Caroline Kay
Shortening our self-sabotage spirals
When we want to do great work, we have to aim beyond our comfort zones. That often sadly means knockbacks, negative feedback, or just facing the uncomfortable word. No.
How strong your mental fitness is could mean the difference between negative feedback knocking you out for days (weeks or months) and being able to see (and act upon) the opportunities that this feedback is presenting us with.
I’m chatting with Caroline Kay, who will share a technique she calls “The Three Gifts” to help you master your own mindset.
She has also offered her Ambitious Leader’s Energy Impact Matrix as a tool to help you learn more about yourself and help you find the work that energizes and lights you up!
Let’s dive in!
[00:58] Understanding Mental Fitness
[01:54] Common Sabotaging Behaviors
[03:47] Client Story: Overcoming Negative Feedback
[07:07] Building Mental Resilience with the Three Gifts
If you enjoyed this, you might also enjoy my Life Satisfaction Assessment. It's a 30-minute program where I guide you through a deep dive into 10 areas of your life to assess what's bringing you joy and what's bringing you down. I call it Derailed and it's a fabulous place to begin a joy-at-work redesign. Learn more here.
Get Caroline’s free gift: The Ambitious Leader’s Energy Impact Matrix
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The Three Gifts To Mental Fitness with Caroline Kay
Lucia Knight: Oh, God. I can't believe I did that. Who did I think I was? Why? Why? Why? When we want to do great work, we have to aim beyond our comfort zones. That often sadly means knockbacks, negative feedback, or just facing the uncomfortable word. No.
Caroline Kay is my guest today. She's a business development expert who is super passionate about high performance.
She shared some fascinating methods to shorten the time we spend punching ourselves in the face when something bad happens so that we can move more quickly, back to getting on the horse, to continue galloping towards our potential to do more joyful work as we age. Let's dive in.
Understanding Mental Fitness
Lucia Knight: Caroline, why do people struggle to reach their full potential?
Caroline Kay: It's not something external, it's something internal. It's actually the way our minds work to protect us from not achieving everything we want to achieve. It's the way that we keep ourselves safe. It's the way that we actually look to ensure that we protect ourselves from staying loved, appreciated, and accepted.
And we don't want to lose our ability to have those things.
Lucia Knight: Oh, okay. So, so, Oh, so curious. So what are some of the most common impacts of low mental fitness that play out in the lives and works of the professionals that you work with?
Common Sabotaging Behaviors
Caroline Kay: It plays out in many different ways. And anyone, senior midlife professionals, we've already achieved a certain point in our careers where we are absolutely striving to do our best work, our biggest work and, change the game. And that brings a certain level of stress. And when we feel those pressures of stress, that's when our internal, and we call it our sabotaging behaviors.
You'll love this because there's actually 10 ways we sabotage and they've given them all names. Okay. And as I tell you these names, you'll be able to imagine somebody in your world. Who was just like that.
So one of them is the controller trying to control every single little thing they can control, micromanaging, really obsessing over the details.
Then there's someone that was like the victim, poor me, why me? Why do all these things always happen to me? Life's so unfair.
And there's the avoider. Oh, I'll get onto that later. I'm just going to just do some other thing. And I'm not going to do that big task that I need to do over here.
And in total, there are 10. Luckily, within any of us, there's only our top three that we need to work on. First of all, of how they show up, recognize how they make you feel, maybe some of the negative, inner critic voice that most people will have heard of before, like starts to show up, or the kind of actions you start taking when you're feeling those pressures and stresses. You start to see, okay that's how this all manifests and comes to light.
You will be able to recognize how you self sabotage, how you have those protectors come out fighting for you when you're in a moment of stress and also with advanced level mental fitness, you start to see how others do it.
So just like you could say, Oh yeah, I know a controller. I absolutely know someone who does that. Oh, I know the victim. God, yeah, I've got a friend who's like that. You are able to, because you've started to understand your psychology of yourself, you actually start to understand the psychology of others.
Lucia Knight: Oh, that's fascinating. I would just have images of certain people, including myself, when you were saying that. Okay.
Caroline Kay: And that's very normal.
Client Story: Overcoming Negative Feedback
Caroline Kay: I'd like to tell you a little story, if I may, about how this has happened with a particular client.
Because to do our biggest work, we obviously need to play to our strengths. And we need to really lean into what we're capable of doing. And I had a client, I'm going to call her Mary. And Mary had an opportunity to play bigger.
I always say, put your big girl pants on and let's go big. Let's do something really exciting. And she wanted to go out there and start presenting herself to large companies. And she had a new proposition that she was taking to market, and she wanted to get those businesses to sit up and listen and collaborate with her.
And she put together a presentation and proposal. And you know how you do when you're putting your blood, sweat, and tears into this new strategy, new idea, new presentation, you're putting it all down on paper. And then she's talking about it with friends and she's talking about it with her family, what you're working on?
And then her dad said to her, why don't you send that to me, love? I'd like to have a look. And she was thinking, he's never been interested in what I do, but okay, fine. Sure. I'll send it to you. Sent it to him. The next day she got a text message from him. I've got a friend who's the head of Walker's Crisp.
So I popped it over to him to see what he thought. This is what he sent back. And she forwarded a text message. And the text message said, sounds like a load of mumbo jumbo. Tell her good luck with that.
Lucia Knight: Oh, I wasn't expecting that, okay. Okay.
Caroline Kay: And just unfiltered, unasked for feedback from something you've been crafting and building, and yes, you want to go to big companies and big chief execs with this, but you weren't ready. You weren't thinking about that. And suddenly you've got this unwanted feedback and that feeling of just being utterly crushed. And all the negative voices that come up. As soon as that happens, who am I to do this? Who did I ever think I was to be able to make this change that I want to see? And, Sounds like a load of mumbo jumbo, God, I haven't even communicated it right. And she's an excellent communicator. She's like top communicator, amazing at marketing, PR, that's her background, that's her world.
So to say mumbo jumbo, that word just kept playing over and over in her mind, you can imagine. So you go into this negative spiral and it's a little known fact that it takes three positives to overcome one negative. And in that moment, all you can see is negatives. I've got this feedback. I didn't even want this feedback.
Who are they to tell me that? Why did he do that? It's all just so many negatives compiling and this creates this negative spiral. And this is the feeling we have when we're starting to self sabotage. We're sabotaging because our protectors, our saboteurs, will come in to protect us from putting ourselves out there and being brave and doing things that we've not done before.
So something like that, a knockback like that, how long would you say, Lucia, that might actually throw you off course, if you've done something like that?
Lucia Knight: Oh, honestly, it could be days if that was my, that experience would be days. Maybe even a good week.
Caroline Kay: Anyone who's listening, if they could all reach through the microphone, they might all say different times. They might say, Oh, that'll take me a day. That'll take me a week. God, that'll be months. I wouldn't get back on the horse for a while for that one. So everybody is different.
And the difference is. Actually down to the level of your mental fitness, or somebody would call it resilience. How many things like this you've had in the past that you've been able to bounce back from. But actually some of the more knocks you've had, sometimes the longer it takes you to get back on the horse and do all of these things.
Building Mental Resilience with the Three Gifts
Caroline Kay: So working on your mental fitness is your ability to shorten the response time it takes from your awareness of all these negative voices and thoughts and the spiral to catch it. And actually flip that and go, okay, so that's not helpful. Thinking that I'm not good enough, that I'm not enough, that this was awful feedback and I didn't want it. And what you actually need to look for is the three gifts.
And the three gifts is a technique that I teach with my clients.
So what we do with mental fitness is we build up your resilience to recognize I'm in sabotage mode, Mhm. catch that.
Quieting down all those negative thoughts, emotions and feelings and actually look for the opportunities and the gifts and the three gifts are the gift of knowledge.
What do we know now that we didn't know before? What's that gift of power that it gives us? What can we strengthen? What can we do with this?
And then final thing is it's like, what's the gift of inspiration? What action could I take now that would help make this go faster?
And Mary came onto the call to me and she said, I managed to catch myself. I'm so proud of myself. I went into a spiral and I got straight onto it going, what are the gifts? And I sat down and I thought about it and she said, she got in touch with somebody who was another head of PR guy that she knew in her world. Cause I said, that was her background. And he said, yeah, let's get on a call.
Let's hear it. And she pitched it and he said, yeah, what you've said and what you've written, the emotion's not quite there. I didn't connect the way it did when you spoke. So she got the feedback she needed. She rewrote it. And in the next month she landed her biggest ever client.
Lucia Knight: Yay!
Caroline Kay: So you could sit there for a month in pain, sabotaging, or you can lean into all your expertise and your knowledge, and you can take an action plan and move forward.
And that's the difference of mental fitness. And that's why I get excited about helping people achieve their full potential by actually, get good at the inner game of stress.
I've been obsessed with high performance for ages, but mental fitness, the techniques it takes to actually action and all this insight into a way that allows you to really pull yourself back to what's my best step to actually achieve my full potential.
Lucia Knight: Okay, so shortening that painful, horrible period that will be different for everybody listening, but for me, I suggest that would cripple me for at least a week. So shortening that with this amazing mastering of your own mindset. I love that. Now you've got a tool that you're going to gift to anyone listening to this.
Tell us about it.
Caroline Kay: Yeah, absolutely. So the energy impact matrix is a planning tool that I use with my clients and it's the classic Eisenhower model, but actually checking in with yourself around your energy levels with what it is that energizes you and lights you up because actually you're playing to your biggest strengths.
It's a real kind of reflection piece to get awareness.
If you do use the tool it's think about those strategies that are going to help you move everything up into your highest energy charging work.
So you're playing to all your strengths, doing the work that lights you up and you do the best. And actually your biggest impact work as well.
Lucia Knight: And that's what we're here to talk about. Thank you, Caroline.
Caroline Kay: Thanks so much Lucia, it's been a joy.
Lucia Knight: If you enjoyed this, you might also enjoy my Life Satisfaction Assessment. It's a 30 minute program where I guide you through a deep dive into 10 areas of your life to assess what's bringing you joy and what's bringing you down. I call it D Railed. It's a fabulous place to begin a joy at work redesign.
