Issue #48: Good News: It’s All in Your Head! Bad News: It’s All in Your Head…
Issue #48: Good News: It’s All in Your Head! Bad News: It’s All in Your Head…
The reason for why you're stuck, unable to influence your stakeholders, and keep butting heads with that one difficult colleague.
👋 Hola friends! Welcome to my newsletter where I write about enjoying a career in Product Management, becoming your favorite version of a Product Leader, building a Startup, and all the human mess in between.
In this issue, I’m sharing
It’s All In Your Head. Fortunately. Unfortunately. That’s Up to You.
5 Things That Can Help You ✨
How I can help you 🤝
01 It’s All In Your Head. Fortunately. Unfortunately. That’s Up to You.
I have good news and bad news.
The good news is: It’s all in your head.
The bad news is: It’s all in your head.
I’m not sure if you’ve noticed but the same techniques are being shared by coaches, therapists, and even Jedi masters these days:
Visualization - Guided imagery to visualize outcomes and mentally rehearse them. You’ve probably seen all the videos after the Olympics.
Affirmations - Positive statements in the present tense, about you to reinforce positive self-talk.
Intention Setting - Deciding consciously on your focus, responses, mindset, or how you want to behave in challenging moments.
These exercises help our brains understand what they need to focus on. Some people call it manifestation, some people call it quantum leaping - I just call them important.
Because when we do these exercises, we’re telling our brain:
What we want to have, we already have it
Who we want to be, we already are it
What’s most important to us, our actions support it
These can shift energies; that then influence behaviors or how we show up because we’ve already decided to embody our “ideal” self and scenario.
Our brains then start looking for evidence. Confirmation bias is discouraged when we build products, but it sure as hell is useful when it comes to building our careers! It will highlight situations that support the truth we want to hold on to. And even tell our bodies to create these situations ourselves to have evidence.
It may sound woo-woo but science backs it up!
So when we:
Imagine the worst-case scenarios - this is visualization too
Tell ourselves “I’m not ready” - this is affirmation too
Focus on “not getting into conflict with colleagues” - this is intention setting too
Except they’re all meant to bring us down because we’re telling our brains to anticipate things not working out.
The things we believe, we project that out to the world. The downside? The world will believe it too.
💡Why is it so hard?
Technically we’re already doing it. But how we’re doing it can have the opposite impact.
01 Very passive believing we have no agency. Things just happen to us. But to believe otherwise means accepting that we have more influence over what happens to us than we want to admit.
For example: When our stakeholders are always pushing back on our priorities and roadmap — is it because they’re just being difficult? Or can it also be because we haven’t taken the time to understand their motivations and concerns?
02 Protecting status quo. Our subconscious doesn’t like change and uncertainty. So anything that might require us to dive into something new, our subconscious will resist it.
For example: When we want to apply for new roles or take the next step, “not being ready” is a common reason for not taking action or for getting lost in the planning and over-analysis phase. We avoid opportunities, we tell people we’re not ready, and our behaviors reflect our not readiness.
03 Defaulting to how we were programmed growing up by our environment and our culture. How we grew up and were taught to behave has a lot of impact on our current behaviors. Some of them are good while some of them can be stifling.
For example: If you grew up with conservative Asian sensibilities, like I did, you probably grew up with the belief that authorities are to be respected and never to be challenged. And this can have a huge impact on our relationships with our managers and leadership.
💡What can we do?
If we want to get positive outcomes, we need to shift our narrative to something more solution-oriented and focused on the things that we can control.
It can be hard at first. Because it requires work.
To be aware of our thoughts and our feelings - so we can understand what triggers our behaviors
To detach our responses from our feelings - we don’t always have to act on our tendencies. We can always choose how to respond.
To decide what our responses will be - and this requires knowing what our ideal scenario and ideal self look like so we can align our behaviors with that.
As well as practice.
It’s like wanting to be strong and fit. Just to get out of bed and into the mat needs more than motivation. It needs a routine. And that routine constantly needs decision and discipline. Especially to get you through the days when you just don’t want to move.
The practice itself can be painful and uncomfortable. We’re creating micro-tears in our current state so they can repair themselves into something stronger later on.
“If you get the inside right, the outside will fall into place.
Primary reality is within; secondary reality without.”
Eckhart Tolle
💡How does it work in real life?
Right! Practical applications to bring it back into our Product Management careers.
Visualization
When it comes to finding a new job, visualization invites us to imagine what our ideal opportunity looks like.
What kind of products are we working on
What kind of people do we want to work with
How do we feel every day in the different situations we find ourselves in
When we do this, we’re getting clear on our goals, our priorities, and our preferences.
We get clear on our vision. Which can lead to:
Becoming more selective about the roles we apply for. Removing the ones that don’t fit our vision.
We normalize for our brains this new scenario. Which can remove the anxiety from the uncertainty. This can help make us feel more confident about our ability to take action.
And it impacts our energy and presence. We get excited. And this excitement can influence the way we craft our career narrative. Make us seek out new ways to find opportunities that are aligned with our vision.
Getting clear in our mind what our ideal scenario is priming our brains into taking the needed steps to make this into reality. Because it already believes it is.
Affirmations
When it comes to the day-to-day challenges we experience as Product people, our affirmations shape our mindset and reinforce new ideas and beliefs that we want to have in order to enable our vision to become a reality.
“I communicate complex ideas clearly and with energy”
An affirmation that can result in more effective and engaging presentations. But also an affirmation that can encourage us to prepare more, tailor our language to the audience, and maybe even find a presentation style that makes us shine.
“I am calm in the face of uncertainty and challenges”
An affirmation that can result in stoicism. Helping us focus on the things that are within our control, define and protect our boundaries, and reflect before responding to any situation (vs reacting).
Intention Setting
An example would be working with difficult people. People who are so draining to work with that it makes us dread every single interaction with them.
“I intend to foster positive, collaborative relationships with my cross-functional peers by approaching conflicts with empathy, clear communication, and a focus on shared goals.”
A single intention that can influence our behavior in multiple ways:
Employ active listening and ask questions that come from genuine curiosity to uncover their motivations and perspectives
Prepare for discussions with them with clear goals as well as talking points that can help us stay on topic vs getting caught up in emotions and being reactive
Align on what truly matters. “Do you want to be right or do you want to do the right thing?” is a question I ask myself when I’m in a heated argument with a colleague or when I find myself engaging in a conversation just because I want to take somebody a notch down or two.
Setting intentions reinforces the new mindset we carry. It’s deciding consciously which behaviors we must practice to be truly aligned with our vision.
The things we believe, we project that out to the world. The upside? The world will believe it too.
💡Is it effective?
Athletes do it all the time.
I moved to Barcelona 9 years ago with a lot of things stacked up against me. But I had a clear vision that I wanted to work in Europe (visualization) and I was convinced that the sun shone out of my ass (affirmations) and so I prioritized and made intentional decisions.
On the flipside, a year ago I applied for a Product Director role. I applied because the multiple waves of organizational changes made me afraid of how it could impact me. (visualization) While it aligned with some of my ambitions, a lot of the context that the role revolved in, conflicted with everything else that was important for me (non-affirmation). In the end, I had zero energy and preparation going through the process, and the feedback I got afterward reflected that.
One of my coaching clients created a role for herself in her target organization. She had a clear image of where she wanted to work, what she wanted to do, who she wanted to work with, and what kind of impact she wanted to have (visualization). The problem was the role didn’t exist. But she was convinced of what she wanted to do and who she wanted to be (affirmations). The work we did was to match her behaviors, decisions, and actions with these beliefs to find a strategy that brought her results (intentions).
And on the flip side, another client when we first started working together was feeling stuck. She didn’t know what her next steps could be and she wasn’t clear on her vision (non-visualization). To add to this, she didn’t have confidence in what value she was bringing to the table so much so that she had trouble articulating it (non-affirmation). All these were impacting how she was showing up at work and why she was getting bypassed for promotions. After our work together, she found a role in one of her dream companies.
Some people say it’s luck. Some people call it manifesting. I call it important.
If we don’t draw for ourselves an image for our ideal scenario, if we don’t believe that we deserve it and can have it - the perfect opportunity could be handed to us on a silver platter and we still won’t recognize it. Much less take it.
💡The Moral of The Story
The way I see it, we’re given so much power to shape our reality any way we want to. And we’re only required to do 3 things:
Use our imagination
Believe in ourselves and in our capabilities
Decide proactively on what’s important and on the actions we need to take
Yes, it’s all in our head. At least it starts there.
And we can choose what we put in our heads.
The question is which one will you choose?
02 5 Things That Can Help You
The Art of Intentional Decision Making by Rishma Walji at TEDxCaledon
- : Nine surprising secrets to unlock your full potential in everyday life
“What have we already tried?” is the most powerful product question you can ask by Pavel Samsonov
For the new and aspiring PMs looking to solidify your Product Management fundamentals, I created a course with AllWomen.Tech that might help you. (The discount code INSTRUCTOR50 gets you 50€ off)
Sometimes our self-limiting beliefs can be so deeply ingrained and replacing them with new ones can feel impossible. Magical Audios’s How to Use Self-Hypnosis to Become Unstoppable can help you. (The discount code AWAKEN15 gets you 15% OFF)
👩🏻💻 Hi I’m Kax! And I offer support through 1:1 coaching. I typically work with experienced Product Managers and aspiring Product Leaders to help them address their challenges with influencing stakeholders, motivating their teams or direct reports, and managing the overwhelm of their day-to-day. My goal is to help them achieve their product and career goals while still enjoying their work and without compromising their well-being.
If you’re interested, you can learn more about working with me.
And If you reached the end of this issue, I’d love to read your thoughts, feelings, and violent reactions in the comments. 🫶
💙
Kax