Best Of Ellen Hendriksen's "How to Be Enough"
Here is a selection of memorable quotes from How to Be Enough: Self-Acceptance for Self-Critics and Perfectionists by Ellen Hendriksen, Ph.D.
The tactic of John Wooden of no praise is described below by Hendriksen reminds me a lot of the thoughts of the Philosopher's thoughts on praise in The Courage to Be Disliked:
In the mid-1970s, teacher praise and reproof were hot topics in education research, so Gallimore and Tharp were surprised to discover Wooden seldom complimented or rebuked his players. Instead, as a former high school English teacher, Wooden did just that: He taught. He instructed.
He informed. He told you what to do and how to do it: "Pass the ball to someone short!" "Don't walk." "Take lots of shots in areas where you might get them in games." "Pass from the chest!" His comments, wrote Gallimore and Tharp, were "short, punctuated, and numerous."
Gallimore and Tharp noted that a highly successful contemporaneous football coach used instructional comments 36 percent of the time. Another revered basketball coach reached 55 percent. Wooden bested them all at 75 percent. A full three-quarters of his statements were focused on the task, not the player.
This shift from evaluation to information applies to all of us, not just college basketball stars. Pop psychology tells us to hype ourselves up with affirmations ("Today, I will be the best version of myself") or switch our critical self-talk to positive self-talk ('I can do it!"). But merely flipping from negative to positive self-talk doesn't work-there's still a sense of evaluation. The focus is still on us as a person.
From the basketball court to our work cubicle to parenting to running a household, evaluation makes it personal: "I suck." "I'm not doing enough." "Why am I not getting this?" "I screwed up." What to do instead? Take it from UCLA basketball: turn your attention spotlight from the global self to the specific behavior. Take the stance of a sculptor eyeing a block of marble; look at the task as an entity separate from you: What to do to make this thing better? What would be effective for the work?
This shift from self-evaluation to task-focused information is subtle but profound. Evaluative self-talk is personal, general, and permanent ("I suck"). But task-focused self-talk is external, specific, and fixable ("Pass the ball to someone short"). It takes away both the harshness and personal implication of self-blame, leaving overvaluation behind like a newly shed snake skin.
Bonus? It's more effective. If the function of self-criticism is to goad ourselves into doing better, instructional self-talk accomplishes that more productively, plus it hurts a lot less.
p. 63-64
Think of the people in your life you're closest to. Do you love them for being right? For showing you how to improve? Probably not. More likely, you love them for how you feel when you're with them: accepted, supported, trusted. Signalling trust is vital. Indeed, the opposite of control isn't being out of control; the opposite of control is
p. 89
In her bestseller Platonic: How the Science of Attachment Can Help You Make-and Keep—Friends, Dr. Marisa Franco writes, "When were in self-protection mode, we're in anti-relationship mode."
p. 245
Below, Hendriksen describes a tactic for reducing social anxiety and making a good first impression, the "Big Three Plus One" strategy by Dr. Lynch:
Yes, eyebrows. The eyebrow wag is a universal signal of "I like you; you're in my tribe." Think of greeting someone with a handshake, a friendly exchange, or when you run into an old friend. Eyebrows are up. It signals liking and openness.
So, put it all together:
1. Sit or stand in a relaxed, open stance.
2. Inhale and let out an exhale.
3. Half smile.
PLUS ONE: Briefly lift your eyebrows.
Adopting a posture and expression of social safety creates two feedback loops. First, it creates a feedback loop to those around us, signalling that we're open and approachable-the very opposite of perfectionistic self-presentation. But it also creates a feedback loop to ourselves. Says Dr. Lynch, "It has the added advantage of affecting how you feel internally. It switches on the social safety system."
p. 250
Hendriksen quotes Eliot Daley as Daley spoke of Fred Rogers:
One old friend of Rogers's, Eliot Daley, once reflected on the elusive energy Junod puzzled over for twenty years:
"I would describe him as the ultimate "what you see is what you get," with one exception. What most people couldn't see in Fred was his enormous power. Power. Capital P. Fred is the most powerful person I have ever known in my whole life.... I've dealt with a lot of people whom the world regards as powerful. None of them could hold a candle to Fred's power. ... His power derived from a really unique place. It was his absolute self-possession, which is very different from self-interest or self-satisfaction, or selfishness. He didn't need anything from you or from me. He welcomed it, but he didn't need it."
p. 264
But like [Fred] Rogers, we don't have to get over our self-criticism or magically clear our lives of pain before we, too, run full speed toward what's important to us. We don't have to make any changes at all before we choose to do what's meaningful. We might constantly compare ourselves to others, lug around an Inner Rulebook to rival War and Peace, and maintain a perfectly overlapping Venn diagram of self-worth and accomplishments, and we can still decide to focus on connection, like Fred Rogers, or our own equivalents, whatever they may be. As our old friend Dr. Michael Twohig summed it up, "A perfectionistic thought isn't necessarily good or bad; it's what you do with it."
p. 265
