Escape the Performance Trap

SUMMARY

Are you totally okay with who you are, or are you constantly concerned about what other people think of you and therefore you change who you are to try and please them?

Hi, this is Grant Herbert, Emotional Intelligence Speaker and Trainer of the Year and Master Coach Trainer, and today, I want to continue our conversation around all things Emotional Intelligence in the competency of Personal Power by helping you to escape the Performance Trap.

What I want to do in this short video is just unpack with you three things, to help you to escape the Performance Trap. Just imagine being able to get up every single day, be who you truly were and perform without all this anxiety and all this stress. It's a tough gig trying to please everyone. So, I'm going to show you what to do instead.

Number one is to identify the root beliefs.

The second thing to do is to shift your identity.

The third one is to perform from a position of self-approval.

As I said last week, I believe what the world needs is for every one of us to operate as who we were created to be, and then putting those individual people together, we create the world that we want. So, is it time for you to draw a line in the sand and go, “You know what? I am going to escape this Performance Trap. Instead of being a people-pleaser, I'm going to start pleasing myself, and that will be enough. That will then help me to behave in a way that everybody wins.” Well, that's it for me for another week. Join me again next week when we continue this conversation around Personal Power by helping you to set healthy boundaries. If you got something out of this at all, then hit the like button, share it with your friends, subscribe, leave a review, whatever it is. Whether you're on my blog, the YouTube channel, or in the podcast, it really, really helps me to get the message out to more people. Have an amazing week. You deserve it.

TRANSCRIPT

Are you totally okay with who you are, or are you constantly concerned about what other people think of you and therefore you change who you are to try and please them?

Stick with me because this week, I'm going to help you to reverse that process so that you can operate out of self-approval.

Hi, this is Grant Herbert, Emotional Intelligence Speaker and Trainer of the Year and Master Coach Trainer, and today, I want to continue our conversation around all things Emotional Intelligence in the competency of Personal Power by helping you to escape the Performance Trap.

For way too many years in my life, I worried about what other people thought of me. I wanted people to like me and therefore I did whatever I thought I needed to do. I became who I thought I needed to be so that they would. I was a people-pleaser. This caused me to give up who I really was and to wear a mask and perform in certain ways that I thought were going to get the result that I wanted. The problem was that it actually stripped away who I really was, and I wasn't able to give to everybody who I was created to be. And it was counterintuitive because whilst I was trying to please others, I wasn't pleasing anybody. This is a common challenge that I see with the people that I work with all around the world, and I call it the Performance Trap.

Every single day, you and I get up and we perform. I'm performing right now. As I stand in front of this camera, and I do this video for my blog and for my podcast, I'm performing as a speaker, as a trainer, as a coach. I like to look at it as it's one of the hats that I wear. Now, the performance isn't the problem. There's nothing wrong with being who we need to be in a particular moment so that we can get the result that we want, so that we can do what it is that we need to do. The challenge comes when we do it for an unhealthy reason, and that my friends is where the Performance Trap comes in.

So, we perform, and as I said, that's okay so long as the motive is healthy. And when the motive is to get the approval of someone else, this is where we come into problem. This is where who we really are changes because we're doing that performance for a reason that's not healthy. And here's the thing: I'm sure, just like me, that you've done your best at something and there was at least one person that didn't think it was good enough and that was probably you. So, the challenge with performing to get the approval of others is that it doesn't always work.

This is where the problem really comes in because when we perform to get the approval, when we get the approval, that's great. When we don't, it erodes our identity. It makes us feel certain things about ourselves and label ourselves in certain ways. A performance is something that I do. My identity is who I believe I am. And then operating out of that identity, my performance going forward is no better and therefore, once again, it's counterintuitive because I'm not going to be who I feel I need to be to get the results that I want, and that is getting that approval. So, what I want to do in this short video is just unpack with you three things, to help you to escape the Performance Trap. Just imagine being able to get up every single day, be who you truly were and perform without all this anxiety and all this stress. It's a tough gig trying to please everyone. So, I'm going to show you what to do instead.

Number one is to identify the root beliefs. Everything that we do comes from a belief, a meaning that we've put on something. For me when I was 15, I found out something that had happened in my childhood that I gave a certain meaning that I was not lovable. Therefore, everything that I did came out of that belief. It is what created the problem for me of wanting to please everyone, because I've thought if I try ever so hard, if I do these things that I am getting asked to do, if I pretend to be who I am in this certain situation, then people might like me. Perhaps I won't get rejected anymore and I will be loved. So, by identifying that root belief, I can isolate the reason behind the Performance Trap. So, what is it for you? What are you believing about yourself that is creating this thinking pattern and therefore this behaviour of wanting to be a people-pleaser?

The second area is to shift your identity. As I said, we perform to get approval and that then erodes or builds up our identity depending on whether we get it or not. So, what you need to do right now is start working on your identity, start shifting what it is that you believe about yourself. Those ‘I am’ statements, challenge them, work on them, build up your Personal Power, and then you decide who it is that you are.

The third thing to do then, now that we have understood the beliefs that are holding us back, we've shifted our identity by flipping those beliefs, by working on our Personal Power, the key now to escape the Performance Trap is to perform from a position of self-approval. So instead of performing to get approval, what we're doing now is we're saying, “I'm okay with who I am. I'm still a work in progress, but I'm performing to be who I was created to be. I'm performing to get the results that I want.” Now, it may sound like semantics where we're just adding a word, but let me tell you, when we work on the identity and we get to a position of self-approval, and then we perform out of that position of self-approval, the whole world changes. We now have much more energy throughout a day. We reduce that conflict and that stress, and we flow in our natural gifts and talents, and everybody wins because we give the best version of ourselves.

As I said last week, I believe what the world needs is for every one of us to operate as who we were created to be, and then putting those individual people together, we create the world that we want. So, is it time for you to draw a line in the sand and go, “You know what? I am going to escape this Performance Trap. Instead of being a people-pleaser, I'm going to start pleasing myself, and that will be enough. That will then help me to behave in a way that everybody wins.” Well, that's it for me for another week. Join me again next week when we continue this conversation around Personal Power by helping you to set healthy boundaries. If you got something out of this at all, then hit the like button, share it with your friends, subscribe, leave a review, whatever it is. Whether you're on my blog, the YouTube channel, or in the podcast, it really, really helps me to get the message out to more people. Have an amazing week. You deserve it.