Being Hard on Yourself - Part One

When the pressure to perform never shuts up, encouragement can sound like fluff. We go straight at that myth and make a case for fierce encouragement: a clear-eyed, grounded way to treat yourself that keeps you in the game without breaking your spirit. If you’ve ever felt capable on the outside and brutal on the inside, this conversation will feel like oxygen.

We start with a restless morning at the desk and the familiar pull toward perfection, then unpack why anxiety convinces us every decision is final. Instead of chasing more productivity hacks, we lean on iteration: try, get feedback, adjust. I share why self-contempt—not fear or guilt—is the real blocker to growth, and how respecting yourself mid-mistake creates flexible, sustainable change. We talk about the hidden tax of isolation, reframing strength as a nervous system practice, and the counterintuitive truth that asking for help is often the bravest, smartest move.

From there, we challenge a common escape hatch: blaming the job or the relationship when the real work is how we’re living inside it. You’ll hear practical cues to stay in the room when you want to run, and a simple prompt to identify the one truth you’ve been avoiding. Expect language you can use in the moment, reminders that most choices are reversible, and a humane approach that makes hard things doable. If you’re a high achiever juggling leadership, parenting, or creative work, you’ll find tools to untangle effort from fear and train discomfort without burning out.

If this resonates, hit play, share it with a friend who needs steady courage, and leave a quick review so more people can find the show. Subscribe for part two, where we’ll explore systems and ways of working that align with the projects that have your heart.

If you’re tired of doing this work alone, I offer a free conversation to help you get clear on your next steps. Apply Here when you’re ready.

Chapters

• 0:01 Defining Fierce Encouragement
• 0:49 High Performers And Hidden Self-Criticism
• 1:50 A Restless Morning And Perfection Pressure
• 2:52 Effort Tangled With Fear
• 4:20 Self-Contempt Blocks Change
• 5:11 Anxiety, Iteration, And Catastrophizing
• 6:10 Isolation Versus Real Strength
• 7:04 Living Inside Your Life Truthfully
• 8:18 Training Discomfort And Not Abandoning Yourself
• 10:12 Practical Next Steps And Invitation

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:01

Hey there, this is Mark, and this is Fierce Encouragement. It is a podcast where we show up in a brave and kind of a revolutionary way by encouraging ourselves and having a better self-image. So in our modern world, it's easy to get pulled into the emotions of being outraged and have this sense of urgency of always needing to push ahead and maybe even getting addicted to our performance. This idea of encouragement can sound really soft, but real encouragement isn't that coddling. It doesn't let you off the hook. Encouragement keeps you in the game without having to break yourself. So I work with a lot of capable people, leaders, parents, um, CEOs, professionals. These people are really, really good at managing their environment and the projects and the people around them. But quietly, they're really brutal with themselves. They're disciplined, they're smart, they're thoughtful, and yet there's this background heaviness, this feeling of I'm not who I say I want to be. That heaviness isn't laziness, in my estimation. It's more their anxiety mixed with a sense of deep shame. So to kind of start on a point here, and this kind of comes with a confession from my own work and the way I show up at work. I had one of those difficult mornings recently. Actually, it was probably a couple mornings in a row, and it was where I sat down to write and to unpack some thoughts, maybe you know, bring some ideas in. And I just had this energy and this heaviness and this self-critical nature just showing up in mass. It was saying something like, um, I don't even know what I'm doing here. And in my body, I felt a restlessness. My mind was present, but it just felt like it wanted to jump from idea to idea, or the distraction to distraction. Um my music was playing, uh, the ideas were kind of bouncing around the room, and underneath all of this was a quiet, like self-induced pressure to produce something that was amazing, something that mattered, something perfect. And that's when it kind of struck me and made me realize in my own humble moment that we always walk through this room of each day, if you can kind of imagine it as a room, we walk by just so many things that we have a chance to do good things or you know, follow through with good ideas every day. But we never slow down enough to number one, recognize them, and number two, to give them the energy that they desire. Maybe it's just pressing send on the email, right? And it's not because we don't care. I don't believe that. I don't think that we give ourselves things to miss on and then don't show up because we don't care about ourselves. I do think it is somewhere along the line in our habits and in the way we show up, we got that idea of effort tangled up or tied up with a sense of fear. I see those same things over and over in my life and also with clients that I'm helping take steps forward. And this kind of touches on that thought that we have why am I not changing? Why people don't change. We see those same things over and over. It feels like we're dealing with the same habits, and we have this deep sense of stuckness. So, number one, our negative emotion around that thing, around the story or the problem we have, it isn't the problem, but more about how we're treating ourselves while the feeling is present. So fear and shame and guilt, these really don't block or make our change impossible. The self-contempt does, the self-hatred or the loathing. Most people do not need more tactics or more systems. Instead, I think we need to give ourselves permission to whatever, miss a workout and still respect ourselves. We are really easy to forget, and I'm thinking of myself, and even this past week, that we forget that a lot of these decisions are reversible. So my anxiety will convince me that everything I'm doing is the final ultimate choice, and if it doesn't get done, it's catastrophic. But I'm not sure if that's something you've run into. How anxiety convinces us that we're fundamentally flawed in a sense. But almost everything is iterative. And I learned this as a project manager in IT land for many years. We try something, uh, we get that feedback from the customer or if if it was successful or not, and then we adjust and make another attempt or another iterative change. Don't listen in the anxiety. I guess that's what I say to myself. That's not me. Don't catastrophize everything. And then here's another good habit or problem for me is that sense of isolation when in fact we need to reach out and get some help, get some other minds in the room. We might think or berate ourselves like we should be able to do this alone. And if we can't, we're not strong. But really, that's not strength. That idea of having to lift every load by yourself, that's not strength. Instead, what if strength is a nervous system practice that brings you back to balance instead of overloading yourself? And of course, we want to overload ourselves to train our nervous system and get better. So why can't we see that when we want to isolate and go away? That's when we need help and contact and some support. And one last point in this that I kind of came out of it with is we avoid the truth or the one thing that we know is true, which we already know. Oftentimes people, and I've heard myself say this to my coach, but sometimes we wonder if the work is wrong, if the job is incorrect, if we'll, you know, ever have a good manager. Or maybe we think our relationship is screwed up and lost and is wrong. But sometimes the job isn't wrong. Sometimes the relationship isn't wrong. Instead it's the way we're living inside it. How are you living inside that thing you already know? And what is the one truth that you might be avoiding? Fierce encouragement really isn't about hype. It isn't. And I don't want to give that illusion It's not pretending everything is fine. It really isn't. Instead, fierce encouragement, encouraging ourselves, is that we can feel that anxiety or that stress and encourage ourselves to take one more honest, clean step towards what we really want. We can feel that imbalance or that uncertainty, and we can still stay in the damn room and not run from the difficulty or the troublemaker or the problem. It's encouragement, and dare I say fierce encouragement, that does not abandon us or abandon ourselves when things get uncomfortable. So you tell me you want to go do great things, Mark. Well, you better train in being uncomfortable more often. For me, it's about not abandoning myself. So I ask you, listener, where have you been abandoning yourself? Especially when things get stressful or uncomfortable. And what's one moment of fierce encouragement you could give yourself today? Maybe it's right before sleep. Maybe it's right after you stop listening to this. Remember a few things that have gone well. And remember that if we want to do new things, if we want to grow our business, if we want to challenge ourselves in our relationships and be that parent we want to be, or we want to get stronger in the weight room or in our races, it's encouragement that does not become a secondary thing. We need to be really comfortable, being uncomfortable, and start to fiercely encourage ourselves in that moment, especially when that heavy down negativity comes in, chanting to ourselves, this is what makes me stronger. I'm good at handling the pain or the uncomfortableness. If this podcast resonates and it's landing for you today, well, maybe don't fix anything today. If it feels too heavy, don't fix anything today. Just notice where you might uh be unnecessarily harsh on yourself. Maybe that's your assignment today. Notice where you're being unduly uh negative towards yourself. In the show notes, I've got a link for a free complimentary strategy call. There is zero pitch. This is just a place for you to slow down and to look at what actually matters. There's a couple of them going into the next few weeks. I would love to meet up with you and give you that support. Thank you for listening to Fierce Encouragement. Again, my name is Mark. Um, this is the first part of a two-parter that I kind of want to create where I want to talk about systems and kind of ways to manage work in the next episode. And it won't be just around productivity, hacks, and things like that, but more about ways of working with yourself on the projects that have your heart and those things that don't necessarily require that quote unquote motivation. So check out the next episode. But for today, I just wanted to say thank you for coming. I hope you enjoyed this. Write back, sign up, and most of all, be well and have a good day or a good evening wherever you're at. Okay, take care. Bye-bye.