Your Social Skills And Confidence
It can be like trying to use a screw driver to hammer in a nail. Using the wrong tool for the job just makes you perform much worse.
For most of my life, it was hard for me to imagine how my smart mind could ever hurt my chances for success, but this is one of those situations.
So Ive put together this short list of ways your intelligence makes you FAIL in social situations and what to do about it.
Being Yourself In The Real World
The most crucial question that most of us struggle with is how to do this in the real world, in our day-to-day life? There is no secret formula for this being an authentic self is the shortest possible answer.
The most primary and critical step in being yourself is about knowing yourself this can never be overrated. It requires significant time to explore and reflect through your own behaviour, inputs from your near and dear ones and what brings you alive, and it is also an iterative process as we peel layers of perceptions, misinterpretations to go to the core of our selves: the essence of self. It is also an excruciating process that needs some patience and commitment to the process. Discovering yourself, and this includes knowing and defining yourself, resolving conflicting values, not dwelling on the past and focusing on your strengths.
How To Stop Being Too Hard On Yourself
To stop being too hard on yourself, its important to be reasonable and treat yourself with respect. Empower yourself to make your life better rather than wasting your energy beating yourself up.
Being too hard on yourself keeps you from moving forwards, however, you can learn to stop it. It will take perseverance and effort but it’s well worth it. If youre having trouble, or feeling persistently stuck, dont be afraid to get the help you need. Stop being too hard on yourself, build self-esteem and create the life you want.
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Pay Attention To Your Behavior
We often behave and think automatically, allowing our negative self-talk to go unchallenged. It takes the intentional act of paying close attention to whats going on inside of ourselves to challenge the negativity. Once were paying attention, we can take note of how we speak and treat ourselves in order to create different thought patterns and behaviors. If youre already telling yourself you wont succeed, you increase the risk of not succeeding. This can feed into a cycle of proving to yourself that youre incapable.
Identifying And Challenging Your Self
We all speak to ourselves, and when we do it in encouraging ways we can feel pretty good. People with low self-esteem often have a harsh and critical inner voice though. Some therapists like to call this a bully voice. The psychologist Paul Gilbert often uses an analogy about the kind of teacher you would want for a young child: would you want one who is harsh and punitive, or one who is kind and supportive? One way of overcoming low self-esteem is to change the way we speak to ourselves, or to have a different relationship with your inner voice. Some of the techniques that psychologists teach include monitoring your self-critical thoughts using self-esteem worksheets like the self-critical thought monitoring record, challenging your negative thinking using thought records, and learning about your unhelpful thinking styles.
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The Fascinating Science Of Why Youre So Hard On Yourself
Most of us battle with an internal voice of self-criticism. A recent psychotherapy review sheds light on how to listen to your inner critic and respond.
This morning, I accidentally knocked over a can of food that splattered all over the floor. Instantly, a voice in my head rang, Rina, how could you be so stupid? Youve wasted food and time!
Sound familiar?
This is the voice commonly referred to as our inner critic. In ancient yoga philosophy the inner critic is considered a manifestation of the ego, or ahamkara. As much as ahamkara is involved with deceptively enjoyable vanity and conceit, it can also be the source of painful self-criticism. Peace of mind and self-love, yoga says, come when none of these snares of ego entrap us. According to yoga, it is then that we are truly free.
In research terms, the inner critic is defined as a well-integrated system of critical and negative thoughts and attitudes of the self that interferes with the individuals organismic experiencing process. In other words, it is the criticism we hear in our minds that gets in the way of life enjoyment.
History of the Inner Critic
Neurophysiology of Self-Criticism
If self-criticism could be psychologically destructive, why might it exist?
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Listening and Responding to Our Inner Critic
Why You Might Be Lacking Self
Low self-esteem or lack of self-love is something that could be developed in childhood and carry through to adulthood. Or, it is something that could present itself solely in adulthood.
Some negative behaviours that can be attributed to a lack of self-love, according to the National Association for Self-Esteem:
- Earlier sexual activity
- Self-harm
- Eating disorders
You might be lacking self-love for a variety of reasons or habits, as noted above. It can be because of the actions of those around you, because of a traumatic event in your life, because you lacked a good example of self-love, or simply because of a way of thinking that you innately practice.
But, one important thing to remember is that low self-esteem due to a lack of self-love is not an accurate reflection of reality, rather a reflection of your perception on reality.
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Why Is Social Psychology Important
Learning more about social psychology can enrich your understanding of yourself and the world around you. By learning more about how people view others, how they behave in groups, and how attitudes are formed, you can gain a greater appreciation for how social relationships influence individual functioning.
Expand Your Definition Of Success
As a sensitive striver, you likely have a tendency to define achievement in a hyper-specific way, that is, complete and total excellence at all times. You dont need to lower your bar, but you do need to broaden your scope of what qualifies as a win. Achieving the desired outcome isnt always in your control, so broaden your definition of success to include:
- Overcoming resistance or fear
- Pushing back and standing up for what you think is right
- Approaching a situation with a different mindset or attitude
- Taking a small step toward a goal
Take a few moments at the end of your workday to reflect not only on your professional highlights , but also to consider moments where you made yourself proud. Acting in integrity with your values is the true definition of success.
As a sensitive striver, your desire to be the best is an asset when managed correctly. Once you tamp down the tendency to be hard on yourself, youll be able to more fully leverage your sensitivity and ambition as the gifts they are.
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Reasons Highly Intelligent People Are Often Socially Inept
In my years of teaching people how to overcome shyness or social anxiety, theres something weird that Ive noticed.
Ive seen this PATTERN so many times now that it cant be an accident
I call it The Socially Inept Genius Puzzle. This is the tendency for unusually smart people to have very LOW levels of social skills or confidence.
After thinking about this for a long time, Id like to share my thoughts about it with you. Why is it that some very smart people can be so socially inept or socially awkward?
If youre still reading this far, then you probably consider yourself more intelligent than average man or woman. Maybe you excelled in school or you couldnt understand why all your classmates were only interested in pop music and celebrities when you mostly cared more about exploring the world deeply with your mind.
At this point in your life, your smart mind has probably given you many advantages over others. Its probably helped you out in school, maybe landing a degree, performing well at your job, and so on.
However, this smart mind can be worse than useless when it comes to
Making Sports A Positive Experience
Dr. Leah Ferguson, an assistant professor in the College of Kinesiology, is passionate about opening the conversations surrounding how an athlete’s mental image of themselves can impact their performance, especially for young women. Her research background encompasses many key points but her current focus includes exploring the benefits of self compassion and working with Aboriginal youth.
For more information about Leah’s current projects and her research, please read this recent feature from the Saskatoon StarPhoenix’s Bridges publication, excerpted below.
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Making Sports a Positive Experienceby Scott Larson, Saskatoon StarPhoenix
Leah Ferguson grew up as a competitive dancer, so she knows about the benefits athletics can offer.
There are the different skills that are developed, the leadership skills and discipline and willpower all those great things, says Ferguson, an assistant professor in the College of Kinesiology at the University of Saskatchewan.
But it also has a potential dark side to it, she says.
Thats especially true for young women who face challenges in sport that their male counterparts dont.
It can be very different for men and women, Ferguson said. Thats not to say men athletes dont have challenges because they certainly do.
Research has shown women athletes are conflicted with body-related demands such as needing to look a certain way for specific sports to perform at peak levels.
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What Is Low Self
Your self-esteem is the opinion you have of yourself. When you have healthy self-esteem, you tend to think positively about yourself, and optimistically about life in general. When you encounter challenges, you feel confident that you will be up to the task. People with healthy self-esteem know that they are valuable and will be able to name at least some of their positive characteristics such as I am a good friend, I am kind, I am honest, or I am a good father.
When you have low self-esteem, you tend to see yourself, the world, and your future more negatively and critically. When you encounter challenges, you doubt whether you will be able to rise to them, and you might avoid them. You might talk to yourself harshly in your mind, such as telling yourself Youre stupid, Youll never manage this, or I dont amount to anything. You might feel anxious, sad, low, or unmotivated.
Nobody is born with low self-esteem it develops as a result of the experiences we have throughout our lives. At the centre of low self-esteem are the beliefs and opinions we hold about ourselves. We tell ourselves stories about who we are and form conclusions about ourselves. These opinions can get fixed, as though they are truths for all time. In reality though, they are just stories or labels, and they dont capture the full truth of who we are.
Retraining Yourself To Focus On The Positive
The psychologist Christine Padesky compared our most stubborn beliefs to people who are prejudiced . She said that they are always quick to spot anything bad associated with the thing they are prejudiced against, but almost blind to good associations. She gives an example of Sigmund who has a prejudice that women are inferior to men:
Therapist:Alright, now when Sigmund sees a woman and she is not doing as well as a man at a task, what does he say?
Client:Sigmund points out how women are always deficient.
Therapist:Now, what does Sigmund say when a women is doing something as well or even better than men -has this ever happened when you were around Sigmund?
Client: Normally he just ignores it and find something to criticize their appearance, or their attitude.
The point of this is that our negative beliefs make us pay attention in biased ways. If your bottom line is Im a failure then you are *much* more likely to pay attention to your struggles than your successes. The problem of this biased perception is that you only see half the picture you dont get to see yourself fairly, and nothing changes. One helpful strategy is to use a self-esteem worksheet like the positive belief log: your challenge is to identify some of your positive qualities, and to pay close attention to times in your day which illustrate these.
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An Introduction To Self
Rather than trying to change our deeply rooted valuesa challenging taskwe can start by lessening the impact they have on us by changing the ways in which we view ourselves. We can begin to do this with self-compassion.
Self-compassion means being gentle, kind and understanding with yourself accepting that you are not perfect and understanding that there is potential for learning and growth in every mistake you make .
If you dont love yourself, you cannot love others. You will not be able to love others. If you have no compassion for yourself then you are not able of developing compassion for others.
The Dalai Lama
The Buddhist understanding of compassion means offering patience, kindness, and nonjudgmental understanding to others as well as oneself. Contrary to what you might believe, self-compassion is not equivalent to selfishness.
An easy way to understand self-compassion is to compare it to the instructions given by flight attendants in case of a depressurized airplane cabin: youre supposed to put on your own oxygen mask before helping someone else with theirs. In the same way, we need to look after ourselves before taking care of others.
What Does Social Psychology Mean
According to psychologist Gordon Allport, social psychology uses scientific methods “to understand and explain how the thoughts, feelings, and behavior of individuals are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied the presence of other human beings.”1 Essentially, social psychology is about understanding how each …
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Make Peace With Your Inner Critic
People generally try to hide their shortcomings in order to maintain a positive self-image. With self-compassion, people can actually increase their knowledge and clarity about their own limitations .
It might seem like that could end in a downward spiral, but self-compassion has been found to be positively correlated with improved mental health and greater life satisfaction.
So what can you do to turn our inner critic into a gentle supporter? Traditional cognitive skills training has been found rather ineffective in this area.
One 2010 study randomly assigned college freshmen one of three workbooks for depression: traditional cognitive, non-traditional cognitive, and academic skills . The study found that the participants who were high in rumination exhibited significantly greater levels of depression and that the cognitive training worsened rumination among the subjects .
This study shows that rather than working on the cognitive level, the inner critic needs to be tackled in a different way: with self-awareness and understanding.
Here are five essential steps to increase your self-compassion using internal and external resources:
Aspects Of Treatment That Daniel Found Helpful
Daniel found it helpful to think of his negative beliefs as an opinion rather than a fact, and to understand where this opinion had come from. The part of treatment that he found most helpful was when his therapist introduced him to the idea of challenging his self-critical voice it felt unusual to begin with but quickly he began to see that his sense of worthlessness had no basis in fact. He had left college and had started university which gave him the opportunity to experiment with showing sides of his character that he hadnt felt comfortable with before: meeting people with similar interests helped him to embrace his difference as a positive trait and finally start to feel comfortable in his own skin.
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Why Do People Talk To Themselves
Children begin talking to themselves around the ages of two and three, but it is generally not much different from other social speech at this early age. Around the age of five, kids become more covert about their self-directed talk. They still talk to themselves, but often speak more briefly, quietly, or privately to avoid having others overhear.
And while it often becomes less obvious to others, self-talk rarely disappears completely. Most people talk to themselves at least on occasion, while some do so with much greater frequency.
While external self-talk is relatively common, there has not been a great deal of research into why some people talk to themselves out loud and others don’t. A 2019 article published in the journal Frontiers in Psychology explored a couple of different explanations that have emerged.
Move Toward Living The Life You Want
The antidote to feeling bad all the time might be to start taking small steps toward what you want in life. That might mean finding a new career path, traveling, getting out of debt, ending a relationship, starting a family, or moving far away. Determine your values and then start acting in accordance with them. Once you start to align with your values, it will be easier to feel confident in yourself.
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Why Am I So Hard On Myself: Learning To Love Who You Are
Medically Reviewed By: Lauren Fawley
Have you been really down on yourself lately? Sometimes it really does feel like we can be our own worst enemies, and some people are harder on themselves than others. You might feel like you’re doubting your own abilities and wondering whether or not you’re capable of realizing your dreams. Some people have negative thoughts about their own appearance and that can lead to issues with self-confidence. Understand that it’s normal to go through struggles like this and that you can learn to love who you are over time by accepting yourself.
Are These Feelings Really Normal?
Experiencing self-doubt is natural and will happen to everyone at one time or another. In our society, it is natural to want to be a bit thinner, a bit smarter, or a bit more outspoken. These feelings can even be good for you at times as they can motivate increases in health and self-growth. However, the extent to which some people are experiencing negative feelings about themselves today is less than healthy. The pressure to compete has been taken to an extreme in recent years, with people striving to reach ideals that are physically impossible, leading to self-deprecating thoughts, emotions, and the question “Why am I so hard on myself?” If you get thoughts and feelings that you will just never measure up, it is time to ask yourself: “Who am I measuring myself against?”
Learning to Love Who You Are
Tip 1: Make a list.
Tip 2: Practice positive self-talk.