Great Attitude, Thanks!!!

What happens when you stop believing everyone else’s opinion over your own

I just moved to a new home, from a home that I lived in for 17 years, and if you’ve moved recently you know that along with lightening your load by selling and donating things, you also take a walk down memory lane by looking through your myriad of stuff.

Now I’m unpacking, and among the things I decided to keep were the materials from the culinary school I graduated from in 2013.

Do I really want to keep this? Is this something that I’ll refer to in the future?

I came across my Culinary Showcase Participation Evaluation. At the end of the program, the entire cohort collaborated to put on a Culinary showcase for our families, friends, and instructors. It was a big deal - especially the collaboration piece, because there were some very challenging egos in our cohort. The evaluation was a combination of a numeric value (1-10) earned for each listed skill level (e.g., planning, participation, attendance, performance of assigned tasks, teamwork, safety & sanitation, time usage, professional appearance and behavior, clean-up, and overall attitude) along with a space for comments.

I want to share the comments that the Instructor, Chef Denis, wrote on my evaluation:

“Very eager, lots of good ideas, came well prepared.”
“Good hard worker!!!”
“Great attitude, thanks!!!”
“A delight to work with, takes direction well. Asks for advice and actually follows it.”

I got 10/10 on every category.

As I looked at this, as a Mom, partner, business owner, writer, teacher, and leader, it struck me - isn’t this the response we want in every endeavor that we take on?

What if we earned the opposite response?

“Didn’t seem to care, lacking creativity, often late.”
”Moved slowly, left things unfinished, and was found looking at her phone a lot.”
”Didn’t seem like she wanted to be there and acted like she already knew everything".
”I found her hard to work with, she was resistant to everything I asked of her, and when she asked questions, she would reject the answer and do it her way.”

I’m not putting this out there at all to brag about this evaluation from 13 years ago. When I look at this, I think Wow, these days I see so much of the opposite response - lack of accountability, disrespect, and arrogance have become so normalized.

I think we are living through a crisis of self-worth and self-love. How you show up in the world has a direct line to how you feel about yourself. This is what inspired me to share this.

It’s nice to get feedback from Chef Denis like this, and what is much more valuable is what feedback I would give myself. Just hear me out. Back then, I didn’t have a foundation of self-love, so getting external feedback like this was what I was seeking. If I didn’t get a stellar evaluation, if there was lower numbers and some negative feedback, I would have been sad about it, and I would have believed it. This is what I used to do: I would believe other people’s opinions about me over my own. Even if I was happy with my efforts, if someone else wasn’t, I would give their opinion more weight than my own. I would have started my culinary career with much less confidence than I did.

Now, that I do operate from a foundation of self-love, if someone else was giving me negative feedback, I wouldn’t automatically believe it. I have had enough experience lifting shame and uncovering lies to look back on things that people have said to me and understand that their comments and feedback were made through their lens that they see the world through. In some cases, the feedback was spoken to undermine my confidence. You know… the “Who do you think you are?” comments. Now, when someone gives me negative feedback or constructive criticism, I check in with myself and discern whether there is truth in what they’re saying. I sit with it for a day or two, then I decide whether I believe what they say, then I either throw it out or take it on.

Try this - take a moment and give yourself the exact feedback that I received on the evaluation.

Does it feel true? If not, what is the truth? Is your negative self-talk coming through - you know the voice that likes to put you down through lies that you’ve heard from others?

Can you be honest enough to admit the full truth? If the truth is in alignment with the opposite feedback, what would need to change?

What you’re doing here is de-centering what someone external says about you, and centering what you say about yourself. The feedback that you give yourself is your foundation. How you talk to yourself is how you train others to talk to you.

The more you can speak the truth to yourself and the more you trust your own opinion of yourself, the more your self-love and acceptance will grow.

This is not easy to do. Sometimes you need to be witnessed by safe people. Sometimes you need to practice with others. And sometimes you need permission to center your own opinion over everyone else’s.

This is why the 6-week, online series The Art of Putting Yourself First has been so successful. Women do exactly this, they discover things about themselves, get honest with themselves, identify the lies, learn new tools, practice, and connect with a safe, loving community of women.

The next 6-week series begins in October. Join myself and Jayne Says and discover what becomes possible when your worth is no longer dependent on someone else’s approval.