72. Do-Overs
When Alex and I first started dating, we had a fight, as so many people in so many situations do.
And I had this idea, that we could do part of the conversation over, because I could see that we’d gotten ourselves into an unfortunate conversational cul-de-sac.
I asked Alex if she’d be willing to have a do-over, and she said yes, and we’ve been doing them ever since.
More recently, I’ve learned that this is an actual tool people (such as my wonderful coach, Maggie Reyes) teach.
And it’s useful for so many situations, both with other people, and also with ourselves.
The basic concept is you back up the conversation to before you were fighting and you try saying what you want to say in a new, improved way. Perhaps a more connection-oriented way.
This idea can be powerful in all kinds of relationships, from your partner to your boss to a friend you snapped at because you were stressed.
It can also be a useful tool in how you speak to and relate to yourself.
If you notice you’re beating yourself up, you can give yourself a do-over and try speaking to yourself in a more compassionate way. Or start over and focus on what you really want yourself to know vs following the same old script you usually use with yourself in stressful or upsetting situations.
None of us are ever going to be perfect. We are all humans who make mistakes and do things we wish we hadn’t. But the do-over is an opportunity to try again and do things the way we wished we had the first time around.
Sure, sometimes you’ll try a do-over and it will come out wrong again. And that’s okay. You can do a double or triple do-over. You have as many chances as it takes to figure it out.
Tune in this week to discover how to normalize repairing and nurturing your personal and professional relationships using a do-over. I’m sharing why the process of a do-over isn’t as awkward as it sounds, and why it’s an amazing way for you to start showing up in your life in a way that is aligned with who you want to be.
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WHAT YOU’LL LEARN FROM THIS EPISODE:
Why you can’t stop or change a behavior without understanding it.
What a do-over is and why they’re so helpful in work environments and beyond.
Why you don’t need someone else to agree to give you a do-over.
How the ability to repair is always more important than being perfect from the outset.
Why repairing relationships is something you do with both external relationships, and your relationship with yourself.
What you can do to initiate a do-over and try to steer the conversation in a direction you want to take it.
LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE:
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FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
This week we’re talking about do-overs.
You are listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It, the podcast for ambitious, high-achieving women who are ready to stop feeling stressed about work and kiss burnout goodbye forever. Whether you’re starting a business or staying in your day job, this show will give you the coaching and guidance you need to start loving your work today. Here’s your host, Career Coach, Kori Linn.
Hey y’all, happy Wednesday. I hope this Wednesday finds you very well. It’s finding me a little bit chilly. We had some really beautiful weather here over the weekend. I had some friends down from Seattle and it was like 70, maybe like 72 degrees the first day they were here, and it was glorious.
And then it’s been getting a little chillier every day since. And it’s still pretty sunny, which is great because I love that. But this morning when I went to kickboxing it was like 37 out and I was like, “No, Sacramento, this is not why I moved here.” But I mean, I guess the weather is going to do what it wants to, not what I want it to do.
So while I’m recording this podcast, the office that I record the podcast in now for the better sound quality doesn’t have heat. It’s okay, it’s not like freezing in here but I do have a hat and little fingerless gloves on, you know, like a furry cheetah jacket, so I’m very fashionable.
Okay, enough about the weather, this week we’re talking about a concept that I think my coach, Maggie Reyes, teaches but I’ve actually been doing this longer than I have worked with her. I didn’t learn about it from Maggie, but I think it’s great that she teaches it too.
So when Alex and I first started dating, like one of the very first times we had an argument I asked her, “Hey, can we have a do-over?” And the interesting thing is I don’t know where this idea came from for me at that time. I don’t know if I had read about the concept in a book, I have no idea. This was like almost five years ago.
But it’s been something we’ve used in our relationship off and on that’s been really powerful. And I will say that most of the time I’m the one employing it because sometimes when I get frustrated or upset I get kind of snappy. But Alex sometimes employs it too and it’s just really, I think, really magical.
So the basic concept is like when you have a do-over, at least the way I do it, I don’t actually know how Maggie teaches it 100%. But here’s the way we do it, I kind of like pick a point in time I’m going back to and I kind of like say the thing I had already said, or I say the thing I want to say in a different way.
So I think this could be really exceptional at work too. Here’s the thing, at work you may directly ask someone if you can have a do-over and get their consent, that’s how we do it in our relationship. But sometimes you can also just have what I’m going to call an internal do-over.
A couple of weeks ago we talked about apologies and accountability, and I think this can pair really nicely with what we talked about then. Like if you’ve shown up in a way that you don’t want to show up, maybe you want to apologize and also do a do-over. Maybe for whatever reason you want to skip right to the do-over.
But basically what this tool allows you to do is to be able to see kind of like the access points in your own behavior and also in conversations and relationships where things kind of go off the rails. Or go in a direction that’s not the direction you want to go and then you can go back to slightly before that point and you can try again.
Here’s why I like this, as I scream about all the fucking time, none of are ever going to be perfect. We are all humans, we will all make mistakes, we will all do things that we wish we hadn’t done. But what the do-over creates for us is an opportunity to try again. An opportunity to do things the way we wish we had done them.
And actually, sometimes with a do-over you’ll try again, and you’ll be like, “Nope, that’s still not the thing.” And then maybe you do a double do-over, a triple do-over. But what you can do also with this is learn, you can find out like when I say this, what happens? How do I feel about having said that? Do I feel really good about having said that? Do I feel like shit about having said that? Why? Why not? This is so fascinating.
And listen, I know for a lot of y’all you’re like, “It’s not fascinating, it’s fucking awful.” But I’m going to invite you to move into it being fascinating because fascination and curiosity are actually, I would argue, much better energies for us to have if we’re trying to understand our own behavior in order to do something different.
Now you may be thinking, “Listen, Kori, I’m not trying to understand my behavior, I’m trying to stop that behavior.” Trying to stop a behavior without understanding it tends to not work. I’m going to say that again, trying to stop a behavior without understanding it tends to not work. So that’s why I’m inviting you into curiosity and fascination.
With do-overs I’m also inviting you into the idea that repair and trying again is equally important, if not more important, to getting it right on the first try. Now listen, I know a lot of y’all are like me, which means perfectionists, which means always want to get it right on the first try and always want to do everything well, get all the accolades, et cetera. I get that, I feel that I still have a lot of that that impacts me and that I’m working on.
But some of the science that I have read, especially about relationships, is that being able to repair is more important than having perfect behavior. I’m going to say that again too, being able to repair is more important than having prefect behavior.
So, you can try your damnedest not to fuck up, you’re allowed. But probably at some point you will, right? So then the question is who do we want to be in that moment? Do we want to apologize, how do we want to hold ourselves accountable?
But also do we want to try a do-over? Do we want to be able to take a few steps back in the conversation and steer that conversation another way? Here’s another thing that I think is really interesting, you can also have do-overs with yourself. You can have a do-over with yourself in the way you talk to yourself.
If you notice that you are beating yourself up about something, you can have a little do-over with yourself where you’re like, “You know what, self? That’s not how we are going to talk to ourself because we decided that we’re going to be curious, we’re going to be compassionate, we’re going to be kind, we’re going to give ourselves the benefit of the doubt. And I can tell that right now I’m not doing that. So let’s back up, let’s have a do-over.”
And then this way you can also repair your relationship to yourself. And you may be thinking, “Kori, why do I need to repair my relationship to myself? Isn’t that a thing for external relationships?” And I’m going to argue that it’s a thing for internal and external relationships.
If you’re in a romantic relationship, you know, a partnership like I am with Alex, we live together, we lived through the pandemic, we’ve been together for four and a half years, there’s been a lot of conflict in that. And do-overs and other forms of repair have really helped us navigate that and become closer and build a stronger relationship instead of a relationship where resentment is always seething and burning right below the surface.
Also, for work relationships, of course, a lot of people we work with, like sometimes we work really closely with them, sometimes we have to have difficult conversations. Sometimes we're disappointed in them, sometimes they're disappointed us. Sometimes we're disappointed in ourselves and how we've acted towards them. So being able to have the do-over, which we either do implicitly or say explicitly to them, “Hey, I'd like to have a do-over on that,” that can help us repair in those relationships.
I think it's interesting too, because I think I see a lot of people who it's like if they've done something that doesn't meet their standards, sometimes they just want to like never bring it up again. Versus bringing it up and talking about it. And I think part of that is because a lot of us want to avoid things that feel uncomfortable, right? And we're like, having a conversation about it would feel super uncomfortable.
But what I would offer is one, sometimes discomfort is worth it, you get to choose when. But two, so many of us are craving connection, so many of us are craving closeness, I think especially right now. And being willing to be real and honest with people and being able to talk about the things that didn't work and being able to have the conflict conversations and being able to have the do-overs and the repair, that's how we build that closeness.
That's how we build that connection. It's not something magical, that just happens. It's not something that happens when people never have conflict. I think it's something that gets created through fucking up and repairing. That's my personal two cents.
Okay, where was I going with this? Oh, right. But so I think a lot of people don't even think about the relationship that they have with themselves. And I spend so much time with Alex and in my relationship with her. And I spend so much time with my clients, and when I worked in corporate I spent so much time with my boss and certain colleagues, right? And so those relationships were big and meaningful in my life, but you know who I spend the most time with?
The person I spend the most time with is me. So that relationship, ultimately, I would argue, is the most important. And most of us are not doing a lot of repair with ourselves. A lot of us are doing a lot of conflict with ourselves. A lot of my clients think that being mean to themselves is the only way they get things done.
Which, side note, I do not co-sign that idea. I think being mean to ourselves basically makes us feel like shit and then we do less. Or we were doing it but we're doing it, but we’re doing it out of fear and then we get burned out and we can't keep doing that. Versus I am a firm believer that we can be kind to ourselves and use that as fuel. And that we can be kind to ourselves while still having high standards of performance for ourselves.
But that's not really the main topic of this podcast. So I'm just going to like leave that there. The main point that I want to make right now is that we have a relationship with ourselves, and often that relationship isn't a very kind one. Often that relationship is like us judging and shaming the shit out of ourselves.
Often it's us telling ourselves all the ways we're failing at everything without giving any time or attention to all the things we're doing, all the ways we're succeeding, all the ways we actually are meeting our standards. I see this all the time and I experience it all the time with my own brain, where I'll be succeeding at like 98% of things, but there's these 2% I’m not. And then my brain just hyper focuses on them and then tells me I'm failing at everything.
And it's taken a lot of work, and effort, and practice, and slowing down, and coaching and all kinds of other shit to be able to be like, “Wait a minute. Wait a minute, this sounds like the negativity bias news. I don't think that this is necessarily an accurate framing of what's going on.” So it's like I talk about all the time in the podcast, noticing what is working, noticing what is going well, appreciating anything we want to have more of.
And yes to all of that, but what I want to focus on here is noticing that you have a relationship with yourself and noticing that do-overs, and repair, and catching yourself in the middle of yelling at yourself and going like, “Oh, I just noticed I’m doing that thing.”
Not beating yourself up for it because that would just compound the thing we're talking about. And instead going like, “Okay, what's the flexion point? What's the point I can go back to where I can start my do-over? When did I start yelling at myself, like what happened a few sentences before that? Can I go back to that part and try again?”
And when we do that, we have an opportunity to choose how we're going to speak to ourselves. And when we do do-overs with others, we have an opportunity to choose how we're going to speak to them. And to think intentionally about who we want to be in these relationships. Who we want to be in our partnership. Who we want to be at work. Who we want to be with ourselves. Versus the part of ourselves that is just reactive, and impulsive, and off the cuff.
And I think a lot of people would call that their instincts, but I wouldn't call it that because I think instincts and our conditioned impulses are different. But I think our conditioned impulses, our conditioned narratives about ourselves, our conditioned ways of speaking to ourselves can feel like instincts. They can kick off really, really, really fast. And do-overs are a way for us to notice that that's happened, and then choose a different way of being and then practice that way of being real time.
And I bet some of y'all out there are like, “Oh, Kori, isn't it awkward, though?” And here's the thing, it may be sometimes. There's definitely been times when I'm like, “This is awkward, I'd rather just not deal with it.” But that's not true, because the part of me that doesn't want to deal with it doesn't want to deal with it or anything.
But who I want to be in my relationship is willing to be awkward. Who I want to be in my relationship is willing to look silly. Who I want to be, and my relationship is connection oriented, and if that doesn't make sense to you go back a few podcasts and listen to the podcast on connection orientation.
And who I want to be overall in my life is a person who is thoughtful and intentional, and do-overs are one of the ultimate tools for that. They're one of the ultimate ways to think about who we want to be and then be that person regardless if the person we were two seconds ago was doing something completely different from an impulse.
And the more we practice do-overs, the more we practice being this intentional version of ourselves, the better we get at it and the more ingrained it is. So all the ways that we are now, all our reactivity, all our impulses, those are usually things we've just been practicing. They're not necessarily who we are as a person. They're how we were conditioned and they're what we've been doing for a long time.
And if we want to learn to do something else, practicing doing that something else is exceptionally helpful. And do-overs will have you practicing that something else. You do a do-over six times, and then maybe your brain starts to learn like, “Oh, this is who I want to be. I can do this, I can say this instead.”
And so eventually you'll catch yourself in your old impulse and you'll be able to reorient to the do-over before it's even a do-over. And then it's just you doing the way you want to be doing in the moment. But the reason we're talking about it as a do-over is because I think this is the most crucial skill. Yeah, we all want the sexy fun part where we like change before we say the mean thing to ourself or others.
But I think it's really important to normalize that when you have impulses that have been conditioned, that you've been practicing for 20, 30 years, you're probably not going to be able to disrupt those immediately without any practice. And you don't fucking need to in order to make a big change in your life.
So just sit with that for a moment. And also, this is beautiful, perfect kryptonite for perfectionists because we want to do it perfectly so bad. And realizing that there could be something better than doing it perfectly, which is doing it over, is really kind of mind bending, I think, for the perfectionist brain. Our brain is like, “What?”
So I kind of want that to be how you think about it. Like what if the do-over is even better than having done it perfectly? Because the do-over is the moment when you see what you've done and you're thoughtful, and you're intentional, and you think about who you want to be. And then you course correct.
What of course correcting and the ability to see when you're off course and bring yourself back is actually more beautiful than having stayed on course the whole time. Let that hurt your brain a little, it will. If you have the perfectionism like me, it will hurt your brain a little.
What you'll also find out when you employ this is it's easier than you think it is. It's emotionally uncomfortable because you're not going to be used to it and it's going to feel weird and awkward at first. But it's also super easy, if you don't resist it, you're just like, “Oh yeah, I can just try again.”
And people tend to love it. You in your head may be thinking like, “Oh, they're going to think I'm weird.” Listen, they may, but people may think we're weird at any time. And they may also be fucking into it, you may change their life by being the first person to ask for a do-over. And that may open up how they can engage in their relationships. And if they don't like it, I think that tells you some interesting information as well. Okay? Okay.
So basically, to summarize, do-overs are just exactly what they sound like, they're choosing to do something again when we don't like the way we did it before. And it's not about beating ourselves up for having done it the way we did it before. It's not about judging or shaming. It's just about going like, “You know what? I think I could maybe do that in a way I like better in another take.”
It's kind of like if you think about, like actors, right? First of all, they read their lines, they practice their lines, they practice doing their lines in different ways and different cadences. And then even when they're performing them for a movie, they're doing multiple takes, right? They're doing do-overs all the time to get things the way they want them to be.
And that's available to you too and it's something really cool that you can employ to create a life that's more of what you want and less of whatever your brain did off the cuff on the first try. So yeah, to kind of go a little further with that, your life doesn't have to be a collection of your habits to date. Your life doesn't have to be a collection of your first impulses of what to say or do in a situation.
And one way to gently redirect our life is to use do-overs and to redo things and to bring them more in line with who we want to be and how we want to be with ourselves and with others. And I've been talking about it in relationships in this podcast, but it could also be all kinds of things. You could do a do-over of your podcast. You could do a do-over of a piece of writing you did.
The funny thing is, we do do-overs in a lot of these other categories already. People do first drafts and second drafts and third drafts and fourth drafts. And people do re-record podcasts when they're like, “I didn't say that the way I want to.” And even I sometimes record the same sentence like three or four times. And then my podcast editors just go and take the extra ones out so there's only the done over in the final product.
So that's interesting too, to just offer your brain that there's all these places where this is already normalized. But I think relationships are a place where sometimes it's not normalized, but we can still bring it in as a skill set to create more of what we want in our career and in our lives.
Okay, that's what I have for y'all this week. And listen, if you want to work on things like learning to do do-overs and using do-overs to radically transform your career and your life, come work with me. I have two ways I'm working with people right now. I’m working with clients one on one, which is like a super cozy, private container where it's all about you and your growth.
And this summer I'm also launching Satisfied As Fuck, which is a small group coaching mastermind. It's going to be incredible and it's going to have the benefit where you get to learn from me coaching you, but you also get to learn from me coaching other people. And sometimes the most powerful coaching in the world is actually coaching you watch someone else receive.
So if you're interested in either of those swing on over to my website, you can go to korilinn.com/learnmore and there is a link to sign up for the Satisfied As Fuck wait list. And there is also a link to sign up for a consult. Actually, by the time this podcast comes out I think Satisfied As Fuck will be out of its wait list and I'll be actually doing consult calls for that. So come on over and sign up for a consult call. All right y'all, have a lovely week and I will talk to you next time.
Thank you for listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It. We'll have another episode for you next week. And in the meantime, if you're feeling super fired up, head on over to korilinn.com for more guidance and resources.
You are listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It, the podcast for ambitious, high-achieving women who are ready to stop feeling stressed about work and kiss burnout goodbye forever. Whether you’re starting a business or staying in your day job, this show will give you the coaching and guidance you need to start loving your work today. Here’s your host, Career Coach, Kori Linn.
Hey y’all, happy Wednesday. I hope this Wednesday finds you very well. It’s finding me a little bit chilly. We had some really beautiful weather here over the weekend. I had some friends down from Seattle and it was like 70, maybe like 72 degrees the first day they were here, and it was glorious.
And then it’s been getting a little chillier every day since. And it’s still pretty sunny, which is great because I love that. But this morning when I went to kickboxing it was like 37 out and I was like, “No, Sacramento, this is not why I moved here.” But I mean, I guess the weather is going to do what it wants to, not what I want it to do.
So while I’m recording this podcast, the office that I record the podcast in now for the better sound quality doesn’t have heat. It’s okay, it’s not like freezing in here but I do have a hat and little fingerless gloves on, you know, like a furry cheetah jacket, so I’m very fashionable.
Okay, enough about the weather, this week we’re talking about a concept that I think my coach, Maggie Reyes, teaches but I’ve actually been doing this longer than I have worked with her. I didn’t learn about it from Maggie, but I think it’s great that she teaches it too.
So when Alex and I first started dating, like one of the very first times we had an argument I asked her, “Hey, can we have a do-over?” And the interesting thing is I don’t know where this idea came from for me at that time. I don’t know if I had read about the concept in a book, I have no idea. This was like almost five years ago.
But it’s been something we’ve used in our relationship off and on that’s been really powerful. And I will say that most of the time I’m the one employing it because sometimes when I get frustrated or upset I get kind of snappy. But Alex sometimes employs it too and it’s just really, I think, really magical.
So the basic concept is like when you have a do-over, at least the way I do it, I don’t actually know how Maggie teaches it 100%. But here’s the way we do it, I kind of like pick a point in time I’m going back to and I kind of like say the thing I had already said, or I say the thing I want to say in a different way.
So I think this could be really exceptional at work too. Here’s the thing, at work you may directly ask someone if you can have a do-over and get their consent, that’s how we do it in our relationship. But sometimes you can also just have what I’m going to call an internal do-over.
A couple of weeks ago we talked about apologies and accountability, and I think this can pair really nicely with what we talked about then. Like if you’ve shown up in a way that you don’t want to show up, maybe you want to apologize and also do a do-over. Maybe for whatever reason you want to skip right to the do-over.
But basically what this tool allows you to do is to be able to see kind of like the access points in your own behavior and also in conversations and relationships where things kind of go off the rails. Or go in a direction that’s not the direction you want to go and then you can go back to slightly before that point and you can try again.
Here’s why I like this, as I scream about all the fucking time, none of are ever going to be perfect. We are all humans, we will all make mistakes, we will all do things that we wish we hadn’t done. But what the do-over creates for us is an opportunity to try again. An opportunity to do things the way we wish we had done them.
And actually, sometimes with a do-over you’ll try again, and you’ll be like, “Nope, that’s still not the thing.” And then maybe you do a double do-over, a triple do-over. But what you can do also with this is learn, you can find out like when I say this, what happens? How do I feel about having said that? Do I feel really good about having said that? Do I feel like shit about having said that? Why? Why not? This is so fascinating.
And listen, I know for a lot of y’all you’re like, “It’s not fascinating, it’s fucking awful.” But I’m going to invite you to move into it being fascinating because fascination and curiosity are actually, I would argue, much better energies for us to have if we’re trying to understand our own behavior in order to do something different.
Now you may be thinking, “Listen, Kori, I’m not trying to understand my behavior, I’m trying to stop that behavior.” Trying to stop a behavior without understanding it tends to not work. I’m going to say that again, trying to stop a behavior without understanding it tends to not work. So that’s why I’m inviting you into curiosity and fascination.
With do-overs I’m also inviting you into the idea that repair and trying again is equally important, if not more important, to getting it right on the first try. Now listen, I know a lot of y’all are like me, which means perfectionists, which means always want to get it right on the first try and always want to do everything well, get all the accolades, et cetera. I get that, I feel that I still have a lot of that that impacts me and that I’m working on.
But some of the science that I have read, especially about relationships, is that being able to repair is more important than having perfect behavior. I’m going to say that again too, being able to repair is more important than having prefect behavior.
So, you can try your damnedest not to fuck up, you’re allowed. But probably at some point you will, right? So then the question is who do we want to be in that moment? Do we want to apologize, how do we want to hold ourselves accountable?
But also do we want to try a do-over? Do we want to be able to take a few steps back in the conversation and steer that conversation another way? Here’s another thing that I think is really interesting, you can also have do-overs with yourself. You can have a do-over with yourself in the way you talk to yourself.
If you notice that you are beating yourself up about something, you can have a little do-over with yourself where you’re like, “You know what, self? That’s not how we are going to talk to ourself because we decided that we’re going to be curious, we’re going to be compassionate, we’re going to be kind, we’re going to give ourselves the benefit of the doubt. And I can tell that right now I’m not doing that. So let’s back up, let’s have a do-over.”
And then this way you can also repair your relationship to yourself. And you may be thinking, “Kori, why do I need to repair my relationship to myself? Isn’t that a thing for external relationships?” And I’m going to argue that it’s a thing for internal and external relationships.
If you’re in a romantic relationship, you know, a partnership like I am with Alex, we live together, we lived through the pandemic, we’ve been together for four and a half years, there’s been a lot of conflict in that. And do-overs and other forms of repair have really helped us navigate that and become closer and build a stronger relationship instead of a relationship where resentment is always seething and burning right below the surface.
Also, for work relationships, of course, a lot of people we work with, like sometimes we work really closely with them, sometimes we have to have difficult conversations. Sometimes we're disappointed in them, sometimes they're disappointed us. Sometimes we're disappointed in ourselves and how we've acted towards them. So being able to have the do-over, which we either do implicitly or say explicitly to them, “Hey, I'd like to have a do-over on that,” that can help us repair in those relationships.
I think it's interesting too, because I think I see a lot of people who it's like if they've done something that doesn't meet their standards, sometimes they just want to like never bring it up again. Versus bringing it up and talking about it. And I think part of that is because a lot of us want to avoid things that feel uncomfortable, right? And we're like, having a conversation about it would feel super uncomfortable.
But what I would offer is one, sometimes discomfort is worth it, you get to choose when. But two, so many of us are craving connection, so many of us are craving closeness, I think especially right now. And being willing to be real and honest with people and being able to talk about the things that didn't work and being able to have the conflict conversations and being able to have the do-overs and the repair, that's how we build that closeness.
That's how we build that connection. It's not something magical, that just happens. It's not something that happens when people never have conflict. I think it's something that gets created through fucking up and repairing. That's my personal two cents.
Okay, where was I going with this? Oh, right. But so I think a lot of people don't even think about the relationship that they have with themselves. And I spend so much time with Alex and in my relationship with her. And I spend so much time with my clients, and when I worked in corporate I spent so much time with my boss and certain colleagues, right? And so those relationships were big and meaningful in my life, but you know who I spend the most time with?
The person I spend the most time with is me. So that relationship, ultimately, I would argue, is the most important. And most of us are not doing a lot of repair with ourselves. A lot of us are doing a lot of conflict with ourselves. A lot of my clients think that being mean to themselves is the only way they get things done.
Which, side note, I do not co-sign that idea. I think being mean to ourselves basically makes us feel like shit and then we do less. Or we were doing it but we're doing it, but we’re doing it out of fear and then we get burned out and we can't keep doing that. Versus I am a firm believer that we can be kind to ourselves and use that as fuel. And that we can be kind to ourselves while still having high standards of performance for ourselves.
But that's not really the main topic of this podcast. So I'm just going to like leave that there. The main point that I want to make right now is that we have a relationship with ourselves, and often that relationship isn't a very kind one. Often that relationship is like us judging and shaming the shit out of ourselves.
Often it's us telling ourselves all the ways we're failing at everything without giving any time or attention to all the things we're doing, all the ways we're succeeding, all the ways we actually are meeting our standards. I see this all the time and I experience it all the time with my own brain, where I'll be succeeding at like 98% of things, but there's these 2% I’m not. And then my brain just hyper focuses on them and then tells me I'm failing at everything.
And it's taken a lot of work, and effort, and practice, and slowing down, and coaching and all kinds of other shit to be able to be like, “Wait a minute. Wait a minute, this sounds like the negativity bias news. I don't think that this is necessarily an accurate framing of what's going on.” So it's like I talk about all the time in the podcast, noticing what is working, noticing what is going well, appreciating anything we want to have more of.
And yes to all of that, but what I want to focus on here is noticing that you have a relationship with yourself and noticing that do-overs, and repair, and catching yourself in the middle of yelling at yourself and going like, “Oh, I just noticed I’m doing that thing.”
Not beating yourself up for it because that would just compound the thing we're talking about. And instead going like, “Okay, what's the flexion point? What's the point I can go back to where I can start my do-over? When did I start yelling at myself, like what happened a few sentences before that? Can I go back to that part and try again?”
And when we do that, we have an opportunity to choose how we're going to speak to ourselves. And when we do do-overs with others, we have an opportunity to choose how we're going to speak to them. And to think intentionally about who we want to be in these relationships. Who we want to be in our partnership. Who we want to be at work. Who we want to be with ourselves. Versus the part of ourselves that is just reactive, and impulsive, and off the cuff.
And I think a lot of people would call that their instincts, but I wouldn't call it that because I think instincts and our conditioned impulses are different. But I think our conditioned impulses, our conditioned narratives about ourselves, our conditioned ways of speaking to ourselves can feel like instincts. They can kick off really, really, really fast. And do-overs are a way for us to notice that that's happened, and then choose a different way of being and then practice that way of being real time.
And I bet some of y'all out there are like, “Oh, Kori, isn't it awkward, though?” And here's the thing, it may be sometimes. There's definitely been times when I'm like, “This is awkward, I'd rather just not deal with it.” But that's not true, because the part of me that doesn't want to deal with it doesn't want to deal with it or anything.
But who I want to be in my relationship is willing to be awkward. Who I want to be in my relationship is willing to look silly. Who I want to be, and my relationship is connection oriented, and if that doesn't make sense to you go back a few podcasts and listen to the podcast on connection orientation.
And who I want to be overall in my life is a person who is thoughtful and intentional, and do-overs are one of the ultimate tools for that. They're one of the ultimate ways to think about who we want to be and then be that person regardless if the person we were two seconds ago was doing something completely different from an impulse.
And the more we practice do-overs, the more we practice being this intentional version of ourselves, the better we get at it and the more ingrained it is. So all the ways that we are now, all our reactivity, all our impulses, those are usually things we've just been practicing. They're not necessarily who we are as a person. They're how we were conditioned and they're what we've been doing for a long time.
And if we want to learn to do something else, practicing doing that something else is exceptionally helpful. And do-overs will have you practicing that something else. You do a do-over six times, and then maybe your brain starts to learn like, “Oh, this is who I want to be. I can do this, I can say this instead.”
And so eventually you'll catch yourself in your old impulse and you'll be able to reorient to the do-over before it's even a do-over. And then it's just you doing the way you want to be doing in the moment. But the reason we're talking about it as a do-over is because I think this is the most crucial skill. Yeah, we all want the sexy fun part where we like change before we say the mean thing to ourself or others.
But I think it's really important to normalize that when you have impulses that have been conditioned, that you've been practicing for 20, 30 years, you're probably not going to be able to disrupt those immediately without any practice. And you don't fucking need to in order to make a big change in your life.
So just sit with that for a moment. And also, this is beautiful, perfect kryptonite for perfectionists because we want to do it perfectly so bad. And realizing that there could be something better than doing it perfectly, which is doing it over, is really kind of mind bending, I think, for the perfectionist brain. Our brain is like, “What?”
So I kind of want that to be how you think about it. Like what if the do-over is even better than having done it perfectly? Because the do-over is the moment when you see what you've done and you're thoughtful, and you're intentional, and you think about who you want to be. And then you course correct.
What of course correcting and the ability to see when you're off course and bring yourself back is actually more beautiful than having stayed on course the whole time. Let that hurt your brain a little, it will. If you have the perfectionism like me, it will hurt your brain a little.
What you'll also find out when you employ this is it's easier than you think it is. It's emotionally uncomfortable because you're not going to be used to it and it's going to feel weird and awkward at first. But it's also super easy, if you don't resist it, you're just like, “Oh yeah, I can just try again.”
And people tend to love it. You in your head may be thinking like, “Oh, they're going to think I'm weird.” Listen, they may, but people may think we're weird at any time. And they may also be fucking into it, you may change their life by being the first person to ask for a do-over. And that may open up how they can engage in their relationships. And if they don't like it, I think that tells you some interesting information as well. Okay? Okay.
So basically, to summarize, do-overs are just exactly what they sound like, they're choosing to do something again when we don't like the way we did it before. And it's not about beating ourselves up for having done it the way we did it before. It's not about judging or shaming. It's just about going like, “You know what? I think I could maybe do that in a way I like better in another take.”
It's kind of like if you think about, like actors, right? First of all, they read their lines, they practice their lines, they practice doing their lines in different ways and different cadences. And then even when they're performing them for a movie, they're doing multiple takes, right? They're doing do-overs all the time to get things the way they want them to be.
And that's available to you too and it's something really cool that you can employ to create a life that's more of what you want and less of whatever your brain did off the cuff on the first try. So yeah, to kind of go a little further with that, your life doesn't have to be a collection of your habits to date. Your life doesn't have to be a collection of your first impulses of what to say or do in a situation.
And one way to gently redirect our life is to use do-overs and to redo things and to bring them more in line with who we want to be and how we want to be with ourselves and with others. And I've been talking about it in relationships in this podcast, but it could also be all kinds of things. You could do a do-over of your podcast. You could do a do-over of a piece of writing you did.
The funny thing is, we do do-overs in a lot of these other categories already. People do first drafts and second drafts and third drafts and fourth drafts. And people do re-record podcasts when they're like, “I didn't say that the way I want to.” And even I sometimes record the same sentence like three or four times. And then my podcast editors just go and take the extra ones out so there's only the done over in the final product.
So that's interesting too, to just offer your brain that there's all these places where this is already normalized. But I think relationships are a place where sometimes it's not normalized, but we can still bring it in as a skill set to create more of what we want in our career and in our lives.
Okay, that's what I have for y'all this week. And listen, if you want to work on things like learning to do do-overs and using do-overs to radically transform your career and your life, come work with me. I have two ways I'm working with people right now. I’m working with clients one on one, which is like a super cozy, private container where it's all about you and your growth.
And this summer I'm also launching Satisfied As Fuck, which is a small group coaching mastermind. It's going to be incredible and it's going to have the benefit where you get to learn from me coaching you, but you also get to learn from me coaching other people. And sometimes the most powerful coaching in the world is actually coaching you watch someone else receive.
So if you're interested in either of those swing on over to my website, you can go to korilinn.com/learnmore and there is a link to sign up for the Satisfied As Fuck wait list. And there is also a link to sign up for a consult. Actually, by the time this podcast comes out I think Satisfied As Fuck will be out of its wait list and I'll be actually doing consult calls for that. So come on over and sign up for a consult call. All right y'all, have a lovely week and I will talk to you next time.
Thank you for listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It. We'll have another episode for you next week. And in the meantime, if you're feeling super fired up, head on over to korilinn.com for more guidance and resources.
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