Be your own best friend: tools for dealing with fears and pressure to be perfect

To lead others, we must have a healthy relationship with ourselves

Sanyin Siang, executive director of Duke University’s Coach K Center on Leadership & Ethics (COLE) and CEO coach and advisor to Google Ventures, believes that we must have a healthy relationship with ourselves to lead others. She volunteers three insights that helped her through a very stressful moment in her life. “No one is immune to anxiety and sadness,” she reveals. “Last spring, I was feeling down and having some not-so-great thoughts. I talked to my husband, who is a doctor, about it and he said, ‘Sanyin, this has a lot to do with neurochemistry, so let’s help you.'”

“I went to a therapist who helped me process a lot of things, and we came up with one central thing, which was feeling unworthy. I was struggling with this idea of ​​being important, and I was so focused on my deficits that I overlooked my abilities.” This led to the realization that we need a much broader definition of value or importance: “I thought, ‘Oh, that’s related to my superpower.’ I realized that what makes us extraordinary to everyone else – our superpower – is also one of our biggest blind spots because we don’t value what comes easily to us. This extraordinaryness can lie not only in things related to achievement, but also in the ability to bring joy and be curious.” This epiphany led Siang to formulate five tips for cultivating self-esteem and being able to lead others better through improved self-esteem:

Step 1: Recognize that we are all valuable

“We are all valuable because we are all human,” says Siang. “We need others to help us see ourselves clearly, then we can help others see the extraordinary in themselves. Instead of asking, ‘What do I bring to the table?’ turn the tables and say, ‘I have something to contribute. Let’s find out what that is, and since we know others have something to contribute because they are human, let’s find out what that is.'”

Step 2: Invite others

Siang’s next tip is to invite others in. “You have to be with others to make the biggest difference, and joy is contagious. We all have blind spots when it comes to what makes us better, so invite others in – which in turn means we can be the person who helps others see how extraordinary they are. The best way to minimize imposter syndrome for yourself is to minimize it for others, so shout out their contributions.”

Step 3: Strive for improvement, not perfection

Another of her maxims is to strive for healing rather than perfection: “Instead of trying to protect ourselves from breaking, which is inevitable because life is messy and we’re human, we focus our energy on becoming a healer.” A better relationship with yourself, she says, can help us be even more compassionate in our interactions with our teammates: “When we help ourselves flourish, we help our teammates flourish. And if we want to become our best selves, the best thing we can do is surround ourselves with people who want to see us flourish.”

Step 4: Believe that you are enough

Siang also strongly recommends letting go of the need for perfection: “Often we need validation to prove to ourselves that we are good enough, but we never get it because it is never enough. Instead, you have to believe that you are good enough. You have to believe that your team is good enough, and your team has to believe that too.”

Step 5: Accept that you are not responsible for everything

Her final tip is to understand that we are not solely responsible for others because decisions are not always in our hands. “This is as true for our children as it is for our coworkers,” she says. “We can help them, guide them, nurture the environment and be there for them, but each person is responsible for the decisions in their life.”