Me First

Mistake #5Judgement

People will judge you, and often that judgement hurts. And, in my experience, as high achievers we tend to focus on the negative, or not-so-good, comments and not the amazing and oh-so-good comments. I used to be terrible at this. At a speaking engagement, if 99 people rated my talk as excellent and one person rated my talk as good, I would focus on that one person: Why was I only ‘good’? What did they not like? Where did I go wrong? Should I have …?

What a waste of time and energy. Why did I not celebrate the 99?

I wasn’t always like this. B.C. (Before Children) I was much more resilient, and much less inclined to worry about unfounded judgement (or let’s face it, even founded judgement). A.C. (After Children), however, I was consumed by this whole baby world where I felt completely out of my depth most of the time and my self-confidence took a dip. I found that I was dialling down the value I placed on my own voice and judgement, while dialling up my preparedness to let the voices of others undermine my decisions. And that permeated from baby world to the rest of my world.

Add to that the fact that everyone — and I mean everyone — has an opinion on how you should be mothering, and you, my friends, are on a hiding to nothing.

I remember one father expressing his surprise at my going back to work after I had my second son. He asked me what I was going to do with the kids (mind you, what was I going to do — not what was my husband going to do …) and I told ...