“I don’t feel intelligent enough.” 😞

I once had a coaching client who started off our call with this. Let’s call him Nakita.

Nakita was a senior leader in a global company who was able to calmly and logically tell me that he knows that he is an intelligent person.

However, whenever he gets feedback that implies that he is stupid for making a mistake, Nakita goes into an emotional spiral of shame, and inner mental self-flagellation (i.e., excessive criticism of himself). 😞😞😞

As we talked, it became clearer to both of us that the specific feedback that led to feelings of unworthiness about his intelligence only happened 1-2 times a year from a specific person.

This was an a-ha moment for Nakita to realize that he was letting himself be blindsided by something that only happened 1-2 times a year, and that actually for the past 9 years, he has been actively working hard on not letting negative feedback derail him.

“I’m now only letting in the really shitty ones, not all of them, and that’s PROGRESS.” ➡️

🤔 Have you felt this way before? Where you focused so much on what’s still wrong with you that you forgot to look at how far you’ve come?