Feeling Personally Attacked – A Self-Handicapping Story

“Table 16.1, Items Indicating Self-Handicapping

  1. When I do something wrong, my first impulse is to blame circumstances” (Gruman, et. al., 2017) – Nah, I don’t do that. 
  2. “I tend to put things off until the last moment” (Gruman, et. al., 2017) – If it wasn’t for the last minute, nothing would ever get done! Am I right or am I right? Ha! 
  3. “I suppose I feel ‘under the weather’ more often than most people do” (Gruman, et. al., 2017) – Well, I have these barometric pressure headaches that can turn into migraines if I don’t get to my medicine in time, and I always seem to have a stomach ache from chronic stress, so… Okay, what’s number 4? 
  4. “I am easily distracted by noises or my own creative thoughts when I try to read” (Gruman, et. al., 2017) –  MICKEY, QUIT LICKING YOUR PAW! Do dogs think their paws smell like Fritos, too? 
  5. “I would do a lot better if I tried harder” (Gruman, et. al., 2017) – Yea, we all would! 
  6. “I sometimes enjoy being mildly ill for a day or two because it takes off the pressure” (Gruman, et. al., 2017) – Hey now, we’re getting a little personal here. 
  7. “Sometimes I get so depressed that even easy tasks become difficult” (Gruman, et. al., 2017) – Okay, now I’m totally feeling personally attacked! I need to go lie down.

As you can see, Table 16.1 from our text was rather emotional for me. I’m over here thinking that I am living a path of self-actualization. I am great at my job, I get really good grades, I’m active in my community, I’m as social as my introverted tendencies allow, I think I’m slaying it over here but I have a deep-dark secret. I’m not. Self handicapping is when we act in a way that undermines our future performance which gives us an excuse for our failures (Gruman, et. al., 2017). Us self-handicappers like to have an excuse ahead of time for us not doing very well, and it seems that my scapegoat is illness. This is painfully ironic because my discussion this week for this class was late because of a migraine. See what I mean by feeling personally attacked? 

For me, a vast majority of my personal handicapping is related to work. While I am really great at my job, I might not have time to call back important leads. I missed out on an important board of directors position because I didn’t email the chairman quick enough after meeting her. I get opportunities to work with people but use my busy-ness of work or getting sick as an excuse to not follow up on these great breaks. There have been many times that after a long morning of meetings, I have to go lie down for a few hours. There’s a possibility that I’m being too hard on myself, I did work through pneumonia earlier this year despite my doctor’s wishes but even though I did that, I still did not get a good review for that quarter. That alone may have triggered my self-handicapping to worsen. 

Honestly, I’ve been working on a presentation that I have to give in front of 300 people next week for about 2 weeks now. How many hours have I really spent staring at the PowerPoint slides? Probably 3 hours. When will I finish my presentation? Monday. When do I present it? Tuesday. However, I will knock it out of the park. I always do. Even though I spent a lot of time in bed this past week, resting and recuperating from all of the things that need my attention, I still managed to land a very important partner that my CEO has been trying to sign-up for years. Do I get an endorphin rush when I beat all of the odds against me? 

So what would happen if I actually got over my self-handicapping habits of procrastinating, succumbing to illness, getting easily distracted, not giving my best, being mildly ill to hide from responsibility, and getting depressed from everything that I need to accomplish? Two things are going to get crossed off my list of concerns: 1. I can’t really do anything about my illnesses, 2. I have been suffering with depression my whole life so this isn’t really something I can address after some Google searching. But what can I do about the other things? 

Back in 2012, Susan David wrote “Don’t Sabotage Yourself” in the Harvard Business Review which has been quoted in almost every article I could find about overcoming self-handicapping. Her first suggestion was to know our warning signs, like taking too many breaks throughout the day, distracting ourselves with loud music or alcohol, or making up excuses. She suggested that a mentor or colleague could steer us back onto course when we go astray. Her second suggestion was to use “what-ifs” and “if-onlys” to generate goals instead of excuses, meaning to make our self-handicapping into motivation. We should think of what could have gone better or identify obstacles that are within our control so we can learn from them. She gave the example of being bad at interviews, the self-handicapper could reach out to learn interview skills and practice with a mentor. Her third suggestion is to identify and manage negative emotions. If we notice we’re being negative about ourselves, we need to be kind to ourselves and acknowledge that we’re working through these struggles. Her final suggestion is to strive for mastery, where our inherent motivation kicks in and we automatically want to learn and grow. 

I’m hoping that this realization kicks my professional life into gear. I really need to stay on task during business hours, maybe I’ll use a timer to allow myself only 15 minutes of mindless wandering whenever I need a break. I’ll start making a goal of having correspondence days where I set aside 2 hours on two days a week to return important phone calls. Since I like to spend a lot of time on projects, I think I’ll try to set due dates for projects that are at least a week prior to when they are due. That will give me plenty of time to procrastinate. I’m grateful for this personal attack, because I didn’t even realize what I was doing to my career! 

Resources:

David, S. (2014, July 23). Don’t Sabotage Yourself. Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2012/05/dont-sabotage-yourself.

Gruman, J. A., Schneider, F. W., & Coutts, L. (2017). Applied social psychology: understanding and addressing social and practical problems. Los Angeles ; London ; New Dehli ; Singapore ; Washington DC ; Melbourne: SAGE.

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