Your Own Worst Frenemy?

I recently read an article about self-sabotage in the Harvard Business Review. I find the topic interesting, because I believe that there are some very capable students who don't perform as well as they could academically because they hold themselves back.

In the article by Jay M. Jackman and Myra H. Strober, I learned that two causes of procrastination and self-sabotage (among others) are brooding and fear of review.

Wow! Brooding? That was a new one on me. But this made perfect sense. Brooding is another word for obsessing about something that you deem to be unfair or hurtful. This is interesting, because students from middle school to high school are constantly bombarded with situations that seem hurtful and unfair. It's an age of emotional turmoil.

But when we spend time worrying about the way people are treating us, we're not spending enough time on things that are good for us. The solution, according to the authors, is to keep a journal! this helps us to manage our emotions in a healthy way.

As for fear of review--this is another way of saying we don't concentrate our efforts on a task as much as we should because we're afraid of being criticized. I do have to admit, it is terrible to put all of our efforts into something and then get negative feedback.

But here's the interesting thing about feedback: we sometimes tend to hear only the negative stuff and we manage to shut out the positive stuff! Are you guilty of this?

The key to overcoming this one is to practice getting feedback and to concentrate on hearing the good along with the "constructive" stuff that stings.

Related: Reactance and Motivation.

View the original article here