024 | The Issue with Shaming Yourself for Mistakes

Do you ever shame yourself for mistakes? You’re not alone.

It’s common for lawyers especially, but in today’s episode, we get into why shaming ourselves is unproductive and often leads to undesired results.

Lightly edited transcript appears after the show notes.

Topics Discussed

• a recent mistake I made and how I handled it
• how shame shows up in legal practice and in money management
• why shaming ourselves is unproductive and leads to undesired results

Listen to the Episode

Resources mentioned

Lifestyle Freedom Starter Guide: https://www.rhothomas.com/start

Previous episodes that discussed how your thoughts create your feelings, which drive your actions, which drive your results:

Wealthyesque, Episode 2: https://www.rhothomas.com/one-thing-keeping-you-stuck

Wealthyesque, Episode 22: https://www.rhothomas.com/why-youre-struggling-to-pay-off-debt

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The Wealthyesque Community: https://www.rhothomas.com/community

Social media: @iamrhothomas on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn

Email: hello@rhothomas.com

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Lightly Edited Transcript

Hey friend. Welcome back to Wealthyesque.

I hope you are having an amazing Friday, and I am so glad that you’re here.

So today we are going to get into shaming ourselves, and that’s in our legal practice and also in managing our money. But before we jump in, I want to read you the five-star review of the week.

This one comes from S.Carlton, and it says, “Advice is simply put and motivational! Heard of this podcast through Redefining Wealth and came over to check out Rho. Love this podcast. Rho gets right to it. Always had a budget and student loan payments were part of it, but now I’ve come up with a plan to pay it off quickly, rather than just minimum payments. No more saying, ‘well they can pay their student loans off because….’ Just sit down with the numbers and figure out how I can do it so I did and it’s much closer than I thought.”

S.Carlton, I am so proud of you for taking steps to make a plan to get out of debt, and if you are a member of Patrice’s community then I know you’re good people, so welcome and thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate you taking the time to leave that review and let me know what you’re getting out of the show.

And if you haven’t done so yet please take a second and leave a review for the show. Those reviews help the show get more visibility, and they also inspire me to keep going because I love seeing what you’re getting out of the show and how it’s helping you and I would greatly appreciate it.

So getting into today’s topic, we are talking about self-shaming. And this happens a lot with lawyers. We tend to be perfectionists by nature, right, and we are trained not to make mistakes.

You get into your firm and you receive the message, whether implicitly or explicitly, that the time for making mistakes is your first year, or maybe your second year, but after that, it’s basically unacceptable.

And so we’ve got this strong drive to do things “the right way.” And we beat ourselves up when we make a mistake or we don’t make the right choice, or whatever, and I’m not exempt.

So I’ve got a story for you about a recent experience I had with this. As you know, my husband is a doctor, and we have two little ones, ages four and almost two.

I’ve been home with them by myself during the day because I’m not comfortable sending them back to daycare, like things are exactly the same as they were back in March, right, and our families are all working, and I’m not comfortable having a random stranger come to my house in a pandemic.

And so, I didn’t hit my hours this year at work, and I had my review recently, so of course that came up. And there were also comments making distinctions between the work I was doing pre COVID versus what I’ve been doing during the pandemic.

And I’m not gonna lie, I was triggered, mostly because I’ve had the same thoughts about my work, so it was like, “Yeah girl we agree, like, it’s not there.”

Where the shame and beating myself up came in is there are things I could have done to mitigate the situation. So, like, early on when we thought that we were going to be home for just a few weeks to flatten the curve—remember that? And now here we are, you know, eight almost nine months later.

But early on I decided to just keep it pushing, not make any changes, and limp along until we could get back into the office. As the pandemic stretched on, and it was clear that we weren’t going back to the office anytime soon, I didn’t change that decision and I could have.

And so now I’m sitting in this review and I’m hearing about it and I felt some kind of way. But after the review, I was shaming myself and I was wallowing, thinking about all the decisions I could have made before and all that.

And truth be told I was ready to quit, as my husband and a few friends can attest. I was like, “Alright, legal career, it’s been real. This is for the birds. I am over it.”

But here’s the thing. You know what I wasn’t doing when I was feeling all the shame and beating myself up and all that stuff? I wasn’t working, even at the level that I had been working in the pandemic, so I ended up with results worse than the ones that I was shaming myself for.

This was a good two days so it’s not like it stretched on for a super long time, but the point is the shame didn’t help the situation right?

I see this happen a lot with money, too. We decide we’re going to stick to a budget. Or we’re going to save X amount or whatever. Then if we fall off the wagon, then we shame ourselves and we wallow and beat ourselves up.

And even when we don’t make a specific goal for ourselves, we still shame ourselves for not being “responsible” with our money.

But then what happens? Then you’re feeling bad, and you either give up altogether, thinking, “What’s the point? It’s not going to make a difference” or whatever.

Or you try to make yourself feel better, which for many of us often leads to spending more money. So, buying things makes you feel good in the moment, and you want to feel better so then you go and buy things.

And we’ve talked before about how our thoughts create our feelings, which drive our actions, which drive our results, but guess what…we don’t have to think thoughts that make us feel shameful. And we definitely don’t have to accept or internalize comments from others that make us feel shameful.

So the personal finance industry is often centered on shaming people for not making the right decisions and all of that, and I’m not here for it. Like, I’m personally tired of hearing about avocado toast and lattes and all that stuff, and as I’ve told you before, like your $5 coffee is not moving the needle that much.

So, you blew through your budget, or you missed your hours, or you made some other mistake. Okay…and?

You made the choice that you felt was right in that moment, and it didn’t turn out the way you wanted, but you’re not defined by that mistake.

Rather than beating yourself up about the things that you could have done differently, what if you chose a different thought? It’s got to be something believable for you but that doesn’t lead to you feeling shame. That way you can take actions that move you to a different result going forward.

One thing that can help is creating a file of your accomplishments or awards or accolades, that kind of thing, that can help remind you of all the good things that you’ve done. That helps you to change those thoughts when you’ve got all of the negative things swirling around in there.

You might still beat yourself up first, but the goal is to choose a new thought more quickly each time. And I’ll admit it’s tough.

As I mentioned, I struggle with this myself. I was in a funk after my review. I didn’t quit by the way.

But once I stopped shaming myself for my past decisions, and I latched on to the thoughts that (1) I’m a good wife and a mother; (2) I’m a good lawyer; and (3) I made the decisions I thought were best under the circumstances, but I’m allowed to reevaluate and change them. Once I latched on to those thoughts, I was able to come up with a plan that I think will work going forward.

And once you stop shaming yourself, and change your thoughts, then I bet you’d be amazed at the things you can accomplish both in your practice and in your money.

And if you’re not sure how to let go of the shame and come up with a plan to help you move forward with your finances, I’m a coach, and I can help you. Head to rhothomas.com/coaching, and let’s set up a call to see if coaching might be right for you.

Okay, so let’s recap.

1. Lawyers tend to be perfectionist, and we also receive the message that mistakes won’t be tolerated. This leads to self-shaming and beating ourselves up when mistakes inevitably happen.

2. Shame is an unproductive feeling that often leads to inaction or to actions that produce more undesired results.

3. We can choose not to think thoughts that make us feel shameful. And we can choose not to internalize opinions from others that make us feel shameful.

4. Choosing different thoughts that don’t make us feel shameful ultimately leads to us taking actions to get to our desired results.

Okay, that’s it for this week’s episode. Join me over in the Facebook community, The Wealthyesque Community, and let’s talk more about shame and making mistakes. You can head to rhothomas.com/community to find it.

If you got value from today’s episode, just think of a friend or two who you think would also benefit and share it with them. You can also come connect with me over on social media. My handle is @iamrhothomas on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

As I mentioned at the beginning of the episode, if you would leave a review for the show, I would greatly appreciate it. Those reviews help to get the show more visibility, help people to find us and spread this message.

Okay, friend, I pray that you will think about all of the positive things that you have done in your life.

I pray that you will not allow yourself to fall into that pit of shame when you make a mistake and that you’ll realize that your mistakes don’t define you.

And as always, I pray that you will continue to take steps to regain control of your time, build wealth, and live the life of freedom and choice you deserve.

Talk to you later.