuddy’s research already. If not though, you can find it on YouTube. It’s called ‘Your body language may shape who you are’. Professor Cuddy’s research suggests that body posture sends messages to the brain that informs exactly how you feel. If you need to feel confident, you want your posture to send your brain that message. Professor Cuddy’s research suggests that our body language governs how we think and feel about ourselves. Thus, how we hold our bodies can have an impact on our minds, i.e. by commanding a powerful stance, we can make ourselves actually feel more powerful and confident. If you’ve heard about this research before, then you might be aware of the controversy around it. Replicating the findings of the original paper has proved very difficult. Numerous experimental and statistical flaws have been identified with the original study. In 2016, the lead author of the original 2010 paper, Dana Carney, published a statement saying, ‘I do not believe that power pose effects are real.’ The evidence against the existence of power poses is undeniable. Professor Cuddy herself acknowledges that not all findings of the original study have proved repeatable. Particularly the hormonal changes that were supposed to occur as a result of adopting a more confident posture. She maintains that the evidence still suggests that power poses can make people feel more powerful. Something that many other studies also support. Current thinking is that it’s more of a placebo effect, but that doesn’t mean that a temporary boost in how confident you feel isn’t still useful on occasion. To build confidence, you need to practise confidence. Learning to ride a bike requires repetition, deliberate practise, and persistence, to become more and more confident in riding the bike. What is the deliberate practise needed for you to undertake, on a regular basis, in order to become more confident in the area of your life where you would like to increase your confidence or reach your potential in? If you’re nervous about presentations, you could practise presentations by yourself, with support of colleagues, or you could find relative training at your institution. I’m going to give you a couple of moments to reflect on the following question. Take something you’ve already thought about during this session, an area of your life that you don’t feel confident about. What things can you practise to boost your confidence in this area? Pause the video for a couple of minutes to think about this, and resume the video when you’re ready to continue. Become a learner by reflecting on both what works currently and what doesn’t work. Especially what might be perceived as a failure. Learning from failures builds resilience and pushes one to persevere and to try to do things differently. Most successful people learn how to fail well. Thomas Edison famously said, ‘I’ve not failed. I have just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.’ If something goes wrong, then take a moment to reflect on it. What could you have done differently in that particular situation? What assumptions did you make? What new skills and knowledge have you developed through this process? A core feature of self-confidence also lies in being valued by others. When we play a positive role in our relationships in communities, this makes us feel good about ourselves and our contributions. A sense of belonging within our social system is fundamental to personal well-being. A study by Professor Frank Flynn, Professor of Organisational Behaviour at Stanford, revealed that people tend to underestimate, by as much as 50 per cent, the willingness of others to help. Professor Flynn says our research should encourage people to ask for help and not to assume that others are disinclined to comply. If you need help, just ask. When we reach out to others, we can see our own efforts, and collaboration among people creates powerful results. Asking for help doesn’t undermine our own confidence. It lets us view our achievements from a different perspective, and can actually boost our enthusiasm for what we’re doing and increase what we can achieve. The final tip for boosting self-confidence is something that’s touched upon in some of the other tips. That is having an awareness of who you are at your best, and the various factors that influence when you’re at your best, and when you aren’t. Pause the video and spend a couple of minutes writing down the answers to the following questions. Who are you at your best? What helps you to be at your best? What gets in the way? Pause the video now, and resume when you’re ready to continue. Those are Daniela Bultoc’s nine tips for boosting self-confidence. In summary, they are clarify your goals, visualise confidence, identify self-limiting beliefs, practise positive affirmations, adopt a confident body posture, practise and prepare, learn from failures, ask for help and offer your help, and self-awareness. I’d like to finish with a few additional thoughts about self-confidence and self-doubt. These aren’t static things that you’re stuck with your whole life. How confident or doubting you feel changes depending on your experiences and achievements. They also change over time. In a study of over 700 health sciences librarians, Barr-Walker et al. found that one out of seven experienced imposter syndrome. This is actually similar to other studies of academic librarians. They also found that imposter syndrome decreases with age and experience. Whilst this may mean that you particularly feel imposter syndrome when starting a new job or even a new career, it also highlights something that is worth remembering – these feelings will decrease over time as you gain experience. Similarly, a study of over 11,000 business leaders by Zenger Folkman found that self-confidence increases with age. They also found that the self-confidence gap between male and female leaders closes with age, with confidence equality reached in middle age, around the late forties and fifties. A study published in early 2022 suggests that not everything about self-doubt and imposter syndrome is a bad thing. In a series of experiments, Assistant Professor Basima Tewfik studied over 3600 employees from a broad range of sectors, including from an investment advisory firm and a physician training programme. She found that people with workplace imposter thoughts became more other-oriented and evaluated as being higher in interpersonal effectiveness. For instance, trainee doctors with more imposter thoughts were rated by their patients as being more interpersonally effective, more empathetic, as better listeners, and better able to draw out information during doctor-patient interactions. Importantly, Tewfik found that workplace imposter thoughts didn’t significantly affect objective performance. You might feel like a fraud, but your colleagues wouldn’t guess from the quality of your work. Doctor Tristan Clemons is a materials chemist and former Australian Kookaburra’s field hockey goalkeeper. His article in the publication ‘Matter’, documents his struggles with crippling self-doubt, both in the laboratory and on the hockey pitch. He calls self-doubt a double-edged sword, in that it pushes him to work harder and to aim to achieve more, whist also on occasion paralysing him with doubt and fear. Clemons talks about the importance of having good mentors and how much of a difference hearing a respected, positive voice can make. Which ties back to one of Daniela Bultoc’s top tips, being able to ask for help. For your next steps, why not try out some of the techniques and approaches for increasing self-confidence discussed in this session. You could also try writing a list of five or more positive things about yourself, and keeping that list somewhere that’s easy to access and to add to, and where you might see it regularly. Another variant on this is to keep a folder on your computer for positive things. Complimentary emails, achievements, praise, etc. The idea with both of these approaches being that if you feel any self-doubt, you can quickly revisit how positively other people view you and your work, and also how positively you view yourself. The Squiggly Careers podcast also has lots of episodes about self-confidence and conquering self-doubt. In one episode they also provide their three top tips for boosting confidence. Their first top tip is around language, both considering your body language and the words you use. For instance, rather than saying things like ‘just’ or phrases such as ‘I’m probably wrong but’, use more confident and direct language. Their second top tip is knowing who you can talk with to get a confidence boost. Their third top tip is around planning your opening line. By preparing for and focusing on the first thing you want to say, you can use that first line as a confidence crutch to get your conversation or presentation off to a good start. Thank you so much for your time and participation in today’s session.[END OF TRANSCRIPT]

There’s no doubt about it: job searching and career transitions can be incredibly tough. I remember a postdoc once telling me that you have to be really stoical to be a postdoc, to keep plugging away when research doesn’t work, when the next grant doesn’t come through and your position doesn’t materialize, or you get rejected once again for a fellowship or a job.

That push for achieving the next step to progress in your career or to do really important work can sometimes start to become overly self-critical, where we beat ourselves up for failures and it can even get in your way, stopping you from putting yourself forward for new opportunities or jobs. So in this video, we’ll look at self-compassion as a really powerful tool in our box for managing the stress and anxiety of job searching and uncertainty, and for helping us to put things into perspective so that we can take a more balanced view of a situation and learn from feedback.

There’s a huge body of academic evidence behind the idea of self-compassion, and I’ve signposted some resources in the links in the handout, but it’s not just about knowing the theory, it’s a practice, and so that means it will unfortunately be a slow burn. You need to actually do the reflection and commit to trying things out. So you might want to grab a pen now so that you can pause this video at times and take some notes on the thoughts or feelings that are coming up for you, the things you notice about them and things that you might want to try out and experiment with.

Kirstin Neff is one of the leading researchers in the field of self-compassion, and she describes it as being supportive towards oneself when experiencing suffering or pain, whether that’s caused by your own mistakes or failings or external things in your life It’s about noticing and acknowledging that suffering and also proactively wanting to do something about it. So it’s not just wallowing and thinking, it’s not about letting yourself off the hook or becoming complacent for things. There’re actually studies showing that self-compassion can help you to take more personal responsibility for things. Maybe dialling down some of that chatter in your head, the feelings of shame or embarrassment, which actually you might be experiencing, and then you can think more clearly about things and take any learning on board.

So Kristin Neff goes on to describe three core components of self-compassion, and the first of these is self-kindness rather than judgment. So treat yourself the way that you would a friend, not judging them, giving them the benefit of the doubt that just because they messed something up once, they won’t necessarily do that again or every time. And there’s two exercises you can do to put this self-kindness into practice in your job searching.

The first is positive self-talk. What will you be telling yourself as you’re heading down the road to the next job interview? I find myself doing this all the time when I’m out mountain biking. If I know I’m going to go off a big drop off or something else is scaring me, I’ll tell myself, you’ve totally got this, Elizabeth, you’ve practiced this; you know what you’re doing; think good thoughts. You might recognize that you also do this in some circumstances already. So just think about where you can translate that into positive self-encouragement in your career exploration. Or, and this is one to pause the video with and write down your thoughts: think about someone who has been a really good career mentor to you, someone who you trust. So how did they behave towards you? What sorts of things have they said or done to encourage you to stretch yourself into a new challenge? How did they listen to what really mattered to you? Or how did they motivate you and inspire you to pick yourself up when things didn’t go right for you? Maybe when you had some sort of rejection? Think about how you might be able to remind yourself in times of stress, or when you need that self-compassion: just think of what did they say to me? What would they say to me now?

So the next element is common humanity. So rather than feeling isolated and like you’re the only one dealing with this messy, complex life situation, maybe the only one struggling with a lack of confidence or feeling like you can’t do something, look for opportunities to connect with others in similar situations. The important thing is recognizing that we all have these experiences, and it’s a normal part of being human, absolutely nobody is perfect. So look for events and workshops within the university or even within online communities to let you get that connection with other people.

And then the third element is mindfulness. And what she’s really getting at here is not getting sucked into the stories that we’re telling ourselves. So for example, just because one interview went badly, that doesn’t mean that you’re rubbish at all interviews or that you’re not applying for the right sort of job. I think it could be really helpful to examine the stories that we tell ourselves about our careers and about our experiences with the interview process. Over my years working as a coach, I’ve heard people share lots of facts about themselves, which aren’t really facts, but just more of a self-judgment based on scan feedback or evidence. My writing isn’t academic enough, I’m not creative enough to come up with research ideas. I am not fellowship material.

There’s a really interesting case study, which explored the idea of luck in academic careers where they found that career successes tended to be attributed to luck, whilst failures were attributed to personal deficiency. So take some time to explore the assumptions that you might be making about yourself and your own career story, and mindfulness interventions are suggested as a way of unhooking yourself a bit from these stories. So just lessening their grip over you, maybe by simply acknowledging that these are one story and letting it flip by like a passing cloud. Perhaps mindfulness for you involves something more embodied: so that could be yoga practice or martial arts, or rock climbing. Maybe it’s just about taking an intentional pause. So having a few deep breaths, feeling your feet on the floor. Maybe you already have a mindfulness meditation practice, and there’s lots of apps and books which can help you develop that habit. Just try some of these out and find out what resonates with you.

I would say, however, that it is not a quick fix. It’s not going to be that you do one five-minute meditation and bam, everything feels better It is a commitment, and like with anything you’re committed to, there’ll be days when you don’t want to do it and it feels pointless or that you’re doing it wrong or you’re not making any progress. So explore some of the mindfulness resources in our handout and try to commit to something that can fit into your life, whether that’s an eight week course, signing up to newsletters or using an app for daily practice.

Many of the websites that I’ve shared in the handout will take you through a very practical self-compassion exercises such as journaling, getting all your thoughts out there, or you know, maybe what you want is something that’s a little bit more embodied. So having a hand on your heart noticing and accepting what’s going on in your body, even giving yourself a bit of a hug the way you would do for a friend who is suffering. So journaling can be a really good thing to try out before and after a job interview, just to process some of the emotions and worry going through your mind and help you to take a more balanced perspective on the outcomes. So use the resources and the reflective questions now to think about the scenarios where you might be needing just a little bit of extra self-compassion, maybe as you’re seeking feedback on why you didn’t get a job and then picking yourself up ready to try again. How can you be kind to yourself, connect with others, and also build in some mindful pauses so that you don’t get too wrapped up in any one particular story about yourself and what’s happening here in your job searching.

Lack of belief in ourselves. The fear that we are going to fail often goes hand in hand with self-sabotaging behaviours, and this link can be really hard to break. Self-doubt in itself is not bad. It’s completely normal to have self-doubting thoughts sometimes. Self-doubt is only an issue when it becomes destructive. Behaviour is said to be self-sabotaging when it interferes with daily life and long-standing goals. The most common kinds of self-sabotaging behaviours include procrastination, self-medication with drugs or alcohol, and comfort eating. It can be difficult to become aware that you are employing self-sabotaging behaviours, and even if you are aware, connecting a behaviour to self-sabotaging consequences isn’t a guarantee that you will stop doing that behaviour. Even if you are aware, you may not find it easy to consciously choose to stop that behaviour. It is possible to overcome most forms of self-sabotage. Imposter syndrome is a particular form of self-doubt. Doctors Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes introduced the term in the 1970s. They wanted to be clear that this is not a psychological illness, but that this is a recurring emotional experience, so a sense of dread that is felt over and over again. In subsequent research, Clance and colleagues tried to find out how many people experience impostor syndrome. They found out that 70 per cent of professional people experience feelings of fraudulence or imposter syndrome. The definition of imposter syndrome is that you feel like a fraud, so as though people see a version of you that isn’t the real you. You devalue your worth. Perhaps you talk yourself out of taking the credit for some work that you’ve contributed or something that you’ve done. You undermine your experience or expertise. In practice this might mean that you don’t claim certain experiences, or you avoid stating that you have certain professional statuses, because you worry that that means that you can’t make mistakes, that you have to be perfect in claiming that status or that role. Imposter syndrome happens at all levels, and it’s frequent feelings of inadequacy despite evidence to the contrary. Research shows that imposter syndrome is more persistent than other types of stress. There are many different dimensions of self-doubt. Here is a clip of Michelle Obama talking about a question that goes through her mind all the time.

Am I good enough? That’s a question that has dogged me for a good part of my life. Am I good enough to have all of this? Am I good enough to be the first lady of the United States? I think that many women, and definitely many young girls of all backgrounds, walk around with that question. I still feel that at some level I have something to prove because of the colour of my skin, because of the shape of my body, because of who knows how people are judging me.

Michelle isn’t talking about imposter syndrome, because it’s not in this situation that people think too highly of you. In this case, she’s talking about self-doubt that’s rooted in society’s view of people who look like her, or people whom she would represent. Self-doubt can exist because of structural inequality and lack of representation, or lack of support for particular identities. Why do we experience self-doubt? Some self-doubt is normal, and sometimes we have a motivating relationship with self-doubt. For example, if we feel concerned about our performance ability in an important presentation, the self-doubt may actually motivate us to prepare more thoroughly and to practise our speech. However, self-doubt can also be debilitating. It can stop us from taking constructive action. When this occurs, it’s really important to dig into the why of the self-doubt to analyse what’s happening to us. Let’s have a look at some of the whys, the reasons why we do have self-doubt. The first reason is about fears that we might have about ourselves, so things that we think are true. We might have core fears or negative beliefs about ourselves like we’re not good enough, or about our ability to cope, or our ability to achieve a task. Negative fears about ourselves can also come in through messages from other people. Finally, messages that society gives us. This tends to be particularly around relationships that we have with other people. Voices of authority can also create beliefs that stick. A coaching question that I find is a powerful, reflective prompt is to ask someone when they’re identifying a belief, ‘When did you learn that lesson? When did you learn that you can’t trust yourself? When did you learn that you’re not creative? When did you learn that you can’t cope? When did you learn that you’re not good enough?’ It can be helpful to ask this question because sometimes there is an actual identifiable source of the belief. A parent, a sibling, a teacher, a boss, a supervisor, a mentor, somebody who said something or behaved in a way that was negative that spawned this kind of belief. Being able to identify sometimes if there is a source of an unhelpful belief can be a really, really helpful step in objectifying that, and realising that the belief has come from somewhere else and therefore can be something that you can make a choice about, whether you want to engage with that belief or whether you want to make a different choice and replace it with a new belief or a new behaviour that’s more constructive and more consistent with your values now as a person, as opposed to how you saw yourself in the past. Observing, documenting, and analysing our own behaviour is a key component of stopping self-sabotage. Use your Prosper journal to notice and record the situations when you are prone to self-defeating behaviours. Write down the trigger or the source of the stress and how you responded, so how you felt and any thoughts that you had at that time. This can help you to explore whether that situation encompasses any mistaken or harmful belief, and then you can train yourself to respond in a new, healthy way. You can see that there are other perspectives and broader choices about how you choose to respond to that situation. In the moment you might need to plan to deal with those feelings, perhaps by sharing that with somebody else and talking it through. Or, you might need to distract yourself by doing exercise or something like that. Then, in terms of practical problem solving, perhaps you might realise that you need to learn a new skill, or work on a particular skill. Use this as an exercise to bring your self-sabotaging behaviours into your awareness. Now I want us to think about the effects of negative self-talk. Each time we say something negative to ourselves, we are reinforcing that belief or that statement in our brain. Our unconscious mind makes no credibility judgement about what we tell it. Essentially, the information that we feed it and the way that we talk to ourselves defines our beliefs about our self. If you think about the language that you use when you speak to yourself, the tone and the actual words that you use, we are strengthening that neural pathway every time we have that thought. A suggestion here is to really start to try and tune in and pay attention to your self-talk, and notice whenever you say something that’s overly pessimistic, overly personal as in, ‘It’s my fault because I’m bad,’ and or overly catastrophic to yourself. Think about reframing that in a more constructive way. For example, ‘I didn’t get the job because I’m not good enough.’ ‘That job wasn’t the right fit for me. I’m going to keep looking until I find a job that is the right fit.’ ‘I’m a terrible networker.’ ‘I am going to learn networking skills so that I can improve my skills in this area.’ It’s not about being blindly optimistic, or necessarily the positive thinking movement. It’s simply about thinking, what’s the most constructive interpretation I can come up with? What’s going to help me to keep going and feel motivated towards my goal? A really common self-sabotage that I see often in academia, I think, is overcommitment and over-responsibility. Overpromising, overestimating and overdoing generally doesn’t help us to lead a balanced life, or take care of ourselves, or develop a positive and professional identity. Yet we all do this on occasion, and we often regret it afterwards. It can always seem like there’s too little time and too much to do, but selecting your activities carefully and prioritising is one of the most important skills that you can master. Getting comfortable with saying no, and respectfully declining ad hoc situations and requests, will serve you better than saying yes to everything and taking on board too much work, and risking your health and your well-being, as well as compromising your ability to be productive. Here is a method for decision making when there are many different alternatives about what you should and should not commit your time to. First of all, get comfortable with not saying yes immediately. Think about a stock phrase that you can use to buy yourself time such as, ‘I’m going to need some time to think about that, and then I’ll get back to you.’ Secondly, examine your schedule and available time. Sit down with your calendar. List all your responsibilities as well as routine and mandatory activities. Include lab work, include research time, Prosper time, family activities, social events, keeping in mind that it’s often easy to underestimate your time. Next step; survey and prioritise. Analyse your schedule and see if you can fit this activity in. After looking at your schedule, determine if you’ve already taken on too much. If you’re going to add this new activity, is there any of the other activities you can scale back to make space for this activity in your schedule? Decide what is most important and realistic in light of your current obligations and your long-term goals. Avoid ad hoc commitments. Whilst the calendar is a useful visual reminder, too many blank pages can tempt you to say yes to ad hoc opportunities. Before taking on an ad hoc opportunity, ask for a detailed description of the activity or opportunity, and think about the time commitment and what will be required of you or asked of you. Consider how the activity will contribute to your development and if it’s in line with your goals. Set aside time in your calendar for rest and relaxation. Days that are just for you or days spent just with family are just as important as everything else. Something to bear in mind when you’re trying to get comfortable with the idea of turning things down is that other people don’t probably understand the full extent of your obligations and responsibilities. They probably can’t see all of the things that you’re already doing. When your schedule is pushing to maximum capacity, it’s not only allowable, but it’s important that you say no, and you actually set limits. Increase your comfort with this. It might be sensible to talk to the other person a little bit about your workload, and to help them to see why you can’t take on that opportunity. To summarise about over commitment and over-responsibility, before you take on anything new, think about the implications so that if you do agree to take it on, then you can perform to the best of your abilities and know that it’s aligned to your goals. The first time you say no to a request or opportunity it might feel awkward or uncomfortable, but it’s much better for your reputation to do a few things exceedingly well than to do lots of things in a mediocre way. It’s also better for your personal sense of mastery and fulfilment and engagement in your work. What is mindset? Psychologist Carol Dweck has led the research on mindsets. She describes this as beliefs about our abilities and qualities that affect the way that we learn, grow, and achieve our goals. Dweck’s work on mindsets is derived from observation of the differences between people, so how people respond to failure and success in different ways, and how people approach learning challenging skills. Dweck describes two different views. She describes two views or interpretations of ability, so a fixed ability, which is a belief that your qualities are carved in stone, so they cannot be changed, and a contrasting belief in the changeable-ness of ability. This means that abilities can be cultivated and developed through learning. Dweck named these mindsets fixed mindset and growth mindset. Where do our mindsets come from? As with many of our beliefs, they are shaped and influenced by our experiences and our environment, including those around us. This is not about assigning blame, but in trying to get an awareness of how our beliefs may have evolved and therefore understanding that we can continue to change and influence our beliefs and the way that we see things. It can be helpful to consider mindsets in relation to your own life, and think about what aspects of life, and to think about which mindsets are operating in my life. Where is growth mindset in my life and where do I have a more fixed approach, and how is that helping me or not? What mindset do you have towards career transition? Changing your mindset doesn’t mean that the old beliefs aren’t still there, but that the new ones can exist alongside them and maybe even be louder sometimes, giving you choices about how to think, feel, and act. Brain plasticity refers to a certain process where the more we think certain things, the more we use certain pathways, the stronger they get. Also, the pathways that we don’t use, the redundant pathways, get weaker over time. This supports the idea that practising is a good way to strengthen neural pathways, to repeat a task over and over. Dweck’s research has shown that teaching people the science underlying the growth mindset and its relationship to learning can be helpful in helping people to move towards a growth mindset. Here’s an activity you can do to help you practise developing a growth mindset. You could journal about this exercise. What I want you to do is to imagine that you’re making a career transition growth mindset cake. What I need you to do is to make a list of the ingredients in this cake, and the percentage of those ingredients. Studies show that self-compassion is associated with resilience, less narcissism, and less angry outbursts. Kristin Neff, Associate Professor of Human Development at the University of Texas, recommends trying to treat yourself like you would a close best friend when you are suffering from anxiety, or self-doubt, or critical thinking. What would you say to your best friend? What would you say to your best friend if they screwed up when they were trying to achieve their goal? Odds are it would be very different for many of us from the kind of language and the kind of talk that we use when we talk to ourselves when we feel like we’ve screwed up. Self-compassion involves being caring and kind towards yourself in the face of hardship or suffering, or perceived inadequacy or self-doubt. Neff defines self-compassion in the following way. Self-kindness versus self-judgement, so offering yourself warmth and kindness instead of berating yourself with judgement. Recognising the commonness of humanity versus isolation, so understanding that going through pain or suffering, making mistakes, feeling self-doubt, feeling difficult emotions, are all part of the human experience. Not just me alone, but actually an experience common to all humans at one time or another. Mindfulness versus overidentification, so a balanced approach to difficult feelings, neither pushing them away and trying to deny that they’re there or exaggerating and amplifying them. Not getting swept away by them. A position of mindful objectivity on yourself and your feelings. An interesting journaling prompt at this point might be to ask yourself, what gets in the way of me being compassionate towards myself? Why self-compassion? A range of recent research highlights the benefit of being compassionate towards yourself. Self-compassion helps us to feel less anxiety when we are thinking about weakness. If we’re trying to protect ourselves from uncomfortableness or anxiety, when we think about personal weakness, we’re less likely to do something constructive or set ourselves a positive action about improving that skill, or improving that weakness. Self-compassion has been shown to be related to positive psychological health, and may be protective against depression. High levels of self-compassion are associated with greater life satisfaction and greater achievement of goals. Self-compassion can counteract self-sabotage. It can allow us to move to a place that’s more open when considering the ways that we may need to grow. By reducing fear and self-doubt, it can help to add fuel to motivate us to achieve our goals. To summarise everything that I’ve said, the way to stop self-sabotage is to try to get used to noticing when you’re experiencing self-sabotaging behaviour, to use your journaling to do a kind of emotional post-mortem on those situations, and then to think about what was happening. What was I experiencing? What were the feelings? What were the thoughts? What was I saying to myself? How was I saying that? What kind of language was I using? Then, when you’ve identified and analysed what’s been happening, you can use one of the tools or techniques that I’ve talked about, such as thinking about the growth mindset and how you would approach this situation in a growth-minded way, or perhaps thinking from a self-compassionate perspective, how could I think about this situation in a kind or compassionate way? How would I speak to a friend about this? This kind of processing can reduce your self-doubt or your anxiety enough, and increase your motivation and confidence enough, that you can make alternative choices. You can pick a constructive action which will move you towards your goal. If we stop for a moment and think about what would be happening emotionally if you did a cycle like that, where you noticed a moment of self-doubt or self-sabotage and you journaled it out, and then you managed to work your way through it, you reduced anxiety and chose something constructive to do, if we imagine how we might feel, I imagine that I would feel empowered and would have started to develop a new belief about my ability to use tools and techniques to work through difficult moments in a constructive way.[END OF TRANSCRIPT]

Hello, welcome to this session on knowing when to cut your losses. P.S. it’s not a waste. In this session we’ll be covering: what sunk cost fallacy is; the thinking that stops you cutting your losses; how to recognise you’re getting into this type of thinking and some practical approaches to counter it; how to set your own trigger point; and some next steps. When considering doing something different career-wise the kind of questions on screen might come up for us. Don’t we owe it to ourselves to keep fighting to stay on the set path after we invested all that time, money and energy, after others invested in us? If we don’t stay will all those years be wasted? Does any of this sound familiar to you? You might not have said or thought this yourself but someone you know might’ve said something along these lines when considering if they continue their career in academia or not. You may even hear this externally from friends or family who say, ‘But I thought you were happy working at the university. It seemed like a good job.’ This feeling that if we move career path all we’ve done previously will be a waste, or wasted, is common. We’ve heard this from some postdocs we’ve worked with; that even though they’re considering a career somewhere other than in academia they feel that as they’ve already spent ten plus years getting to this point, leaving now seems like a bit of a waste. So, they might as well carry on. This type of thinking is called the sunk cost fallacy. A sunk cost is an irrecoverable investment. It could be money, time or effort. The result can be that you continue with an activity that no longer benefits you because you fear having wasted time or effort. However despite rationally knowing you can’t get that cost back, because you’ve expended it you now feel emotionally attached. It’s this emotional attachment which makes it hard to change your strategy or career. A quick thought experiment: imagine you’ve headed out to the shops to pick up a loaf of bread. You’ve got over halfway to the shops when you realise that you’ve forgotten your wallet and phone. Do you carry on to the shops because you’re already most of the way there? Hopefully you’d all answer no to this example. However if you’ve fallen into the sunk cost fallacy thinking you would continue on to the shops because of the time and effort you’ve already expended getting ready, leaving the house, walking to the shops – despite not being able to buy the loaf. This irrational decision-making based on past investment rather than future outcome is a well-studied psychological phenomenon. It’s not unique to academia. In fact it’s not even unique to humans; rats and mice have been observed to do it, too. Individuals and groups can both be prone to it. A commonly-cited example of this is Concorde; a joint project between the governments of France and Britain to create a commercial supersonic passenger jet. The project ultimately ended up with wildly-escalating costs, but instead of rationally deciding to stop the project, investment and effort continued to the end. Granted, in this example there was a political rather than emotional attachment to the project which prevented it from being canned. The problem with this type of thinking when making career decisions is that if you’re making choices based on time and effort you’ve already spent, you’re not thinking about what you want in the future or what you hope to gain. It means if you’re in a career you’ve outgrown or is no longer aligned to your values, you’ll carry on accumulating costs and not giving yourself a chance to thrive in another pursuit or area. As the quote says, you could end up making your future self suffer to please your past self. This type of feeling – that changing career can be a loss – can be exaggerated if you hold the belief that careers are linear, that you steadily progress logically from A to B to C, advancing towards the apex of that particular area or sector. I’ve used a phrase career path in this session as it’s in common usage. I’ve had a range of metaphors, often journey based, used to describe careers such as a jungle gym, a squiggly career, a ladder, a trajectory, a pipeline, a network of pipes, a lattice, branching, haphazard, a book of many chapters, a well-beaten or well-trodden pathway, a road – bumpy or otherwise – a track, a roller-coaster, a zigzag, jazz. The list goes on. These metaphors can be useful but sometimes they can unhelpfully limit or shape our thinking. We can end up trying to fit ourselves to a career model rather than the other way around. The quote from Cadbury is perhaps more useful, emphasising that a career is something we, as individuals, construct and create ourselves through proactive action rather than being pre-planned, allowing us to make adjustments as we go. This also fits with the increasingly common career metaphor of a narrative career; that our career is a story we are creating and retelling as we go. Another unhelpful aspect of considering career paths to be linear is that they have one correct career outcome or destination. However as Emily Wapnick summarises in her TEDxBend talk, ‘Why some of us don’t have one true calling’, it is rarely a waste of time to pursue something we’re drawn to. Even if you end up quitting, you might apply that knowledge in a different field entirely in a way that you couldn’t have anticipated. Her quote flips the sunk cost fallacy thinking around. Instead of mourning the time and effort we’ve already expended as lost, we can think of it as building a useful resource we can tap into in the future in ways we can’t even imagine yet. This brings us nicely on to our activity. We suggest that you pause the recording here and spend about ten minutes considering the outputs you’ve generated so far in your career. By outputs what we mean are things that you’ve produced and the impact you’ve had. These could be really discreet things like papers, monographs, book chapters or slightly more nebulous things like moving knowledge forward in your discipline. People you’ve made a difference to, building your research community to things like public outreach and communication. If you find thinking of your outputs or the impact you’ve had tough, it may help you to view yourself from an external perspective. Perhaps think of what a very good friend who knows the details of what you do in your research work would say are your main outputs, or the view of PhD or master’s student you’ve supervised would have of you. Now you’ve listed these outputs we really do want to emphasise that whatever you do in the future, these won’t be lost or erased. They’re outputs you’ve created and experience you’ve gained. The impact you’ve had on your research, on the people you’ve worked with isn’t lost regardless of whatever you choose to do in the future as you move forward. As we’ve discussed, getting hung up on costs you’ve already expended can stop you from moving on and exploring new possibilities or careers. You may want to address this by setting yourself a trigger point. A trigger point is analogous with a gambler setting themselves a limit or folding, or a mountaineer setting themselves a point at which they know they need to turn back. Setting these points or changing direction isn’t a waste of effort or a failure. In these analogous examples, the consequences of not setting or ignoring their trigger points can be catastrophic. To set your own career trigger point you need to set a clear measurable threshold that once – or if – it’s met you change your career direction. If we stick with the analogy of gambling: a trigger point may be once I’ve lost £50 at roulette, I’ll leave the casino and go and do something else. The something else isn’t the important part of the statement. What is crucial is setting and sticking to the threshold point that you’ve set. If we consider a hypothetical postdoc now setting themselves a career trigger point of when they will stop pursing a career in academia, the trigger point statements could look something like: I’ll submit a particular number of fellowship applications. If I’m not successful I’ll start to look for career opportunities beyond academia. I’ll try to get a tenure-tracked role for a particular number of years. If I’ve not achieved this by a year, I’ll do something else. Or if I haven’t got a permanent academic role by a particular month or year, I’ll look elsewhere for a job. Again the important part is committing to change career trajectory if the conditions of the trigger point is met. If you find yourself making decisions based on sunk cost fallacy-type thinking, there are a few things that you can do to counter this. Firstly, by realising that in this context the sunk nature of the cost is itself a fallacy, you’ve not lost anything. You won’t lose anything by moving on or changing your career direction. You take all of your experience, knowledge and outputs with you. Instead of focussing on the time and effort that you’ve already expended, focus on what you want for yourself right now and in the future. When making a decision about whether to persist with your current course of action or not, you could ask yourself: firstly what would I gain if I stuck with this option and what would I lose if I switched? Then the reverse; what would I lose if I stuck with this option and what would I gain if I switched? If you’re still unsure if you’re deciding base d on facts or not, think back through the whole chain of decisions that have led you to this point. When reviewing each decision in the chain, ask yourself: if you are presented with the same choice again would you make the same decision? If not, why not? Another approach you might wish to take is to try… Another approach you might wish to take is to get you to think… Another approach you might wish to try out gets you to think through several steps. Here it’s worth starting by viewing yourself as a being that has just magically popped into existence, with all of your skills, experience and knowledge – but no history. You go through your present considering all of your skills, to considering the options that are ahead of you, and finally discussing your decisions and reasoning with an impartial third party to essentially double-check that your decisions aren’t rooted in sunk cost fallacy-type thinking. As we draw to the end of this session what are your next steps? As you build on your career development going forward, remember to check your thinking – or that of your peers – for sunk cost fallacy reasoning. Check you’re making decisions for future you and not being beholden to past you. Have a go at one of the approaches we’ve presented to help make a decision in the future. You may wish to reflect on decisions you’ve previously made to see if you’ve learned… To see if, now that you’ve learned about the sunk cost fallacy, you’re faced with the same decision now you’d make a different choice. Lastly, you can think about setting your own trigger point. Thank you for your time.

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A very warm welcome. And as I say, thank you. Um, some of you know me, some of you are like, who’s this person? So I’m the other Elizabeth. Um, so I’m the one of the other coaches on the Prosper programme, and I’ve been working with Prosper since its inception, uh, three years ago. So, um, I’m really pleased to be here and a tiny bit about me. Um, so I’ve been working around with researchers about 14 years, 15 years. I’m not an academic. Um, I came from the corporate world, but, um, worked for the university for a short while and became really fascinated in academia, but also, um, I’m really interested in people. So I’m a coach and I’ve been coaching across the business sector and across academia as well. Um, so I do one-to-one coaching sessions. I also do facilitation, and I’ve got a real passion as well for what I call early career. So, um, because I’m rather old and I’ve made lots of mistakes in my career, so I get an opportunity to say, here’s some things you might never wanna do. Um, so I’m quite vulnerable in that space as well. So that’s a tiny bit about me.

Um, well, working virtual, I have one rule. One is permission to be messy. Uh, things happen, people knock on the door. Um, tech things happen. So do what you need to look after yourself. Um, if you can pop, keep yourselves on mute, but there will be an opportunity to ask questions and contribute later. And if you can keep your cameras on, thank you. If you, for letting me know if you’ve got a camera problem. So that’s, um, useful too. You will need some pen and paper for scribbles.

Um, and how we’re gonna be working today is I’m going to set up where we’re heading today. Um, I’ll share a bit of context, then you’ll do a bit of an activity, and then I’ll share some other context and you’ll do some activity too. Um, and, um, the main part of the session you’ll be doing work on your own in terms of self-reflection, and there’ll possibly be a breakout room a little bit later on with about four people. So we’ve got, um, a little bit of an opportunity to just, uh, share the results of your profile, which I’m gonna invite you to, to take to, to share. So, so do you think you might stay? I always like to check, yeah. Okay. There’s a few nods sometimes, not too sure. But anyway, um, okay, so I’m just gonna share a couple of slides. Um, you’ll be pleased to know it’s not pa hopefully not. PowerPoints too heavy and there’s no role play unless you really want one. I can create one, but there we go. Generally people don’t like anything like that. So it’s a safe, confidential environment, I’m hoping.

Um, so let me just share where we’re heading today.Okay? So we’re gonna look at why, why we, what is this positive intelligence stuff? Why have we got a session called it? And what do you need to know about that? Um, we’re gonna talk about the inner critic, where does it come from? And if you’ve done inner critic work before, I’m sure you know your own, so it might be a bit of a refresher for some of this, but I’m gonna share a couple of models, um, about, uh, what the in critic is, where it comes from, and I’m going to share a bit of what the neuroscience says because I think sometimes we use different language and we, we don’t quite understand. And we know that the first steps in understanding and managing our own negative mindset and shifting more towards a positive intelligence is when we understand it a little bit more. Um, and then I’m going to, um, invite you to complete what they call the seven personas of your inner critics. So you should all have a paper copy or access to a profile tool, and if you haven’t, if you can, um, pop that into the chart and Stefania, you’ll pick that up. Um, we’ll talk about that a little bit later. And then I’m gonna offer some strategies, um, to help build your own positive intelligence, um, based on really effective strategies from my world that I know that have been proven.

So, um, so I’m gonna ask you to stay open and curious and, um, again, when we’re working in small breakout rooms, just to be respectful, um, in terms of confidentiality, we are recording, but we will cut out any of the conversation. Um, so any of the tools that I share today, please feel free to take them away. Um, I’m gonna ask that we keep the conversations either within the confines of our small breakout rooms or if there’s some conversation in the bigger group that we do that. So I’m hoping that is okay for everybody. Is that okay? Let me just have a little check. Is everybody okay with the confidentiality? Super. Okay.

So, um, we are gonna begin with the end in mind. And again, this is another little technique. So you’re gonna just grab a piece of paper and a pen. And, um, given where we’re heading today, I’m gonna invite you to set your own intention for the session. It’s a, it’s a small goal, but I’m gonna ask you to do it in a certain way. And the technique is called Begin with the end in mind. And again, it’s based on positive psychology. And very often when we come to a session like this or we go to a meeting, we think about what we don’t wanna have happen. And this is, we’re doing the reverse of this. So what I’m gonna do is I’m gonna ask you to set yourself a little intention for the session today. Again, you can, um, write this down for yourself, and we’re gonna do this in a certain way. It’s called With the Begin with the end in mind. It’s by a guy called Stephen Covery, who wrote a book called The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. And it’s a way of really helping us focus on what it is that we really want.

So I’m gonna ask, ask you, what do you wanna be saying at when we finish at 1130 today? What is it you wanna be saying to yourself? What is it that you want to have? And we ask you to do this in a certain way. It, we ask you to write it in the present tense as if it’s already happened. So I am or I have. Um, and it needs to be positive. So what do you want? What do you want to be taken away? It needs to be personal to you, and it also needs to be possible.

Um, and it’s a great practice to get into. Again, we can do this for meetings. Um, I think, uh, we did this with, um, with my Prosper group. We set, we went to the end of the program and said, what is it you wanna be taken away in six months time? What is it that you want to be focused on and taken that away? So I’m just gonna give you a minute to write that down. I’ll keep the slide up so you can see how it’s written, and then I’d like you to write that down and keep it somewhere. You can see it through the course of the morning. So what do you want to be saying as you leave the session? Making sure it’s in the present tense, that it’s positive about what you do want and it’s personal to you.

Okay, so I’m just gonna move us on and, um, I’m just gonna set up, uh, and answer that question, what, why positive intelligence? So I’ve been working across academia for about 10 to 14 years, and what I, I notice particularly working with a lot of high achievers, very successful people, um, that includes you even though you might not feel that. Um, is that a very, when it comes to the inner critic, that there’s a very harsh, critical voice that might be, um, sometimes a little bit harsher than I sometimes see in other sectors. And I got really curious about this and wondered, um, what is it that stops us being, treating ourselves with kindness and compassion? And actually that, that voice that, um, that can be quite strong.

Um, what I was noticing is that that had, it had certain personas and there were certain things that I saw more in academia that I didn’t see in the business world. And then I came across, um, um, Chamine’s work, which is, so what we’re gonna be talking about here is from a book called Positive Intelligence. We’ll put all the links in the chat later on, and he came up with some personas. And when I was reading that, I went, oh my gosh, that’s what I see. And wouldn’t this be great to help people explore a little bit deeper around this positive intelligence and actually how our inner critic gets in the way. So that’s a little bit of background.

So I guess my first question, I’m just gonna think, get you to think about that and put your best guess. There aren’t any prizes, I’m afraid. What a shame. But anyway, so the question is what do you think positive intelligence is? So what would be your best guess? Um, and you can either pop that in the chat or if there’s anybody who would like to, um, I’m just gonna remove, can I remove the spotlight, Stefania, just to, so I can see everyone? Thank you. So let’s put somebody like to have a little guess about what positive intelligence is. Yes, great techniques to stay optimistic. Yep. Yes, some of that. Anybody else? Less acceptance of difficulties. Yeah, there is something about accepting them and also being really aware of them and being realistic. Great. So it’s all of that. Okay.

Um, so let me, let me, um, let me talk a little bit about how, uh, Chamine talks about positive intelligence. So our mind can be our best friend, or it can be our worst enemy, and it has a direct impact on whether we reach our potential or not. So we’re probably a lot more familiar with IQ, our intelligence or EQ, which is our emotional intelligence and our emotional intelligence, and they contribute to our maximum potential. So that’s our potential, that’s our maximum potential PQ or positive intelligence determine determines how much potential we will achieve. And what he talks about is the MA PQ measures the amount of time our mind is serving us in that positive state versus the amount of time our inner critics driving the bus. And if we’ve got a higher, um, PQ, so if we’re able to work with, um, we have more positive intelligence and our PQ rating is higher, then we are gonna be able to work more to our potential and in that voice.

Does that make sense? And he goes into a whole science about that, and I’m not gonna be doing that in our 90 minutes, um, because you can go and do that if that’s something that you want to do. But I just think it’s really interesting way to think of, actually I self sabotaging myself. What’s the conversation I’m having with myself? Am I being positive or realistic or getting back up after a disappointment, or am I just using that really harsh voice? So the good news is that once we understand more about how our own minds work, we can then start to practice and build that up.

And he’d identifies 10 personas of the inner critic and that inner critic that stops us from really reaching our full potential. And I’ve taken, I’ve taken three of them out, so we’re only gonna be looking at seven of them today because I think when he was writing the book, my sense is the other three that he put in 10 made a nice number. And I think we can get away with seven. And actually the seven that I’m gonna introduce you to later, the ones that I see more around what I term academia, I’m not saying they’re not outside academia, but I think once you start looking at the titles and the descriptions, you will absolutely recognize, oh, I’ve got a bit of that, or I’ve seen that. Or this is something else as well. So it’s a just a nice way for you to understand a little bit more about, about your own. Um, so we’re gonna dive a little bit deeper into the inner critic. And I’m also going to, um, share another model with you to understand the, um, just to understand the, the neuroscience.

Um, we all have an inner voice. Um, it reminds us to pick up milk on the way home from work. Um, it helps us to problem solve. Um, uh, if we’re practicing a presentation or we’re scoping some work out, our inner voice is part of our work in memory. It helps keep information active. Oh, I must remember to do that. Oh, I’ve got the Prosper session to do this. Oh, I must do that. I have to send that email. But we have an inner voice. It’s normal. We all have it. Um, and, um, it can be really helpful because it can help us rehearse things when we’re doing presentations. Um, it helps us at an interview if we haven’t gone into inner critic. So it can help us plan for questions, think about things that can be really, really helpful.

Um, sometimes this really helpful inner, inner voice wanders into harmful chatter. And when it wanders into harmful chatter, that’s where the inner critic comes out. Okay? So when it’s normal, the normal kind of chatter, that’s fine. When it wanders into the negative, that’s what we’re call in inner critic, it’s that negative chatter. And the chatter’s generally very harsh. Um, and your, your chatter will be quite unique to you. So it’ll tell you some amazing stories about why you shouldn’t really, you won’t be very good outside of academia because of blah, blah, blah, blah or whatever. It’ll have some fantastic stories to tell you. Um, it’s, it very often will come from our younger self, the teacher that gave us some feedback when we were small that we’ve, we’ve taken on board. Um, so we, it it’s informed by our caregivers very often. It comes from our younger self, and that’s where it establishes. So when we’re very young, it can be really helpful to get us through school and I’ll talk about some examples later on.

But the role of the inner critic is, it’s not good or bad, it’s to keep us safe. That’s it. Okay? It doesn’t want us to mess up upset ourselves, just play small more. Um, and if if there’s a perceived danger, then it’ll show up. Okay? And everybody is unique and everyone’s in a critic is unique, but there will be some commonalities between them.

So I’m just gonna take a pause just to see, is this making sense for everybody? Yes. Okay, good. So you’re a, you’re inner critics are going, mm, we’re not too sure about this. We’ll, the jury’s out.

So, so I’m gonna share, um, I’m just gonna share another, um, model. Um, this is a really familiar model, which I know some of you will already know. And we’re just gonna touch on the neuroscience, because I think it’s useful to know what part of the brain, uh, when we’re looking at positive intelligence and we’re looking at the inner critic, where does it come from?Um, so I’m just gonna share a little model, um, which as I say, I know some of you will have seen. Here we go. So, um, Steve Peters is, uh, professor Steve Peters is, uh, a, a thought leader. He wrote a book, uh, in 2011 called The Chimp Paradox. Um, and, um, you may be familiar with his work. Um, he was the dean at the medical school at Sheffield, and he was, when he was working with his medical students, what he was noticing was that when it came to the, the workings of the brain, it seemed all very confusing for people. And he was like, how can I make this simple for people to kind of go, actually, this is how the brain works, this is what, what would be most useful? And he came up with what he called the chimp paradox. And, um, like all models, it isn’t correct, but it’s a very simplified way of, um, helping us understand where does the inner critic come from, um, and how can I be more in my best self if I’m gonna increase my, um, positive, my positive intelligence, which part of the brain do I need to be in, and how do I get in there? So Peter’s talks about that we have two thinking systems.

So we have the prefrontal cortex, which is the little human person which he actually calls the human. And that is our smart executive functioning part of the brain. It’s the human, the what he calls the human. It thinks logically and rationally, it’s able to get perspective. It can get us back up after a disappointment and it can get, um, it has some real, its success is all about values and what’s important. So it looks internally for success and is actually can be quite realistic as well. It, it, it can get real perspective and it also is able to put things in a timeline. So, and it will work with what’s in front of us and the reality of life that sometimes isn’t quite fair, but actually it can probably deal with that. So that’s the prefrontal cortex. The other part of our, the other thinking system thinks very differently to us. And that is, um, what he calls the chimp. It’s the orbital frontal cortex, uh, represented thereby little chimp. And that thinks really differently to you, that thinks emotionally and in it thinks in feelings and senses and intuition. So when it perceives danger, it will react.

So you’ve probably heard a fight flight freeze. So that comes from that area there. And this is our kind of inner critic area, so it thinks really differently to us, and it will, it’s again, designed to keep us safe. So it will catastrophize, it will look at what’s the worst thing that’s going to happen. Um, it’ll look at consequences about what might happen. So it, you know, if you might have what I call a what if thing in a critic, so what if this or what if that or what if the other, um, particularly if we’re trying to do something we’ve never done before, um, it doesn’t have a concept of time. So everything you know, that happened a long time ago is brought back into the present moment as if it’s very real.

And how it works is that actually, so we’ve got these two parts of our brain and they work really differently to us. So logic would say, well, why don’t we just ignore the chimp part of the brain and just kind of like, just forget it. But actually it doesn’t actually work like that. So, um, that part of our brain thinks five times quicker than us. Um, it’s designed for safety. And every north point north seven of a second, it scans for danger. So, you know, for those of you who didn’t know me, when, when you rocked up today for this session, you pro your chimp was probably thinking mm, sure about her. Mm or you’ll have made it, you’ll have made an opinion, is this safe? Is it not safe? Is it safe? Is it not safe? So it, it thinks really, really quickly because that’s what it’s designed to do. And it reacts when it in, when it, when it perceives a danger. And if you think about the things that it thinks is a danger now, so anywhere we might be unsuccessful or we we’re risking looking stupid, it will react and can take over. And again, going back to what we’re talking about today in terms of positive intelligence, what we’re trying to do is quieten that part of our brain to really work with it and manage it. Because actually when any anything comes into the brain first, it goes to that area first and that it’s kinda like the gatekeeper really. So we really need to understand more about it.

So I’m going to just pause there because that’s neuroscience in five minutes. And I’m just gonna ask, is there any questions before we go onto the next bit or did that make sense? Okay.

So we’ll possibly come back to that in a minute. Um, but for now, what I’d like you to do is, is you’re gonna need your profile. So if you’ve got access to it, and you could get that, and I’m just gonna explain a little bit about, um, about what we’re gonna do next. Let me just share. Sure. Okay. So what you’re gonna be rating yourself against is what they call seven personas of the inner critic. So you’ve got the judge, the stickler, the pleaser, the restless, the hyper rational, the hyper achiever, and the controller.

Okay? And I’m not gonna, I’m not gonna read all of this. So what I’m gonna ask you to do is, um, grab your profile and what you’ve got is that you’ve got a description of each of the seven of the personas. And what I’m gonna invite you to do is read through each of the personas and at the bottom of each of the, um, descriptions, you’ve got a one to seven. And what I’d like you to do is rate yourself. So if you read through the judge and go, yeah, that’s, that’s a seven, I recognize everything on there. That’s, that’s very familiar. Um, and if it’s a lower score, that’s fine. Don’t worry about the scores. They only mean something to you. It’s not good or bad, it’s just a score. And then what I’d like you to do is I’d like you to go through each one, take your time. We’ve got, we’ve got about 20 minutes to do this. I’m gonna ask you to do it on your own. Um, and then at the very end you can move all your scores and summarize them and then we’re gonna come back and have a little chat about it. Is that okay? Okay.

[Solo activity]

So we’re just coming up to the 15 minute mark. I just wanna check in and see how you’re doing. And does anybody need any more time or is that in, okay, good. Um, and one of the reasons I wanted to do this as well is that, you know, we’re only starting the conversation here, so I’m gonna be encouraging you to take this away and dive a little bit deeper into it. But, um, okay, great. So I’m gonna ask you to pop your cameras back on for those who are able to. Thank you. Um, and just before, um, I’m gonna, we’re gonna go into some breakout rooms. I’m gonna offer some, um, discussion questions, uh, just for 15 minutes.

But just before I do, um, I just wanted to mention, um, that, um, when we were talking about the neuroscience and I was sharing the chimp model, what’s really interesting is that actually that part of our, that part of the, our security, our kind inner critic, the chimp part has drives and the survival drives. And um, what’s really interesting is looking at those, some of those survival drives and this profile you can see. So one of them is that actually we have an inbuilt and some of us will have stronger ones than others. We’ll have an inbuilt competitive drive. Now if you think about, uh, primates in, in, in a, in the wild that keeps them alive. And again, when we were kind of hunter-gatherers, that part of the brain before our prefrontal cortex was really well developed was, again, there’s that competitiveness. So you can kind of see where those survival drives and how they show up today can actually be helpful or not so helpful.

The other one, which I see a lot around, not just academia, but it’s what I call the troop drive, chimps can’t survive in the jungle on their own as human beings. We need other people to survive and connect with. So very often, uh, I’ve got a very high troop drive, which resulted from some, as a kid at school being had no friends for a few weeks when they all fell out with me for something that’s quite brutal at seven. So I learnt to people please, great, just say yes. Yep, I’ll do that. I had lots of friends, it was a great coping mechanism to get through school when I stepped into a management role and everybody wanted the day off and you go, oh yes. Or who wants to volunteer to do this? Oh yes, I’ll do that. I didn’t really want to, but actually, but it was an old habit that’s actually an inbuilt drive to keep me safe and secure. It just wasn’t very helpful. And when I went through my own coaching journey and some of this was, it was like, oh, it’s just something I learned to do. People might still like me. Well they might not, but they might still like me if I say no. So let’s try it and see. So again, it’s quite an interesting one. I see troop drive a lot in, um, in teams. Um, and also a lot of new people join a team. Oh, we’re not sure about this person. Well, we like them to start with and then we don’t. So we’ll all get together and push the person out. Sure. None of that goes on, but it’s, you, you kind of get the gist right.

So what we’re gonna do is I’m gonna ask, um, Stef if she can put us into groups of four for 15 minutes and I’m gonna share some, um, you might wanna take a little picture of this. Please feel free. You don’t have to stick to this. The, these are just some invitation. The purpose of this is one, a bit of networking, saying hello to people, but also to share what you feel comfortable to share, share in your groups around these questions or anything else. So again, um, let me just, okay, so what stands out for you of your own profile? Were there any surprises? Um, what would change at work? Um, or in your personal life if your judge or one of the other voices was quieter? So, which is the ones that shows up the most, which is the loudest one? You will find that, um, the judge is the, uh, is the, is the, is the main critic if you like, and can very often kick start all the others. So we all tend to have a judge. Um, some of us might have a quieter judge. Uh, my judge comes out around particular people, so you might wanna think about when they show up and stuff and I’ll offer some questions later. So, um, what stands out for you? Any surprises? Uh, what would change at work or in your personal life if your judge or one of the other voices was a little bit quieter, um, and you might wanna appoint a spokesperson. ’cause when we come back, I’m just gonna, we’ll, we’ll check in with each of the rooms. Uh, and I might pop in if that’s okay not to check up, but just because it’s lonely sitting here on my own when you are all having conversations. So I might pop into one of the rooms.

[Breakout rooms activity]

What we know about really smart, successful people is that they’ve got a really heightened level of self-awareness. And so, um, what we’ve been doing today is offering a structure to give you more information about what voices allowed and what aren’t. So I think that’s the first stage. And then it’s about deciding, um, where, where you wanna make that change. So do you wanna quieten it down or, or do you wanna dial it up or to bring that more imbalance? Because sometimes it can be quite helpful. And, and I think that’s where the, um, that’s setting those small goals and intentions. So I’m just gonna share, um, just a couple of slides, um, to just make that point and I’ll, I’ll come back to your question if I may. I’ll, so here we go. Um, thank you to Disney. I just love this picture, but there we go.

So the, the, the first part is getting to know ourselves, but also knowing our kind of inner critic. It’s not good or bad. It’s there to help us. Sometimes it doesn’t. And when we want to start making changes with it, whether we want to dial it down or dial it up, is that actually we need to know when it shows up, what are we doing, who are we with and when does it not show up? Okay? And then what do we need to do differently? So we’re going to send those questions out. So again, Ross, it’s about what is it you want to do differently and what’s stopping you getting in the way? Generally when we, when we step forward to make a change, we always do what we’ve always done, but we have to do something different when we’re trying to build a habit. Um, and the next, um, I’ve got a couple of slides which we’ll talk to. There’s a guy called James Clear who wrote a book called Atomic Habits. I know some of you know the book. Um, and he talks about, I think it’s a really interesting idea is that when we want to do something different, before we do the different, we need to build a habit.

So he talks about going to the gym, okay, so 1st of January we’re going to go to the gym every day for 30 days for two hours. That isn’t going to happen. No. And what he said is that when we’re building a habit, we need to, to do that in tiny, tiny steps to build a habit. And he gives an example of, so you get up for the first three mornings and you get in the car and you go to the gym and you drive back. But you don’t go in but you just get the habit. Uh, or you might, like for me it’d be put my pack, my bag and put it at the bottom by the stairs, because if it’s not there, it’s not gone, I’m not going to be getting in the car. It’s a bit like, don’t want to use my mobile phone very much. So move it out the way, what I need to disrupt, what might disrupt my current habit. And then once you move the habit, then you need to check in the belief about what’s the belief that’s that again.

So there’s a number of things when we’re making those changes, what’s the habit? What do I do at the moment? What do I want to be different? And what’s the belief behind that? So, um, very often our belief around motivation and work hard and strive hard and keep going is there’s a fear that actually if we, if we dial that down and we don’t, when we’re not motivated by fear, is that actually all our success? And that will just disappear. And actually we know the research is that actually that’s not true. We know that actually when we’re kinder to ourselves, particularly in struggle around appreciation and self-compassion, that is actually as much a driver as that harsh voice. We also, when we’re making a change, also need to prove that those things that we’re telling ourselves that will happen won’t happen. So I’m going to apply for this job. Oh, don’t bother, you won’t get it. Well I’m going to apply for it anyway. I can only do my best. Um, you might not get it, but you could, but you can still have a go. So we have to try and build those habits. Has that answered your question?

Yeah, but the first stage is being aware of it and then we can do something about it. Because actually what we’ve been doing today in our 90 minutes is bringing stuff into your, from your subconscious into your conscious mind. When it’s in your conscious mind, then you can start to change it. A lot of this stuff, it, we didn’t even know it. We didn’t, might not even known it was there. So thank you. I think the thing is, and I always say to people, do you want something to be different? If you don’t, then you carry on. Uh, you, a lot of this is around choice. What’s the choice that I want to make?

So I’ll share a really silly example, but it’s a really, so I worked with a medic, a medical, a GP, so do a lot of work with medics, England healthcare professionals. And I had, um, uh, a GP and she said, I said, what do you want to be different? She had a very harsh judge and she couldn’t take any time off at all. She had to work all the way through her lunch hour. And I said, what, what is it you want? She said, I’d just like to have a lunch hour. She said, even half an hour every night. And I said, well, what gets in the way? She said, oh, I can’t stop. Somebody might need me. So I said, well, okay. So we got a call on permission slips. So she got some post-it notes and she put, I give myself permission to have 30 minutes today for lunch. And she popped up and a laptop like that and I couldn’t wait to see her to see what happened. So anyway, she did it three times in the week. And then she, when I met her the next time, said, how did you get on? She went, well, two people interrupted me. And I just said, can you come back? And I said, what did they do? And they said, okay. And so she went, oh, right, I can have a lunch hour. Very tiny step, very tiny step. But actually what that did was actually start to give her a different perspective of, well, if that’s not true, what else might not be true?

You know, our brains are re you know, we, we are hardwired for this stuff. You know, we’ve worked very, very long, many years and now we’re thinking we might want to change it. So we have to be really gentle with ourself, but we actually have to really start with small steps because that voice can make us, it, it can really stop us in our tracks. So we have to start in small steps and then other people maybe not. So, so does that make sense? I think it’s about choice. If you want something to be different, there are certain periods of your life where you, you might not want it to be different or it’s not appropriate for whatever reason, but it comes down to how your choice. So thanks.

Okay, so I’m conscious of time and I do have some other couple of slides that I’d like to just share. Um, building on, uh, some of the techniques to this go. So again, um, we’ll get a copy of these slides as well.

Uh, the other strategy is what I call building reps. You have to practice this stuff. So, um, with my GP friend, she could have done, like, she did it over a period of a month to keep, you know, sometimes it wasn’t appropriate. It wasn’t realistic to have a lunch hour. Like every day she got maybe one lunch hour, every so many weeks was better than nothing at all. So it’s what we call building reps. The more we practice the new habits, then we create a new neural pathway and a new belief. That’s how this stuff works. A bit like going to the gym and actually our muscle memory then carries on when we’re not in the gym, if you like, because that’s what we do. And we have those new habits now. So, um, and it takes practice, and it takes commitment even when we don’t feel like doing it.

So, um, the other strategy is what I call self-compassion. There’s a lot of work by a lady called Kristen Neff who’s done a lot of research. She’s an academic researcher over in the States. Um, she’s, she’s spent her life work on the, um, things around self-compassion. And she talked, she says there are three components of self-compassion. And again, um, I’ll send out a link to, um, had a TED talk that she’s done on self-esteem and self-compassion. It’s only 20 minutes, it’s very interesting watch. Um, do we treat ourselves with the same kindness as we would a good friend? So do we talk to ourself? You know, when you don’t do something that doesn’t work out, do you, would you say that to a friend? Uh, it’s a really good check in point, um, very often, and I think this is the one that’s a real crucial bit for me around compassion, is that when something doesn’t work out for us, we tend to judge ourselves about why we’re different. And what she calls it is common humanity. Where am I the same as others? If someone had spent lots of time trying to publish some piece of research and they’ve spent hours and hours and it doesn’t, it doesn’t get published, what would I do? Like where am I, what would I say to someone else in that situation? Well, of course you’re going to feel upset and disappointed rather than, what have I done wrong and I should have done this? So again, that common humanity looking to see, um, where am I the same as others? And again, that does a lot again for positive psychology and that actually about being really mindful. So being present in our struggle. Um, and as I say, I’ll send that link out later on because it’s, it’s kind of really interesting.

Um, the other one, um, is practicing gratitude. Um, this is a really, really simple, um, effective technique that you can do two minutes before you go to sleep of a night. I’ve been practicing gratitude for about 15 years. I do it every night. Um, and I write three or four things that I’m grateful for. Um, my dad had cancer, um, in 2017, uh, and we had two years of in going through treatment and I practice gratitude every day through those treatments, even when it was going to cost us for a cup of coffee after his treatment. And he went into remission. And I could have spent two years worrying about him, but I didn’t. And actually it was about what can I focus on even in the struggle, which was those conversations got really funny sense of humour as well. So, so gratitude practice, again, we are programming the brain to kind of go, what’s working? What’s working well, what can I be thankful for? Uh, loads of research again about, about that.

And then the other bit is about how do we develop our inner leader? And I know for those of you who’ve been doing Prosper, you know, you’ve probably been spending a lot of time on your strengths and your skills, your personal brand, thinking about how you can really develop those, those strengths and those things that you can be counted on four. Um, so I think the whole Prosper journey has really been supportive of that. And again, probably has given you, if you think about where you started five months ago, probably a lot more information about your own skills and strengths and what you can be counted on four, um, then you maybe had five months ago. And again, in terms of that, that focus as well.

So I’m very conscious of time. That’s the quickest, it’s always the quickest 90 minutes. And, um, I just want to give you, um, a little opportunity to go back to that piece of paper that you set, that you picked up this morning. Um, and set yourself a little intention with the, begin with the end in mind and then see how you got on. So how did you get on? I’m not going to ask you to share that. What is it, what did you do?

And then my second question is, what I’d like is to, for you to pop in the chat, um, what’s your, uh, number one takeaway? What’s been most useful for you? What’s one action maybe that you’re going to take away to reflect on, think about, um, to take this forward of anything that stood out. And if you haven’t enjoyed yourself and you’ve thought it’s not been very good, well if you could just make something up that’d be really helpful to make me feel better. Um, so have a think about what’s, what’s the one thing that you’re taking away today? What is it that you might try? I’ll invite you to pop that into the chat if you want to. If you don’t want to, that’s fine too. And just give you, um, couple of minutes to do that. And then I’ll just ask if there’s any final question. Thank you for taking time out your diaries today to come and, uh, and do some stuff together.

Welcome to this short podcast. My name is Natasha Wilson, and I’m a leadership development consultant working mainly in research intensive organizations. I will be introducing you to the toolkit labeled how to thrive in research,

growing new agility and resilience. You will be able to access additional information on the Prosper website with detailed information on the framework and relevant exercises.

How did this toolkit come about? In my work, I’ve had a chance to speak with many researchers who share the challenges and struggles that are connected to research environments.

And I initially created a workshop on the art of thriving in research, which focused on open science, the art of collaboration, and gaining an entrepreneurial mindset.

These essential skills and mindset help researchers like you gain momentum and work towards their goals. However, COVID -19 and the related changes in the way we work and connect with each other has driven me to develop an additional toolkit linked to our personal mastery and how this can help us thrive in research.

This toolkit focuses on growing our agility and resilience to perform at our best. I have used principles from applied neuroscience, positive psychology and best practices in research environments.

The first step is to check in and define your thriving state by assessing your workload, project difficulty, progress towards your goals,

your energy levels and external factors influencing your work. You need to reflect on what makes you thrive and identify triggers that set you back.

Taking control of factors you can influence to improve your state. Remember that performance and capacity may change over time, so it is crucial to notice where you are on a scale to avoid exhaustion.

The second step involves building resilience which is defined as the ability to positively adjust to adversity and grow in the face of challenges. You need to clarify your purpose and high level goals to stay motivated and focused.

Boosting your confidence in reaching your goals by setting achievable milestones, connecting your current work to your long -term vision, seeking feedback and reflecting on your experiences are crucial ways to stay motivated and get things done.

Developing a strong social support system is also key to resilience as it can provide emotional and practical assistance when needed. Being agile and adaptable is essential in research,

allowing you to bounce back from setbacks and navigate changes effectively. The third step focuses on increasing your agility through reframing,

a technique that helps you gain perspective and clarity in challenging situations. Define the challenge you are facing, consider different perspectives, share your views with colleagues and develop a plan of action.

You also need to reflect on the experience to learn and refine your approach. By practicing reframing and seeking input from others, you can improve your ability to adapt to change and thrive in your research endeavours.

Remember to regularly assess your wellbeing and performance, leveraging social support, set achievable goals and stay connected to your purpose to maintain resilience and agility in your research journey.

Overall, the toolkit provides a structured approach to thriving in research by focusing on assessing your current state, building your resilience, and adapting to challenges in a way that supports your well -being and performance.

I sincerely hope that you find the toolkit useful and wish you the very best in your research journey.