Mel Robbins explains why people get defensive when they mess up: they're trying to prove they're already good instead of learning. Treating kindness and parenting like fixed identities makes you anxious. They're skills you practice, not things you prove.
You can't learn from a mistake you're still defending. We get in a space of trying to prove ourselves rather than trying to improve ourselves.
Hold on, did you hear that? She said we get into a space where we try to prove ourselves instead of trying to improve ourselves.
Right.
Oh my gosh. I can think of a million examples where I got very defensive.
Me too.
Proving why this is too hard or why I couldn't follow through tonight or why—
Me too.
We get into a space of proving ourselves instead of trying to improve ourselves.
And by the way, Mel, the people we're trying to prove ourselves to are sometimes other people and defending, but sometimes it's ourselves. It's, why didn't I get that right? Why didn't I know how to do that? Why am I so bad at this? Why can't I be as good as so-and-so at it? Why isn't my life like other persons'?
How do you get out of that trap?
When I say I study the psychology of good people, it's a little bit of a gotcha because my work focuses on helping people let go of being good people, whatever that means to them. Going to the gym, being nice to neighbors, Whatever it is, that you need to let go of it in order to become better people. What does that mean? Because aren't we supposed to be good people? Of course we are. And the problem is, as soon as we decide we're a good person, we're trying to prove it instead of trying to improve towards it. And this game never ends. Life goes on day after day, throwing new challenges, new curveballs at us. Even if you thought you did it today, you crushed it today, tomorrow's a new day. And so getting in a space where we realize this is an ongoing process for ourself and for other people, we're not trying to prove we've already figured it out. We're trying to improve on an ongoing basis. We're not trying to see ourself as good people. Mm. Especially things that are kind of got some moral charge to it. Like, are you nice to your children? Are you a good parent? Like, those things have a lot of moral charge to them, and we feel like we should just know how to do it, and you should just know how to do it. That's not good enough. These are skills, and skills require practice and improvement. So good people things, we tend to view as like, it's a belief you should have. It's a value you should have. This, this is— how can you not know how to do that? How can you— why do you keep interrupting me? If you cared, you wouldn't interrupt me. That's like a, you should just know how to do it. Mm-hmm. Prove it to me. As opposed to you're trying to get better at it, and it's a skill that you're working on.
Oprah Winfrey: How to Find Your Unique Purpose, Authentic Power, and Calling in Life
