The Power of Having Your Own Back

A common theme among high performers—ourselves included—is a drive to keep pushing for progress. You never want to become complacent. You always want to ask yourself, "What can I do better?" This mentality is core to a growth mindset; it lies at the heart of greatness, excellence, and mastery.

However, while you are pushing yourself and finding weaknesses to improve, it’s crucial to learn to be kind to yourself, too. Otherwise, you risk becoming bitter, angry, and resentful.

Brad was recently providing counsel to a highly skilled and sought-after surgeon. This person (let’s call him Dave) was being exacting and hard on himself. It was, of course, a learned behavior. His unrelenting intensity and unforgiving accountability helped him to become one of the best. And in this current moment, much of what he was saying was accurate and true. He was falling short in certain areas. There were things he could improve upon (there always are). And yet, what Dave was completely overlooking is how truly excellent he already was. The surgical cases he focuses on are long and exhausting. Navigating his career, family, and friendships is hard. Holding himself to such a high standard is hard.

It took Brad pointing this out to Dave multiple times for him to realize he could accept himself as he was—and even be proud of himself—while at the same time striving to improve. These two attitudes don’t need to be opposites. It was a huge unlock for him; not just hearing it, but coming to truly believe and embody it. Not only did he feel better, but he started to perform better, too.

So much performance and personal development content gravitates toward extremes: On one end, you’ve got the drill sergeants, hard ass, get your shit together I’m going to break you down messaging. On the other hand, you’ve got the let’s all hold hands and sing Kumbaya, life is hard, it’s not your fault, the systems and structures are stacked against you.

But this is a gross oversimplification, a reductionist view of the mindsets actually required for excellence.

Regardless of what you do, if you want to get the best out of yourself and live a full and meaningful life, there is no avoiding confronting the limits of your personal responsibility and acting with agency. Study after study shows the power of self-efficacy. “Over the last 34 years, educational researchers from diverse fields of inquiry have used the notion of self-efficacy to predict and explain a wide range of human functioning, from athletic skill to academic achievement,” write the authors of a 2012 ​review​.

And yet, if you are always beating yourself up or judging yourself, you are not going to last long. If you constantly compare yourself to people in completely different situations from yours, you are never going to accurately appraise your progress.

Consider the popular personal development aphorism we’ve all got the same 24 hours in the day. This is bullshit. Some people have kids to take care of, others don’t. Some people have cancer, others don’t. Some people live in poverty, other people have multi-million dollar trust funds to back them up. Sure, there are 24 hours in the day, but there are also very real constraints on what someone can do in those hours.

The 24 hours in the day thing is obviously true across the population, but it’s also true within ourselves. All of us will experience seasons of life that are less chaotic than others. All of us will undergo injury, illness, and loss. Nobody escapes unscathed.

It’s not meant to be a cop out. We shouldn’t sit around and feel sorry for ourselves. We should acknowledge the difficulties and challenges that each one of us will face while doing everything in our power to take agency and improve.

It’s not either-or. It’s both-and.

Trying to get the most out of yourself, show up consistently, and be excellent is hard under even the best circumstances. So many people go through the motions. So many people blame others for their problems. So many people are okay with mediocrity. Stepping into the arena, making yourself vulnerable, risking failure, trying to achieve your own personal greatness—this stuff is hard! Doing hard things becomes a bit more sustainable when you learn to have your own back.

It doesn’t mean brushing off accountability or responsibility. It simply means acknowledging that being a good person and striving for excellence is not the default path, let alone the easy one. As you walk that path and do everything under the sun to improve, there is room and need for self-kindness, too.

There is no conflict between being a badass and having your own back. If anything, the latter helps to support the former.

Brad and Steve