EP 26: Tough on Yourself? That's Not Growth. (Trainer POV)

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Michelle:
Welcome back to WeCultivate: The Pod. Today we have a Trainer POV episode, and I started doing these at the beginning of this year because I wanted to showcase more of the patterns and themes. I've noticed working with clients again and again. Now, this is going to be the only episode I release this fall for trainer, POV, because there will be many coming in the spring, and since I've only allocated one slot for this, you better believe it is about a topic that is very, very, very important, and it is a theme that has come up again and again and again from every corner of the world, from every type of person. I have encountered this, and that's why we're going to talk about it today. Now, if you took a peek at the title, proudly, see that we are going to be talking about the difference between self-awareness and self-criticism, and at first glance, these can look very, very similar.

Both involve looking at yourself, your behaviors and actions and thoughts. Both are really closely tied to that sort of work of looking internally, but there is a huge difference, and not knowing how to make that distinction for yourself is actually one of the biggest blocks that I often encounter with new clients who are new to working with me. So let's settle in and discuss this for a bit. Take for example, a new client meets with me. We have our consultation, everything goes fine, we align on values, we do that sort of back and forth. Are we a good fit? Okay, yes. Great. We get started and within the first kind of few weeks of us working together, I'll notice at some point it's not with everyone, but for many people I will notice they will say something like, I can handle it. You can tell me exactly what I'm bad at.

You don't have to worry about hurting my feelings. Translation, I'm big, I'm strong. You can't hurt me… RAWR. Okay, I'm sorry. Sorry to infantalize. It's honestly a little bit of that, right? It's this energy of I'm so big and tough, you can't hurt me one bit. And I don't mean to mock it. It's not the intention, it's just to add a little bit of humor because sometimes when I've heard this again and again, and I've heard it from every type of person, no matter their background, I have seen it, I have heard it, and I need to dispel it. Every time I have been told this in a training session, my client thinks that they are telling me out of the interest of self-awareness and personal growth and not from the standpoint of self-criticism. And so I want to back up for a second because this can be very tricky if you don't know the context.

So I'm not saying that it's the words. I can of course tell you directly what you're doing wrong, why you need to improve in this area, and that is part of what I do as a trainer slash coach slash mentor, but I'm talking about the people who have confused the two, the people who think that focusing on weaknesses and weak spots without looking at strengths, natural or learned is the only way to growth and success. And so much like when you hear me say things like, languages don't fall in a vacuum. Humans don't live in a vacuum. Children don't live in a vacuum, adults don't live in a vacuum. Our personal growth doesn't happen in a vacuum either, especially one that orients itself towards weaknesses only. And this could sound very soft and sometimes it does. When I talk with clients and they tell me things like, because you're background and because you're a nice person and because you don't want to hurt my feelings, but the questions I always ask back are, are you sure I haven't already communicated these weaknesses or these growth areas?
Are you sure that this is really what you're asking for? Because most times what I notice is even if they're asking me for what they define as growth or straight talk is not actually that what they want is something akin to me, reprimanding them or telling them how much they suck. This is the balance and this is the expertise that I have personally grown in the time I've been doing this. How you communicate a message that is not only clear, but one that is deeply rooted in what that person actually needs. Many people mistake this. We're touching on this other topic here. Just because I'm a nice person doesn't mean I don't know how to communicate, especially in my capacity when I work with clients, I have to be responsible for the direction of their growth and learning. And that doesn't happen in isolation. It can't just be me, but it can't just be from them either.

And so I need to make sure that I have this very grounded and very assertive approach in how I communicate so that it's clear, not aggressive and not passive, but clear, grounded, assertive so that they understand what I'm saying. However, if they are missing that, missing that entirely and they're waiting for it to come in a certain packaging, they're waiting for it to come either as passive aggressiveness or aggression, maybe because that's what they received at school. Maybe that's because that's the work culture, then that's where I need to take a step back. That's where I say, Hey, did you see this document of all these different areas I already explained to you? Do you remember the conversations that we had addressing these specific areas? Do you remember that? We had a discussion about this, about why you need to focus on this one area?

Because another thing that clients struggle to understand sometimes is the difference between weakness and imperfection. These are all interwoven and it's far too complex to fit inside of an episode, but I want to just drive home this one point in the name of, I can take it in the name of I'm strong, I focus on my personal growth. I can handle the tough things they've pigeonholed themselves into only looking for information that comes in that particular packaging so that if it's not presented that way, they don't know how to use it, they don't know how to leverage it, they don't know how to integrate it. And that's my work. My work is to get them to understand that if you are just focusing on this one small part, whatever it may be, by the way, we're not even talking about whether or not it's a real weakness or not.
We're talking about the complexity of the adult brain and its ability to go and orient and twist things in a particular way so that it, oh, there's so much psychology behind it, but essentially I'm trying to understand why this person needs it like this. Why do you need it heard this way? Why do you need it represented in this way or presented to you in this way? And that's where I started asking myself a little bit more of this question, how does one recognize the difference between self-awareness and self-criticism? Especially if we consider the history of language teachers, language schools. I mean, language is one part of my work, but it's related to a kind of central piece. My clients are non-native English speakers and they did not grow up with English as any one of their circulating languages. And so there is this kind of element that comes from how they're choosing to filter information that I need to recalibrate before we go further.

So when I see this happen with a client, the first thing that I do is just pause. I mean, we cannot go forward if I cannot pause for a moment and examine what's actually happening. Imagine that we have a client who told me these things because they want to be corrected on their grammar because they want to know whether or not the tent that they're using is appropriate for the circumstance. And it's kind of the age old thing for so many language instructors that first of all, grammar is only one piece of the puzzle. Second of all, I can't know what you want to say. I can't tell you what tense is correct if you don't finish your sentence. And if you don't tell me what the intention is behind the sentence. And so it's so funny, we run into this a lot. If you've ever worked with students or learners only on language, you know that sometimes you will be asked, is it this or that is it?

I went or I had gone. And you're like, I don't know which one, because you have not finished your sentence. So I can't tell you what's going on in your head. I can't tell you what it is you actually want to say because you have to finish saying the thing for me to tell you whether or not that was appropriate. Also, sentences don't live in a vacuum. They don't live on their own. They fall in a larger context of conversation and the back and forth. And whether or not, I mean, even in writing, they fall inside a larger paragraph. And so to isolate a sentence, technically both are grammatically correct. I went to the store, I had gone to the store. When would you use one versus another? I can't tell you that if I don't know the larger details, that's when I'll hear, well, you don't have to worry.

You know enough about my work. Now you kind of get where I'm trying to go with this. You can do it, Michelle. You can tell me, give it to me straight. What is the answer? And it's like, oh my god. See, so much of the work that I do is actually about patterns, behavioral patterns, communication patterns, thought patterns. It's great for me. I love patterns, but it is tricky work to untangle and reconstruct and then build those habits that will be maintained later. And the difference between my work and somebody who's just going in that old school fashion, sit there and correct you and say, no, it's supposed to be like this. It's supposed to be like that. You suck because you mis conjugated everything or you suck because you drop the s. I am focused on real things. I'm focused because I know that when they go to work, their coworkers are not going to care about the fact that they dropped an S on shoes.

So they said shoe instead of shoes. Their coworkers are not going to fixate on that because the professional working environment does not have the time to spend on these kind of minute things. Are they worth looking at? Yes, when you have the time on your own, but the problem with a client who says, oh no, it's my imperfect grammar that's getting in the way, and you don't have to worry. You can just give it to me straight. You can tell me that it's my imperfect grammar. I know I suck creating that story right on their own. I always ask them to cite an instance of how that is their largest block. Is that what's keeping you from being promoted? Is that what's keeping you from being able to deliver a presentation effectively? Is that what's keeping you from weighing in when everybody raises their hand to contribute ideas in a meeting?

Is that what's keeping you from understanding your coworkers when they talk to you? And so we go through this exercise of deciding between us because it could be for anything. I am just low hanging fruit, so I'm using grammar as one of the most commonly seen and heard conceptual ideas that many non-native speakers will submit. And for that, it is very often not always, because if you are in an incredibly toxic work environment where they do go and nitpick and pinpoint and shame you like it's elementary or middle school, then yeah, that could be a reality. But most cases, I mean, it has been all the cases that I have worked in with my clients, it is not actually that if they genuinely take a step back and think about it, they go, oh, well, I can't really give a particular instance where someone shamed it, but I think they're thinking it.
Okay, let's test this for a second. Okay, you're saying it came from an email, you're saying it came from an interaction that you had in a meeting. Okay, let's look at the difference between grammatical perfection and your larger idea because larger ideas can be explained in a multitude of ways. Or let's look at the politics of your office. Is it just that these people have been working there longer or are you new to the team, or is it that they don't feel as close to you because they don't know you as well? Maybe that's why they ignored you. I work really hard not to reject immediately what they're saying. I just often want to make sure we put it in that isolated environment where we can examine the true impact of a variable, good or bad. Because when you attach unconscious assumptions to a variable without doing this first, without seriously thinking about it and saying, how much does it actually factor into my life?

Where have I seen it factor into my life, my work? How do I know whether or not this is actually happening? How can I gather this sort of information that tells me this? Because if it's about the politics of your team or the fact that your boss hates you or the fact that your coworkers are jealous of you, or the fact that somehow everyone is just thinking, it's weird that you're emailing things because you feel more comfortable with writing when in fact you should be speaking, then it's not actually about your grammar, is it? And yes, multiple things can be true at once, but my job is to ensure that I have this back and forth conversation, this communication with my client, so that what we decide to work on together is calibrated to their situation at hand, calibrated to what they need in real time, not just what they believe they need because it has historically been this as they were a student in school when they went through English classes, when they met with other tutors, and oftentimes the litmus test, I actually have two of them.
I ask the client whether or not other people make grammatical mistakes. So we're trying to figure out how necessary a condition this is. So have you seen other people make grammatical mistakes and succeed? Oh yeah, my coworker speaks horribly, speaks worse than I do. I can't believe that they got a promotion. Okay, so very interesting. So why do you think this is the main thing for you? Oh, huh. Well, okay, maybe it's not the main thing maybe. And so that moment is so key. Another thing that I do is I ask them to tell me what happens when they are perfect because they're not imperfect a hundred percent of the time. So show me an instance when you wrote an email or when you did something and it was just absolutely perfect. You knew that you had conjugated everything correctly. Your subject verb agreement was great.

You didn't forget your singular plural. Tell me an instance of this, and did it lead to success? Did it lead to the positive outcome that you wanted? Not always, right? Even if it did, does it every time? No, because emails don't happen in a vacuum because communication doesn't happen in a vacuum because you control how your boss and coworkers are going to be interpreting this information. All this has to be talked about in this very, very nuanced way because I am not saying that you can use whatever type of grammar and then the other person, it is expected to understand you. There is this kind of threshold that we need to establish, but providing for the fact that we are meeting that relative to this person's situation, providing for the fact that this is what they've been focusing on in the name of personal growth, that they can't even see the millions of other things that they should be working on.

Instead, for instance, intonation when they give a presentation, pausing to allow for questions to come instead of always rushing through knowing how to handle negative outcomes. So when they present a project proposal, how do they deal with the fact that people didn't like their idea? How do you work through that in a diplomatic and professional way so that you can maintain professional decorum so that you can have that sort of rapport still maintained inside of your team, the respect, the common mutual working respect that you need without people fully agreeing at the same time? Because that's the reality of the workplace, and that's stuff that I've lived myself irrespective of language. Things don't work in this mechanistic timeline based on programs and runtimes and execution marks. Things are chaotic and unpredictable and dynamic every single day, and there's 1 billion variables that you cannot see, but what you can see specific to you is often more than one thing.

And so if you can understand this, you can understand then that there is something very, very, not only wrong but incomplete, wrong, makes it sound like it's in a binary. It's not. It's just highly incomplete to be looking at one variable and giving it the weight of all your problems when in fact it's spread across all these different other pieces. That's also one of the biggest mistakes that I see language instructors making when they advise on language as if language doesn't happen in a larger environmental context. And so why am I talking about all of these examples as self-criticism? I kind of touched on it before. It's that sort of internal story aspect that is not objective because it is heavily biased by how you see yourself. And too often I see that people talk about self-awareness as though it's the opposite of self-criticism, so I suck is self-criticism and self-awareness is like, I'm great.

No, that is not what self-awareness is just no, no, no, no, no. Break that. Break that. Now, self-awareness is the skill of observing yourself to the greatest extent possible. Honestly. And honesty does not mean negativity harshness, and because we live in a world where people will be like, oh, I'm honest when I'm saying harsh things, that is a total hijacking of the word honest. It is very, very hard not to get philosophical when I talk about things like, but we cannot be objective as humans, but we can try. Okay, we can do as much as we can to try because we don't know it, but we bias ourselves all the time with things like, I've always been bad at this or I've never been good at this. We trap ourselves inside of this box that is essentially created from our own confirmation bias. We decide on something, we look for that thing and we're like, oh, look, it's there.

Here's the thing I looked for and therefore here's the thing I decided would be there and look, it's there, therefore it's there. That doesn't work that way. And so an exercise that I often put my clients through, I have a workshop basically on this when they first start working with me, I ask them to recognize the difference between taking an observer role and taking an evaluator role. The difference between observation and judgment, judgment to either good or bad. Because self-awareness is the skill of observing yourself, not only honestly, but without personal judgment. We are not talking about external judgment. We are not talking about how we will be perceived by others. We're talking about how you see yourself. This is a question I ask my clients a lot. Are you able to see yourself without personal bias? Are you able to see your knowledge, skills and abilities without your personal filter?

Without immediately saying, that must be that. That must be this. Are you able to step back? And a lot of people are uncomfortable. I get it because we live through life. We have an ego that's growing and we're trying to protect it. I understand, but can you try to take a step back and before you decide that in the interest of self-care and everything else that's going on with popular psychology, just take a moment and write on a piece of paper all the different skills that you have, all the different things you know how to do even if you don't do them well, and then decide the impact of those individual variables relative to your actual situation. Are you able to do that? And this is an exercise I do again with them. Are you able to take that step back and say, wow, if I wasn't me and if I was just a third party looking at all of this information that make up my professional repertoire, if I didn't think that I already sucked and therefore put it in the suck pile, and then decided that everything that I suck at is where I need to focus on for personal growth without even thinking about how I'll use my strengths without even thinking about how they can work together without even recognizing that there are things that are in my strengths pile that can help me while I'm still working on my weaknesses.

See, self-awareness is this exercise, this kind of stepping back, looking at the situation, pausing before you decide what happens next before you decide how you attach the details to that one point and self-criticism on the other hand is you take the one point and you just go, yeah, well, clearly that one point sucked because I suck and because I suck, everyone thinks I'm incompetent and because everyone thinks I'm incompetent and that's why I'm not getting promoted and that's why I need to work on more grammar for my promotion. Even though your grammar isn't even the main variable impacting your chances at a promotion. I don't know where it comes from, but I've seen it everywhere. This kind of practice of self condemnation and being overcorrected with No, I have to give myself grace and then this lip flopping that happens all the time. That gets so exhausting and I see it happen.

I understand it because gone through it too, but when I say build self-awareness, I am not talking about give yourself a pass or just let things go or just be chill. Many times you can't be chill. I mean, many times, even for me, I can't be chill because life happens and my sort of industry secret, the thing that if a future or past client hears this, they're going to be like, oh my God, I heard you say this before because this is kind of like how I get people to understand deeply truly the case I'm making. And by the way, that's exactly how this has to go because I have to reason with the person, I have to go through this argumentation, not arguing, but I have to go and break down the logic of it until we get to the heart of what's going on, and I say, strategically speaking, wouldn't you want to work on the things that are actually impacting your life instead of the things that you simply believe are impacting your life because you've carried them up until this point?
If what you want truly, truly what you want is a promotion, and what you want is your teammates respect, and what you want is to work for a company and do amazing product development or work in whatever area. Is that your genuinely true goal or is your goal to stay inside of this locked in story that started from years ago where you've invested all of this time and energy, which if given the situation, if it was actually the hurdle we would be working on, but in fact is not given everything that you've told me about your work environment, and I do something called a holistic intake, which I ask them many, many, many questions about what's going on inside, outside. I need the whole picture together. We work through what is actually there. We build that self-awareness, build that observer perspective before just jumping back into the same patterns that have essentially not been working right up until now.

And this is why it bothers me a lot when people think that my work is somehow about getting people to sound a certain way or getting people to speak perfectly or getting people to have the most eloquent, advanced, developed speech and presentation. When I say that I work with people on their presentation skills, people think that I am, I don't know, there's some image that goes in everyone's mind. And when I say things like, well, no, I work with the person to see what's natural to them, and then we try to use what's natural to them so they feel like they don't have to play a role all the time, they can kind of tweak what's already there over time. Of course they can develop that, but I want to give them a starting point. If you don't like presentations, how do I get you from going from zero public speaking to feeling comfortable in front of other people no matter the size of the crowd?

How do I train you for that without making you feel like you need to pretend to play a role? Because again, the amount of psychology behind this is just completely overlooked. Sometimes you'll hear people be like, no, but you have to play the role. Everyone plays a role. Yeah, people can play a role when they have enough practice in it and when it becomes natural, because I didn't start here. I didn't start being comfortable talking not only in front of the camera, but to strangers. I was an incredibly shy child. I was scared to speak, and I realized at some point when I was a teenager that I just had to go and do the little steps in between that made me feel comfortable that I could practice in my own ways. I didn't need to. My God, it was horrible to stand in front of the class and to give a presentation.

I was absolutely terrible at that because I was so scared. How do I go from there to this? I have a podcast. Not only that, but put me in front of anyone. I'm okay. How did that happen? It didn't happen overnight. It does not happen overnight. And the last thing that I would want to do is for one of my clients to feel like when they work with me, they have to turn into a totally different person because by the way, that is exhausting to do. Even if you can do it, the amount of energy it takes to maintain, especially in a language that is not your own, because this is hard enough in your native language, that is so entirely difficult. And so let's take it back to an example of self-awareness versus self-criticism. When someone realizes that they can kind of freeze time, look at a particular moment, examine it, take the whatever notes that they need, ask themselves certain questions, I often give reflection questions for this reason, and then track the pattern over time, they build a deeper understanding of not only who they are but who they behave as, how this changes when they talk to different people, how they can change it.

Because another thing that I say is, how can you work on something that you don't know? How can you go and address something that you don't have an understanding of or a relationship with? If you can't identify what other parts of you exist, how can you make the best decisions for your career and your life if you don't know how to use them all? It's like a toolbox. Skill sets, knowledge, abilities, these are all things that we put together in isolation. You might have varying degrees of skill level or comfort, but that doesn't mean that just because you're not as comfortable using a hammer doesn't mean that you can't achieve your goals with a combination of other tools or use the hammer every now and then. It's a toolbox where you get to decide over time as you sharpen certain tools, and as you continue to use others, you get to have more of this flexibility that just cannot exist when you stay hyper-focused on that one thing.

And self-awareness is not just a language skill. It's not just communication skill or an interpersonal skill. These are terms that need to be understood appropriately in order to truly understand how to build that relationship with yourself, those conversations, those things that allow you to make those strategic decisions. And again and again, I'll do this based on who needs whatever messaging, I will absolutely tailor how I present my case. Sometimes there are people who are trying to leave their countries trying to feed their families. They're trying to give their kids a better life. They're trying to maintain control over a particular section of the company. They're trying to not only get a promotion, but they're trying to literally jump and level up in their careers. When I talk to them in these very, very real ways and future clients of mine, if you're listening, you can do this work yourself and save us the time of going back and forth with this.
Think genuinely about what is in the real world, not in the imagined world. And that's why I look for real world examples, real life examples. Tell me if you really believe that these are the worst offenders, that it's about A, B, and C, that you have told yourself, those are the things that are holding you back. Where is the real world evidence of this? With some people, it happens when I say it once, so it's really great. We can move on faster. Some people it takes a little bit longer. Some people we need to go back and forth a couple of times for them to really, really get into it. But I've never had an instance where somebody has not been able to get to that deeper layer and say, oh, yeah, I actually didn't realize this, but this is kind of something I do all the time in life.

And wow, huh, I should probably stop. I should probably not do this anymore. I should probably think a little bit more about what you're saying. Yeah, actually, that's true. You're right. Kind of amazing. I feel like I was blinding myself. I have heard that a lot. I feel like I was getting in my own way. Yeah, you were literally creating this massive obstacle that wasn't there because you weren't giving yourself the space to see what is. And so dear listeners, as you hear me talk about all of these things, I want to ask you, and rather, I want you to ask yourself in your own life journey, be it for language communication, but for really anything, where are you cultivating self-awareness and where are you feeding self-criticism? Growth doesn't come only from punishment, it comes from having the skill to discern what is necessary. I recently started a community Instagram series.

It's happening every Friday, and it's called notice name and navigate precisely for this reason. It's my hope that as you listen to these episodes, as you follow me and what I write or what I have to say, you understand that so much of life is not self-reflection so that you can just hate on yourself. Maybe you can, but not 100% of the time. It's about learning how to hold that middle space. So noticing what happened, naming it, naming what the deeper patterns were, and deciding how you're going to navigate it in the future. So as I said, this is the only trainer POV episode. It's one of my core topics that I've been wanting to talk about, so I am so happy to have been able to share it with you all. Do let me know your thoughts about this episode, and I'll be back in the spring with case studies to go a little bit deeper into some of these patterns.
But until then, I hope this episode gave you a chance to step back a little, think about your own patterns, and ask yourself how you can shift from criticism to awareness.

Michelle (outro):

I hope you enjoy this episode of We Cultivate the Pod. Make sure to subscribe here and wherever you get your podcasts so you can catch new episodes as they become available. I also share after the mic reflections on Substack, the place where I dive into the themes that stay with me long after recording beginning in 2026. You can also find additional bonus content from guests and other, we cultivate extras. Subscribe for free to the communication shift on substack. The link is in the show notes and in this description, thank you so much for joining us this time, and I will see you in the next episode.