This article is also featured in Brainz Magazine.
Peter Drucker, the management consultant, asserted, “The only skill that will be important in the 21st century is the skill of learning new skills. Everything else will become obsolete over time.”
The man who arguably wrote the book on business operations should have something to say about how we can manage success: we do it by managing our minds.
High performance can take many forms and [always] depends on a person’s ability and willingness to know their own mind; not necessarily their opinions, but rather the experiences that shape their beliefs and how those beliefs shape present decision making. This goes for the office as much as it does personal life; what we say and do provide insight into the science of the mind and the art of thinking.
The Role of Reflection and Language
In 2020 James Pennebaker and colleagues published a study on the emotional vocabularies we use and their correlation to our wellbeing.
The study showed that ‘verbal concepts construct perceptions of reality, including the experience and perception of emotional states.’ What we say doesn’t just express how we feel now. What we say also structures how we feel about what happened then. Active vocabularies provide a window into mental habits. Investigating our language choices reveals how we think about the past, present, and future.
Accessing the Power of Vocabulary
There’s a simple hack for accessing the power of vocabulary: write down your thoughts about a particular situation. Write freely, continually, and reflectively. Just write.
I set this as homework for my client, JC (not their real name). He wrote continuously for between 15-30 minutes. Then in session, JC and I parsed his writing together. The words revealed he’d been ruminating less than he had realised; his vocabulary choices presented a much more balanced relationship with a particular family member. He’d fallen victim to negative bias; the brain is wired for survival, so it focuses our attention on threats in our environment.
JC read me his entry and I sorted the words into positive and negative categories following Pennebaker’s guidance.
Looking at his lists showed JC how he had sown the seeds for a positive relationship with his family member as they grew up in England and he lived abroad. Writing and sorting reactivated memories of birthdays, flying visits, and longer term stays together. Though they had been apart, JC had intentionally done everything he could to maintain a positive relationship. In fact, ‘the fact that I was [abroad] made me want that much more to have a positive relationship with [them] as [the] were growing up.’
Turning Reflection into Action
When we were finished, I asked JC how he would like to focus the remainder of our session time. JC’s reflex answer was clear: Regret about the past and making reparations for the future.
Together, helped JC identify his feelings now, based on past experience. We then triangulated the position in which JC wanted to be when he had completed his goal: making contact with his loved one with the intention to set a date for the conversation and then actually having that conversation.
Accepting misfortunes means the opposite of accepting disaster. Acceptance means seeing the good and the bad and intentionally capitalising on the good. Regret points us to ways that we can reconsider what happened, reform our intentions and make good on our goals.
Professionalism and Vulnerability
Acceptance cuts through our personal and professional lives.
Another client of mine reinvigorated their career in finance by owning their responsibility for impulsive behaviour that had tainted two serious relationships. Like JC, AR (not their real name) showed initiative, and initiative makes coaching and therapy work. Yes, it’s hard. And yes, a good coach is a compassionate coach. But there’s a reason why so many refer to therapy as moniker ‘the work’. Sometimes ‘the work’ takes us on what can feel like ‘a long day’s journey into night’ and when dawn shows up we meet for coffee and renew our family relationships. Showing up for job applications brings the interview and showing up for that can bring a $100,000 annual salary (yes, that happened).
Professionalism means making sense of our language patterns and then showing up for obstacles and opportunities.
Professionalism means taking the latter and transforming them into the former. Every field has its milestones and the path for each requires the vulnerability and strength to take off our armour, disclose our thoughts and feelings, and take accountability and control over our words.