88. Vicious and Delicious Cycles
This week, we’re talking about vicious cycles (and delicious cycles).
You might have heard of virtuous or victorious cycles, but these words don’t give me gooey, delightful, yummy feelings, so we’re not going to use them. Decide for yourself, but I am much more into the idea of building a delicious life than a virtuous one.
(Especially because virtue is such a loaded concept and often informed by cultural narratives around what it means to be good, and many of those narratives are about keeping women and people of marginalized identities small and quiet, which is definitely NOT what we’re about around here.)
So, what’s a delicious cycle? What’s a vicious cycle? And how can you use these concepts to create more of what you want at work, or wherever else in your life you want something different?
I’m using a basic example of self-talk in this episode.
Say you’re working on a project, and it’s a little challenging. You might be saying, “You should know this already. This is embarrassing. Nobody else struggles with this.”
These are unhelpful thoughts that will probably create a vicious cycle.
You’re not making the project any easier, you’re just trashing yourself and reinforcing a disempowering thought pattern.
You’ll probably do a worse job on the actual work. Not because you’re incapable. But because it’s hard to even get started let alone do well when you’re inside this mindset.
So, what can we do to turn this from a vicious cycle into a delicious cycle?
In the same work project scenario, a delicious cycle might start with, “ Maybe I can do this. I’ve done other challenging things. I’ve figured some stuff out before.”
This is a simple switch.
(That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s easy to do, though. Habits can be hard to change.)
And the more you choose thoughts and actions that are delicious and helpful, the easier it will be to keep choosing and doing them.
Tune in this week to learn more about vicious cycles and how to turn them into delicious cycles instead.
If you want to supercharge your capacity to create a life that blows your mind, I have some one-on-one coaching slots opening up soon. Send me an email and let's talk about it or click here to schedule a call with me and we’ll see if we’re a good fit to start working together!
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WHAT YOU’LL LEARN FROM THIS EPISODE:
What a vicious cycle looks like and some of the vicious cycle thought patterns I see people having.
Why getting stuck in a vicious cycle of thoughts is so difficult to get out of.
How vicious cycles are keeping you from building your satisfying-as-f*ck life and career.
What I tell myself when I’m stuck spinning in a vicious cycle.
How a vicious cycle makes results you might otherwise consider positive feel a whole lot worse.
What you can do to try on some delicious cycles and explore the possibilities when the mean self-talk starts.
LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE:
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FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
This week we're talking about vicious cycles and delicious cycles.
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'm pretty excited to talk to you today. The thing I want to talk about, I was talking in a client call with a client about the idea of like vicious cycles. And I was saying that for a lot of people, what they call the opposite version is like a virtuous cycle. And I don't like that because I think it puts a lot of weight on morality and that this kind of cycle is a good cycle and if you're a good person you do this cycle. And I think that just adds kind of weight to the thing in an unhelpful way.
So much of the time I think we see certain activities as like doing it right, or doing it better, or being a better person, or being healthier. And I think those ways of referring to things actually makes it harder to do them. It's kind of like the word should.
When we say we should do something, then that presupposes that there's a right thing and a wrong thing, and a good thing and a bad thing, and we should do the good thing. And that seems like it would make us more likely to do the thing we're thinking of as good, but I find in practice it often actually makes it less likely that we'll do the thing and more likely that we'll beat ourselves up when we don't do the thing.
So I was like, “I want to call it something else,” like the idea of the virtuous cycle. And I was thinking like I think I've heard it called a victorious cycle before, so I was like victorious cycle. But my client was like, “Delicious cycle.” And I was like, “Oh, delicious cycle, I like that.” And the client was like, “Yeah, because you use the word delicious all the time.”
And it's funny because another client recently also was like, “I want a Kori word for this, what's a Kori word? Oh, delicious.” And between these two things it came to my attention that I guess apparently I use the word delicious a lot. And the funny thing is, y'all probably know this already because I probably, if I'm using this word a lot in coaching calls I'm probably using it a lot on the podcast too. And just I wasn't really aware of it.
So I think that's super fun that we can know ourselves so well and I'm a pretty reflective person and I think about my language a lot. And still, this was like kind of a fun surprise for me. I also think it's fun because the word delicious to me is so much more, well, fun than the word virtuous or even victorious.
Virtuous and victorious sound like things I should, again there's that word should, be striving for and also maybe they're going to be hard. I don't know, I'm just like it's doesn't inspire a lot of delight in me, a lot of like gooey, fun, juicy, yummy feelings. Whereas delicious does. Delicious is like a really fantastic glass of wine, or like a really yummy french fry, or a really beautiful flower, or a candle that just smells incredible.
In short, I think the word delicious is a lot more fun and a lot more indicative of the kind of cycles I'm trying to build in my life and the kind of life I'm trying to have in general. I think my satisfying as fuck life involves a lot of deliciousness, and maybe yours does too. And if it does, steal this word and use this phrase in your own life.
And if it doesn't, find a word that feels yummy to you. We don't all have to be the same, which is great news since we're not all the same and we all have our own different preferences. And word connotations can really vary a little bit and even dramatically between people.
And one of the things with coaching and with thought work, which is the work of choosing our thoughts and mindsets on purpose that we talk about all the time here, you really have to figure out what feels good to you. Because a thought that feels really yummy to me, a narrative that feels delicious to me, may feel unsettling or constricting to you. And so you got to figure out what works for you specifically. That's that.
Let's also though talk about what's a vicious cycle, what's a delicious cycle? And how can you use these concepts to create more of what you want at work and everywhere else in your life? Okay, so I'm going to use a basic example with self-talk.
Okay, so let's talk about the vicious cycle first. Let's say you're working on a project and it's a little challenging and you're saying things to yourself like, “You should know this already. I can't believe this is hard for you, you should be embarrassed. If everyone else knew that you were struggling with this, they would really question you being in your position and making the amount of pay you make,” right?
These are kind of the kind of things that people's brains say to them all the time for most of us. But they're very unhelpful thoughts and they're kind of vicious cycle thoughts because when we have thoughts like that, when we doubt ourselves and it's harder to focus, it's harder to do the work, we usually don't do as good of a job, right?
And so then we get whatever the outcome is on the work and then that reinforces the thoughts that we were having and makes it easier for us to believe them. Which makes it harder for us to do the work next time. More likely we’ll procrastinate, more likely we’ll doubt ourselves, more likely we’ll question like what are we even doing in this role? And we'll feel like more and more of an imposter. And it's going to keep going, keep going, keep going, keep going.
And the idea with the viciousness is that it's self-reinforcing. Well it's actually the idea with the cycle part. The viciousness is what's happening, and then the cycle is the idea that it's self-reinforcing. So the more we're in that cycle, the easier it is to stay in that cycle and the easier it is to believe all of those negative thoughts.
And when people come to coaching, a lot of people are stuck in one or often many different vicious cycles. It doesn't mean nothing in their life is working. As humans we're very complex beings and our brains have like a bajillion thoughts a day.
So you may have like six vicious cycles going, and six delicious cycles going, and maybe like another 10 sort of mediocre cycles going that are not great and yummy, but they're not so vicious and they're just kind of like maybe keeping you in sort of a status quo thing, right?
But vicious cycles feel terrible and they're not very fun. And they can also keep us from building our satisfying as fuck life and our satisfying as fuck career either because they're keeping our performance subpar because the cycle is draining us so much that we're not able to do our best work.
Or they also often keep people from trying new things and taking risks because that negative self-talk or the negative habits that can also go with a vicious cycle just keep us either stuck in the same place or they're like pushing us into worse and worse situations that may seem like they're just happening to us, but are actually part of the cycle.
Okay, so what would a delicious cycle look like, right? So if you're working on that same work project that’s a little challenging, a delicious cycle is like what would be delicious to say to yourself? What would be a delicious outcome there? How do we get that for ourselves?
For me, a lot of things, like if I'm working on something challenging it might start with like I can do this. I've done other challenging things before, I've figured out so many things. One thing I think I've talked about on the podcast before is that I do country dancing which is like two step and line dancing. And when I first started I was really, really bad. Like really, really bad.
And I just kept going because I liked it and thought it was really fun. But guess what? Over time I also got a lot better and that is something that I can use now when I'm trying to delicious cycle something.
I can say like, okay, this feels really hard, you feel like you have no idea what you're doing. That's okay because we know we have this other data point that you can get really good at things that you're not good at right away, and that's okay. And we can have fun doing it. I have that data set so I can bring that data set over and turn that into a delicious cycle.
So let's say I'm working on the work thing, and I bring in this delicious feeling idea that I can figure it out and maybe in five years, it's going to be as easy as country dancing is for me now. And if you don't have an example like that from your own life, you can borrow mine.
You can be like, if Kori Linn can learn to country dance, I can fucking do anything. Because that's like the level, if you had see me when I was first dancing I couldn't hear the beat. Y'all I couldn't hear the beat for four, at least four years of dancing. And when I started hearing the beat I was like, “What the fuck? This is much easier when you can hear the beat.” Anyway, so you can borrow that from my life.
That's something we can do. When we're delicious cycling something or coming up with a mindset, or a narrative, or a thought that's going to help us in a situation and feel more useful, it doesn't even have to be proof or evidence from our own life. It can be proof or evidence from the world, from someone else if it creates a delicious feeling for you.
And in the beginning it might not be delicious, it might just be like not quite vicious, or it might be medium, or it might be like moving towards delicious, right? Let's not be perfectionist about it being delicious, we're just like moving in that direction.
So how does this go from being like I'm saying something kind to myself to it being a delicious cycle? Like I'm working on a project, it's kind of challenging. I'm telling myself I can do it, I'm telling myself, hey, if you figured out country dancing, you can figure this out.
And then I'm probably going to get better performance out of myself because I'm having these positive thoughts and I'm orienting towards my capacity and my capability, versus orienting towards myself-criticism. So I'm probably going to do a better job, which is already great. But then also when I'm in that headspace I'm going to say nicer shit to myself about the performance I did.
So let's say in the vicious cycle I get like, these are not graded but I'm just going to use grades to kind of give your brain something to think about that’s specific. Let's say when I had the negative thoughts and the vicious cycle, maybe my performance was like a 75 out of 100. But then if I have a bunch of negative thoughts about it, then I'm going to feel like shit about it And then my performance is probably going to keep getting worse because I'm going to be like spiraling and that self-negativity.
Whereas let's say in the good version, not good, but in the delicious version, like let's say with my positive self-talk maybe that improves things a little bit, it's going to improve the way the experience feels, and I still may get like an 80% out of 100. So that's only 5% more, I think that's still a significant margin. But it's like only 5% more, it's not like I'm going to get 100.
But the way I can talk to myself like, “Yeah, really good job, you got 80%. This is just like the country dancing, you weren't perfect at first. You did dance for a lot of years before you got really good at it, but you eventually did get really good at it. So this is great, keep going.” Right?
And the more I do that and the more that's how I'm narrating to myself, then the 80 is something to be proud of and something that's taking me closer to my goal, and that's going to put me in the delicious cycle. It's going to help me keep doing better and keep doing better and keep doing better. It's going to make it easier to keep being kind to myself, it's going to make it easier to keep performing well.
Versus getting the 75 and then berating myself about that and then feeling like shit, and then probably my performance goes down. Or if it goes up, it's not a triumph, it's not delicious, it's like, “But I should have been better the whole time.”
So this is such an interesting point that in the vicious cycle you could actually have performance that's better than someone in a delicious cycle. But you'll have a worse experience of it because of that narration and because of the meaning making, and because of the criticism, and the judgment, and the blame about how you should be better already.
And I think, like let's also take a moment to just talk about like a lot of people when they come to coaching are really mean to themselves. And that's what they think they're using to fuel everything in their lives. And they really sometimes are reluctant to let go of that self-loathing, self-judging, self-criticizing, like beating themselves up, basically.
They think that's the key to their success. Y'all, it's not, because even when you do well, you feel like shit about it. And over time, you 're going to stop trying because it's no fun to try and even do pretty well and then feel like shit all the time. So a lot of people, like that beating themselves up thing, that maybe works for 5, 10, 15, maybe 20 years.
Because a lot of us start it in like elementary, middle school and we get to our 30s and then we're like, “I hate everything. Nothing feels good. I'm a failure,” right? Then we come to coaching and the coach is like, what if we don't do that?
And it's scary to let that go, and I get that. But I just want to offer to you that in the delicious cycle, it feels a lot better, it's much more sustainable. And also, like everything we do, everything we try, even if it's not perfect can be part of our greatness, can be part of our triumph, can be part of us building the life and career we want to have. And it's just a much more fun way to do things.
Also, it makes it easier to stay on that track, right? Whatever we practice we get better at if we practice the vicious cycle, we're going to get better at the vicious cycle. But that's not fun, good, better. That's like now we're just more efficient at saying mean shit to ourselves. And I think there's a lot of going against the grind there and like willpower because we know it's all going to feel terrible.
Whereas when we practice the delicious cycle, like it might feel alien at first, it might feel weird at first. If you've never done it you might be like, “This is strange.” It's a new habit. But once you get going with the delicious cycle, this is renewable energy y'all. It feels good to try things. It feels good to make effort. It feels good to do new things. It feels good to do the work you're already doing because the way you're doing it, that cycle you have around it is delicious.
A question I always get is, but if I'm nice to myself won’t I just stop trying to do things? And I think this is such a funny question. Why would you do that? Like why wouldn’t you be kind to yourself and then still go out and create the life you want? Like why do we think we have to be mean to ourselves or we're not going to create the life we want?
It's just like the premise that that's on is that you have to be miserable to change things. And I just, one, I don't think that's true. And two, I don't think it's very fun. And it puts us in this place also where we're like, oh, I have to hurry up and get away from this thing because it's terrible.
Versus like, my life is fucking wonderful. It's great, and there are things I want to change. And I'm going to change a lot of them, but I'm not in a super hurry about it. And I don't need the process of it to feel terrible in order for me to stay motivated. And I don't think you do either.
Now, I've talked about this before, you may find that when you're in the delicious cycle there are certain things you don't give a shit about doing. But maybe that's okay. Maybe we don't have to give a shit about doing everything. There may be some stuff that you're like, “Oh, I was socialized to think that's important, but it actually doesn't matter to me.” But I don't think it means you're going to do nothing.
And maybe you would do nothing for a little bit because I think a lot of us, we’re like overworked and so we may need to rest a little bit. But that's not going to be forever because humans like to do things. We like to learn. We like to work. We like to create stuff. And when you really believe it's possible to have that satisfying as fuck life and career, why wouldn't you work on it joyfully, deliciously? Why wouldn't you? It just doesn't make any sense to me.
But it makes sense that we have that thought pattern because I think a lot of us learned that as kids and had it instilled in us. And it's a paradigm that we're very used to, we're very comfortable with, it's very habitual to us. It's like driving, we've been doing it for so long that it just seems natural. But that doesn't mean it is and it doesn't mean you have to live your life that way.
I just happen to think delicious cycles are a lot more fun. And also, as I was talking about before, the vicious cycle stops working. People get burned out and they get into fuck it effect and they get into the pit of despair, and it just stops working. So why not try a delicious cycle instead?
And the examples I've given in this podcast are about self-talk, but there's lots of other stuff too. It's kind of like something I see is like if people drink too much and then they judge and shame themselves for drinking too much. Then they want to get away from the judging and shaming, so what do they do? Their brain is like have a glass of wine, right? So that's a vicious cycle too and it still does involve thoughts, but it also involves the action of drinking of the wine.
And nothing against wine, y'all know I love wine. But I love wine as like a sensory delight that I include in my life, not as something I do to get away from my feelings, right? So in this example, someone's like drinking and then they drink more than they wanted to, and they don't want to do that again.
But then they have all that negative emotion and maybe even feel yucky in their body as a result of the amount of alcohol that they had consumed. And they want to get away from those thoughts and sensations, so they turn back to the very thing that they've judged themselves for. That's a vicious cycle, because it's because it's set you up to have the same thing happen again and again and again and again.
Versus a delicious cycle, or like a delicious interrupt to that vicious cycle could be like, hey, yeah, you did that. You drank three glasses of wine when you meant to drink two. And we don't have to do it again. And we don't have to beat ourselves up about it.
And even maybe something like, hey, we've been drinking since we were like, I don't know, 21 years old. And so, of course changing this habit is taking time. And of course we're going to fuck up. And that's okay. We got this, you know how to fuck up and keep going and actually make changes in your life.
And again, if you don't have an example of that from your own life, use my example. Use anyone's example. Use an example from like Oprah's life, or Beyonce’s life, or somebody else's life. Like for me, it's like, oh my God, do y'all know how many times I fucked up at that country dancing before I got good at it? And I'm good at it now. And guess what? I still fuck it up all the time. I get my footwork wrong, all kinds of stuff like that.
We don't have to be perfect to create a change in our lives. We don't have to be perfect to have a satisfying as fuck life, and career, and relationships. But I think one thing we do need to do, or one thing that's going to make it much easier to do that and is a very useful skill is being able to tell when we're in a vicious cycle and then step out of it.
And sometimes we may need to step into that sort of neutral, mediocre cycle for a while. That's okay, neutral is a great place to go if you've been in negative and vicious. And then I want you to think about what would be delicious? How can I step into a delicious cycle around this? What would that even look like? Blow your mind with the possibilities.
And if you want some help figuring out what this could even mean for you and your life and your career, come hop on a consult call with me. Let's talk about it. Let's talk about how this would apply to your life and what a delicious cycle could look like for you. And then if you want to learn more about working with me I will tell you about the ways I'm currently working with clients.
All right y'all, that's what I got for you. Have a great day. Just be delicious, delight yourself. And I'll talk to you next week.
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'm pretty excited to talk to you today. The thing I want to talk about, I was talking in a client call with a client about the idea of like vicious cycles. And I was saying that for a lot of people, what they call the opposite version is like a virtuous cycle. And I don't like that because I think it puts a lot of weight on morality and that this kind of cycle is a good cycle and if you're a good person you do this cycle. And I think that just adds kind of weight to the thing in an unhelpful way.
So much of the time I think we see certain activities as like doing it right, or doing it better, or being a better person, or being healthier. And I think those ways of referring to things actually makes it harder to do them. It's kind of like the word should.
When we say we should do something, then that presupposes that there's a right thing and a wrong thing, and a good thing and a bad thing, and we should do the good thing. And that seems like it would make us more likely to do the thing we're thinking of as good, but I find in practice it often actually makes it less likely that we'll do the thing and more likely that we'll beat ourselves up when we don't do the thing.
So I was like, “I want to call it something else,” like the idea of the virtuous cycle. And I was thinking like I think I've heard it called a victorious cycle before, so I was like victorious cycle. But my client was like, “Delicious cycle.” And I was like, “Oh, delicious cycle, I like that.” And the client was like, “Yeah, because you use the word delicious all the time.”
And it's funny because another client recently also was like, “I want a Kori word for this, what's a Kori word? Oh, delicious.” And between these two things it came to my attention that I guess apparently I use the word delicious a lot. And the funny thing is, y'all probably know this already because I probably, if I'm using this word a lot in coaching calls I'm probably using it a lot on the podcast too. And just I wasn't really aware of it.
So I think that's super fun that we can know ourselves so well and I'm a pretty reflective person and I think about my language a lot. And still, this was like kind of a fun surprise for me. I also think it's fun because the word delicious to me is so much more, well, fun than the word virtuous or even victorious.
Virtuous and victorious sound like things I should, again there's that word should, be striving for and also maybe they're going to be hard. I don't know, I'm just like it's doesn't inspire a lot of delight in me, a lot of like gooey, fun, juicy, yummy feelings. Whereas delicious does. Delicious is like a really fantastic glass of wine, or like a really yummy french fry, or a really beautiful flower, or a candle that just smells incredible.
In short, I think the word delicious is a lot more fun and a lot more indicative of the kind of cycles I'm trying to build in my life and the kind of life I'm trying to have in general. I think my satisfying as fuck life involves a lot of deliciousness, and maybe yours does too. And if it does, steal this word and use this phrase in your own life.
And if it doesn't, find a word that feels yummy to you. We don't all have to be the same, which is great news since we're not all the same and we all have our own different preferences. And word connotations can really vary a little bit and even dramatically between people.
And one of the things with coaching and with thought work, which is the work of choosing our thoughts and mindsets on purpose that we talk about all the time here, you really have to figure out what feels good to you. Because a thought that feels really yummy to me, a narrative that feels delicious to me, may feel unsettling or constricting to you. And so you got to figure out what works for you specifically. That's that.
Let's also though talk about what's a vicious cycle, what's a delicious cycle? And how can you use these concepts to create more of what you want at work and everywhere else in your life? Okay, so I'm going to use a basic example with self-talk.
Okay, so let's talk about the vicious cycle first. Let's say you're working on a project and it's a little challenging and you're saying things to yourself like, “You should know this already. I can't believe this is hard for you, you should be embarrassed. If everyone else knew that you were struggling with this, they would really question you being in your position and making the amount of pay you make,” right?
These are kind of the kind of things that people's brains say to them all the time for most of us. But they're very unhelpful thoughts and they're kind of vicious cycle thoughts because when we have thoughts like that, when we doubt ourselves and it's harder to focus, it's harder to do the work, we usually don't do as good of a job, right?
And so then we get whatever the outcome is on the work and then that reinforces the thoughts that we were having and makes it easier for us to believe them. Which makes it harder for us to do the work next time. More likely we’ll procrastinate, more likely we’ll doubt ourselves, more likely we’ll question like what are we even doing in this role? And we'll feel like more and more of an imposter. And it's going to keep going, keep going, keep going, keep going.
And the idea with the viciousness is that it's self-reinforcing. Well it's actually the idea with the cycle part. The viciousness is what's happening, and then the cycle is the idea that it's self-reinforcing. So the more we're in that cycle, the easier it is to stay in that cycle and the easier it is to believe all of those negative thoughts.
And when people come to coaching, a lot of people are stuck in one or often many different vicious cycles. It doesn't mean nothing in their life is working. As humans we're very complex beings and our brains have like a bajillion thoughts a day.
So you may have like six vicious cycles going, and six delicious cycles going, and maybe like another 10 sort of mediocre cycles going that are not great and yummy, but they're not so vicious and they're just kind of like maybe keeping you in sort of a status quo thing, right?
But vicious cycles feel terrible and they're not very fun. And they can also keep us from building our satisfying as fuck life and our satisfying as fuck career either because they're keeping our performance subpar because the cycle is draining us so much that we're not able to do our best work.
Or they also often keep people from trying new things and taking risks because that negative self-talk or the negative habits that can also go with a vicious cycle just keep us either stuck in the same place or they're like pushing us into worse and worse situations that may seem like they're just happening to us, but are actually part of the cycle.
Okay, so what would a delicious cycle look like, right? So if you're working on that same work project that’s a little challenging, a delicious cycle is like what would be delicious to say to yourself? What would be a delicious outcome there? How do we get that for ourselves?
For me, a lot of things, like if I'm working on something challenging it might start with like I can do this. I've done other challenging things before, I've figured out so many things. One thing I think I've talked about on the podcast before is that I do country dancing which is like two step and line dancing. And when I first started I was really, really bad. Like really, really bad.
And I just kept going because I liked it and thought it was really fun. But guess what? Over time I also got a lot better and that is something that I can use now when I'm trying to delicious cycle something.
I can say like, okay, this feels really hard, you feel like you have no idea what you're doing. That's okay because we know we have this other data point that you can get really good at things that you're not good at right away, and that's okay. And we can have fun doing it. I have that data set so I can bring that data set over and turn that into a delicious cycle.
So let's say I'm working on the work thing, and I bring in this delicious feeling idea that I can figure it out and maybe in five years, it's going to be as easy as country dancing is for me now. And if you don't have an example like that from your own life, you can borrow mine.
You can be like, if Kori Linn can learn to country dance, I can fucking do anything. Because that's like the level, if you had see me when I was first dancing I couldn't hear the beat. Y'all I couldn't hear the beat for four, at least four years of dancing. And when I started hearing the beat I was like, “What the fuck? This is much easier when you can hear the beat.” Anyway, so you can borrow that from my life.
That's something we can do. When we're delicious cycling something or coming up with a mindset, or a narrative, or a thought that's going to help us in a situation and feel more useful, it doesn't even have to be proof or evidence from our own life. It can be proof or evidence from the world, from someone else if it creates a delicious feeling for you.
And in the beginning it might not be delicious, it might just be like not quite vicious, or it might be medium, or it might be like moving towards delicious, right? Let's not be perfectionist about it being delicious, we're just like moving in that direction.
So how does this go from being like I'm saying something kind to myself to it being a delicious cycle? Like I'm working on a project, it's kind of challenging. I'm telling myself I can do it, I'm telling myself, hey, if you figured out country dancing, you can figure this out.
And then I'm probably going to get better performance out of myself because I'm having these positive thoughts and I'm orienting towards my capacity and my capability, versus orienting towards myself-criticism. So I'm probably going to do a better job, which is already great. But then also when I'm in that headspace I'm going to say nicer shit to myself about the performance I did.
So let's say in the vicious cycle I get like, these are not graded but I'm just going to use grades to kind of give your brain something to think about that’s specific. Let's say when I had the negative thoughts and the vicious cycle, maybe my performance was like a 75 out of 100. But then if I have a bunch of negative thoughts about it, then I'm going to feel like shit about it And then my performance is probably going to keep getting worse because I'm going to be like spiraling and that self-negativity.
Whereas let's say in the good version, not good, but in the delicious version, like let's say with my positive self-talk maybe that improves things a little bit, it's going to improve the way the experience feels, and I still may get like an 80% out of 100. So that's only 5% more, I think that's still a significant margin. But it's like only 5% more, it's not like I'm going to get 100.
But the way I can talk to myself like, “Yeah, really good job, you got 80%. This is just like the country dancing, you weren't perfect at first. You did dance for a lot of years before you got really good at it, but you eventually did get really good at it. So this is great, keep going.” Right?
And the more I do that and the more that's how I'm narrating to myself, then the 80 is something to be proud of and something that's taking me closer to my goal, and that's going to put me in the delicious cycle. It's going to help me keep doing better and keep doing better and keep doing better. It's going to make it easier to keep being kind to myself, it's going to make it easier to keep performing well.
Versus getting the 75 and then berating myself about that and then feeling like shit, and then probably my performance goes down. Or if it goes up, it's not a triumph, it's not delicious, it's like, “But I should have been better the whole time.”
So this is such an interesting point that in the vicious cycle you could actually have performance that's better than someone in a delicious cycle. But you'll have a worse experience of it because of that narration and because of the meaning making, and because of the criticism, and the judgment, and the blame about how you should be better already.
And I think, like let's also take a moment to just talk about like a lot of people when they come to coaching are really mean to themselves. And that's what they think they're using to fuel everything in their lives. And they really sometimes are reluctant to let go of that self-loathing, self-judging, self-criticizing, like beating themselves up, basically.
They think that's the key to their success. Y'all, it's not, because even when you do well, you feel like shit about it. And over time, you 're going to stop trying because it's no fun to try and even do pretty well and then feel like shit all the time. So a lot of people, like that beating themselves up thing, that maybe works for 5, 10, 15, maybe 20 years.
Because a lot of us start it in like elementary, middle school and we get to our 30s and then we're like, “I hate everything. Nothing feels good. I'm a failure,” right? Then we come to coaching and the coach is like, what if we don't do that?
And it's scary to let that go, and I get that. But I just want to offer to you that in the delicious cycle, it feels a lot better, it's much more sustainable. And also, like everything we do, everything we try, even if it's not perfect can be part of our greatness, can be part of our triumph, can be part of us building the life and career we want to have. And it's just a much more fun way to do things.
Also, it makes it easier to stay on that track, right? Whatever we practice we get better at if we practice the vicious cycle, we're going to get better at the vicious cycle. But that's not fun, good, better. That's like now we're just more efficient at saying mean shit to ourselves. And I think there's a lot of going against the grind there and like willpower because we know it's all going to feel terrible.
Whereas when we practice the delicious cycle, like it might feel alien at first, it might feel weird at first. If you've never done it you might be like, “This is strange.” It's a new habit. But once you get going with the delicious cycle, this is renewable energy y'all. It feels good to try things. It feels good to make effort. It feels good to do new things. It feels good to do the work you're already doing because the way you're doing it, that cycle you have around it is delicious.
A question I always get is, but if I'm nice to myself won’t I just stop trying to do things? And I think this is such a funny question. Why would you do that? Like why wouldn’t you be kind to yourself and then still go out and create the life you want? Like why do we think we have to be mean to ourselves or we're not going to create the life we want?
It's just like the premise that that's on is that you have to be miserable to change things. And I just, one, I don't think that's true. And two, I don't think it's very fun. And it puts us in this place also where we're like, oh, I have to hurry up and get away from this thing because it's terrible.
Versus like, my life is fucking wonderful. It's great, and there are things I want to change. And I'm going to change a lot of them, but I'm not in a super hurry about it. And I don't need the process of it to feel terrible in order for me to stay motivated. And I don't think you do either.
Now, I've talked about this before, you may find that when you're in the delicious cycle there are certain things you don't give a shit about doing. But maybe that's okay. Maybe we don't have to give a shit about doing everything. There may be some stuff that you're like, “Oh, I was socialized to think that's important, but it actually doesn't matter to me.” But I don't think it means you're going to do nothing.
And maybe you would do nothing for a little bit because I think a lot of us, we’re like overworked and so we may need to rest a little bit. But that's not going to be forever because humans like to do things. We like to learn. We like to work. We like to create stuff. And when you really believe it's possible to have that satisfying as fuck life and career, why wouldn't you work on it joyfully, deliciously? Why wouldn't you? It just doesn't make any sense to me.
But it makes sense that we have that thought pattern because I think a lot of us learned that as kids and had it instilled in us. And it's a paradigm that we're very used to, we're very comfortable with, it's very habitual to us. It's like driving, we've been doing it for so long that it just seems natural. But that doesn't mean it is and it doesn't mean you have to live your life that way.
I just happen to think delicious cycles are a lot more fun. And also, as I was talking about before, the vicious cycle stops working. People get burned out and they get into fuck it effect and they get into the pit of despair, and it just stops working. So why not try a delicious cycle instead?
And the examples I've given in this podcast are about self-talk, but there's lots of other stuff too. It's kind of like something I see is like if people drink too much and then they judge and shame themselves for drinking too much. Then they want to get away from the judging and shaming, so what do they do? Their brain is like have a glass of wine, right? So that's a vicious cycle too and it still does involve thoughts, but it also involves the action of drinking of the wine.
And nothing against wine, y'all know I love wine. But I love wine as like a sensory delight that I include in my life, not as something I do to get away from my feelings, right? So in this example, someone's like drinking and then they drink more than they wanted to, and they don't want to do that again.
But then they have all that negative emotion and maybe even feel yucky in their body as a result of the amount of alcohol that they had consumed. And they want to get away from those thoughts and sensations, so they turn back to the very thing that they've judged themselves for. That's a vicious cycle, because it's because it's set you up to have the same thing happen again and again and again and again.
Versus a delicious cycle, or like a delicious interrupt to that vicious cycle could be like, hey, yeah, you did that. You drank three glasses of wine when you meant to drink two. And we don't have to do it again. And we don't have to beat ourselves up about it.
And even maybe something like, hey, we've been drinking since we were like, I don't know, 21 years old. And so, of course changing this habit is taking time. And of course we're going to fuck up. And that's okay. We got this, you know how to fuck up and keep going and actually make changes in your life.
And again, if you don't have an example of that from your own life, use my example. Use anyone's example. Use an example from like Oprah's life, or Beyonce’s life, or somebody else's life. Like for me, it's like, oh my God, do y'all know how many times I fucked up at that country dancing before I got good at it? And I'm good at it now. And guess what? I still fuck it up all the time. I get my footwork wrong, all kinds of stuff like that.
We don't have to be perfect to create a change in our lives. We don't have to be perfect to have a satisfying as fuck life, and career, and relationships. But I think one thing we do need to do, or one thing that's going to make it much easier to do that and is a very useful skill is being able to tell when we're in a vicious cycle and then step out of it.
And sometimes we may need to step into that sort of neutral, mediocre cycle for a while. That's okay, neutral is a great place to go if you've been in negative and vicious. And then I want you to think about what would be delicious? How can I step into a delicious cycle around this? What would that even look like? Blow your mind with the possibilities.
And if you want some help figuring out what this could even mean for you and your life and your career, come hop on a consult call with me. Let's talk about it. Let's talk about how this would apply to your life and what a delicious cycle could look like for you. And then if you want to learn more about working with me I will tell you about the ways I'm currently working with clients.
All right y'all, that's what I got for you. Have a great day. Just be delicious, delight yourself. And I'll talk to you next week.
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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