One thing I know for sure about you, you have an inner voice that you are probably very familiar with. In fact, so familiar that you probably don't realize just how much impact and control this voice has in your world.
It's a voice that comes from your subconscious and is filled with your values, attitudes, and beliefs that you've picked up over the years from your family and friends, and it decides what is right and what is wrong.
What is good and what is bad.
What is acceptable, and what is unacceptable. What you should, or others should do, or should have done.
Tyranny Of Shoulds
In fact, American psychiatrist Karen Horney, she coined the term Tyranny Of Shoulds.
You may or may not resonate with these examples. But here are some of the rules that often float around in the back of people's minds:
Now, these aren't necessarily conscious thoughts or beliefs.
They are feelings that kind of just tick away in your subconscious. But often like a bomb waiting to explode unexpectedly.
I mean, is there someone that really ticks you off, but you're not sure why? It's probably because they're breaking one of the rules in your rule book.
The 2.00 Am Wake-Up Call
Have you ever wondered where that hectoring voice comes from?
Meet Your Judge Archetype
Well, it's the voice of your judge. The judge is one of a number of archetypes that if you're unaware of them, can create absolute havoc in your life.
Have you ever heard of archetypes?
Well, they're just simply a shortcut that we use to describe people and patterns of behavior.
Archetypes really help you to gain insight and clarity into why you act the way you do at times, and also gives you the tools to enable you to shift your thinking.
So rather than being trapped by the, "Why did I do that?" followed by a shrug of the shoulders, you'll be able to recognize when your actions are being driven by an archetypal pattern.
So , let me give you an example. Unfortunately, not a particularly flattering example of how the judge archetype played out in my life.
There's The Gate
Now, remember I mentioned in an earlier lesson that I was involved in the startup of a manufacturing facility and we had a vision for creating a workplace with a high performing culture, and I was one of the key leaders to take us from the vision to reality.
And as part of our high performing culture, we designed a very intensive selection process for the production team member roles.
The people that were going to work in the factory went through about 11 hours of selection activities, including doing presentations for us, aptitude tests, role plays, group discussions, interviews.
It was really, really intense. So these team members, once we hired them and when they joined us, were really excited about being part of the team and this culture.
I'd really, really sold them on the culture.
Now, we'd been operating for about four months with all the normal startup frustrations and hiccups. If you've ever been involved in a startup, It's chaos!
You're trying so hard to get your product out the door and you're oftentimes working 18, 19 hours days.
People are exhausted and if anything can go wrong, it will. Murphy's Law, well, it comes to play up a lot in startups.
Frustration begins to bubble
So on this particular day, the entire factory was involved in a meeting and I happened to be leading up a section of the meeting when people's frustration started to bubble over and they were venting and their frustration that promises that had been made during recruitment, but that hadn't yet happened.
You said this. You said that. It hasn't happened, blah blah blah and on and on it went.
And I'm standing in front of this group and to be fair, because I was the face of the selection process and I had made most of these promises to them in our various selection presentations, so for their anger to bubble towards me probably wasn't entirely unreasonable.
However, I was part of a bigger leadership team, so I certainly wasn't riding in this rodeo on my own!
I started to feel vulnerable
And so after several minutes of being poked at and me deflecting a lot of the criticism and the angst, I really started to feel attacked and I felt vulnerable and defensive, and I was also feeling really, really alone.
It felt like the rest of the leadership team was just leaving me hanging out to dry. And so on the inside, I was begging and pleading with my leadership team. Help me out, guys. Come on. Some of you stand up and gimme a hand.
But not one of them made a move.
So as I started to feel resentful. Then I got angry and my natural instinct, if you haven't already caught it, is always to fight.
So with a rush of blood to the head, what came out of my mouth is something that every great leader can learn from. So get your pens and pencils ready, folks.
If you don't like it here ...
I said,"Well, if you don't like it, there's the gate you can f**k off." Oh no!
I mean, I still cringe when I think of it. Me, the champion of this great culture.
In one small sentence I had undone all the good work we'd done and put doubt in the entire, um, in the minds of the entire team, that we were serious about creating a high performing culture.
And of course, the next thing I did was something every exceptional leader does. I burst into tears. I turned on my heel, and I bolted from the room.
Oh God. It was kind of like an Elvis moment, ladies and gentlemen. Shelley has left the room. It certainly wasn't a great leadership moment. It was actually bloody awful. And I was mortified at what I'd done.
And of course it created chaos in the workplace for a few days. The person that they had trusted and who'd said this workplace was going to be different from anything they'd ever worked in, had just pulled the rug out from under their feet.
That moment impacted my performance for years after
Now, even though the majority of my workmates got over it fairly quickly, they still poked me every now and then.
Two and a half years later, my inner judge was still punishing me for that moment.
My mortification and shame was just getting grooved deeper and deeper and deeper.
In fact, we're 25 odd years down the track, and I'm still pretty mortified by it.
I think you can probably tell. But at least now I don't beat myself up about it.
I couldn't present to groups
However, in that first couple of years when I didn't know about the judge archetype, whenever I needed to get up in front of a group to talk about high performance cultures, I'd feel a sinking feeling in my tummy, and I had a real sense of dread.
My voice would shake, my knees would wobble, and I'd be showing all kinds of nerves.
I'd be choking.
Me, the person who previously had had no trouble getting up in front of 500 odd people.
Now, at the time, I couldn't understand why. All I knew was that I couldn't get in front of people and tell a story of what we were doing.
Deeply ingrained stories
You see what had happened in the first few hours after the, "there's the gate" I deeply ingrained thoughts and judgments like.
If you're going to beat yourself up, you might as well do a really good job of it!
And so I remember very clearly waking up in a really cold sweat for many, many nights after that incident.
And because it was such a dramatic incident and at the time I didn't have the tools or the insights to negate those thoughts and feelings, they just wore, as I said, a deep groove into my subconscious.
And my judge just ran unchecked and unexamined.
Filling my subconscious, my inner world with unsupportive thoughts and feeling.
What I later came to understand was that I had no truth in my voice when I wanted to talk about high performance, simply because I'd allowed that judge to run unchecked.
So when I went to get in front of a group, there was a tape that kind of clicked on, again, not actual thoughts, but feelings that were like,
Remember what you did?
How can you talk about leadership?
What if this group finds out what you did?
You should keep control of your temper.
You should be more like put a name in there. Any of the guys I was working with at the time.
And it showed up in my body, stomach fluttering the nerves, the croaky voice.
Same raw emotional charge 2.5 years later
I was still feeling the raw emotional charge and energy as if it had happened two and a half minutes earlier rather than two and a half years previous.
And it was really sad because I didn't realize all those tapes were running in my subconscious.
You must learn how to turn down your Judge's volume
But by learning about the judge archetype, I was able to learn how to turn down the volume on my inner critic and to discover the real truth about who I am and who I could become and not let that one incident taint and put the brakes on the rest of my career.
Certainly, if I hadn't, we wouldn't be here together today. I would not have gone on and influenced many thousands of people in a positive way since then.
Unfortunately, we humans, we tend to have a bad habit of replaying our mistakes over, and over, and over.
Stop scolding - instead focus forward
So you must look at your mistakes, but rather than wasting energy, scolding yourself, your focus must be to learn from your mistakes and on what you're going to do differently next time.
You know when you put your hand on a hot stove, you only leave it there for a second or two before you pull it back. So when you screw things up, you need to learn the lesson, but take your finger off the stove.
Monitor what you say to yourself
So over the next few days, I want you to monitor what you say to yourself and others. And when you hear your inner judge being critical or negative, stop and reframe the words.
For example, if you hear yourself saying, I'm so stupid, stop and rethink that statement. Are you really stupid? Of course not.
Instead, tell yourself I'm a smart person. I may make mistakes from time to time, but I learn from these mistakes, which enhances my wealth of experience and wisdom.
So during the week, focus on being kinder to yourself and more uplifting to yourself. At the same time. Own it. When you make a mistake or a monumental screw like I did, own it fast.
Apologize to yourself and others and be willing to share your story like I've done with you today, but with no guilt or charge in it.
Instead, focus on what you're going to do differently next time around. I've got myself to a place where I can say, "Yeah, that was me, but now I'm focused on being a bold, cool, and inspiring leader."
The Judge is trying to protect you!
And the big takeaway here is that the judge is actually trying to protect you and stop you from being hurt. Hurt. From what? Well, rejection.
Numerous studies have shown that people's number one fear is public speaking. But what's that a fear of? Mm. Of course it's rejection.
It's the fear that people aren't going to find you good enough. And protecting you from rejection is what the judge holds as its very noble person and very dear to its heart.
Every single being at the inner core wants to be loved and accepted.
But unless you start by loving yourself, you certainly can't expect to be loved and approved of by others.
You must love, accept and forgive yourself before you can do the same for others
And the judge is all about helping you to learn about acceptance, forgiveness, and love for yourself. And then for others.
And that's why we started this module with a lesson on forgiveness.
You might have thought it was a bit weird.
There was a reason for it, and I hope you've already started using the meditation in that lesson, because forgiveness of yourself and others is the foundation to managing your judge. Because if you don't manage your judge, it costs you dearly and lowers your performance.
We've got more techniques on how to minimize the impact of the judge in upcoming lessons.
And now, while in this lesson, we've mainly focused on the judge archetype around yourself, in the next one, we're going to look at how the judge works when you're judging others and its impact or the significant power that it wields in your relationships.
It's time to do your reflection work. Go to the Take Action tab, complete your tasks, then move on to the next lesson
