This post is from Dr Vikki Burns, an ex-Professor and certified life coach. She runs The PhD Life Coach coaching, workshops, and podcast, as well as the UoB online group coaching programme. Here, she explores the importance of the way we speak to ourselves.
As a PGR, we have supervisors and other people around to support us, but a lot of the time we are managing ourselves. We decide when we start and finish work, what we do each day, and what our expectations of ourselves are. We’re also the voice that we hear most often. What is that voice saying? What type of supervisor do you want to be for yourself?
We’re going to start by thinking about what type of supervisor you are at the moment. I coach PGRs all the time and see patterns in how you speak to yourselves and how you treat yourselves.
How many of these resonate with you?
- You have very high expectations for yourself, and beat yourself up when you don’t achieve them quickly and easily.
- You set unrealistic goals and give yourself unclear instructions.
- You tell yourself that you are not good enough to be here, and someone is to going to figure that out.
- You tell yourself you have to do all the things, they’re all important, and that you don’t have time to get them done.
Do those things feel familiar to you? Are these ways you speak to yourself? I bet they are. It’s true of an awful lot of PGRs (and academics!). But I want you to pause for a second and think: would you accept that from a supervisor?
If you had a supervisor that gave you vague instructions, told you that everything was important and there was no way you could get it done, and you weren’t really good enough anyway, you wouldn’t put up with it. Or if you did put up with it, you would see that that person was making your life more difficult and you would wish they were another way. So, let’s stop doing this to ourselves.
You can start by thinking about your dream supervisor. Get a really clear picture of what qualities they have and how they speak to you. Compare that to how you speak to yourself.
I want you to pick out three qualities that your dream supervisor has, the qualities that you need most right now. Is your dream supervisor more compassionate or reassuring? More ambitious? Has more faith in you? Maybe they’re more structured and help you set goals and work out action plans.
Now let’s think about how we can nurture these qualities in ourselves. How can you try and be that boss for yourself? Can you set aside time where that boss plans a little bit for you? Can you write down thoughts that you want to try and keep at the front of your mind while you are working this week?
Remember, it’s not easy to change the way you speak to yourself. We’ve been talking to ourselves our whole lives, and absorbing loads of messages from our environment and from society that aren’t necessarily helpful. So this week I want you to notice when you speak to yourself in ways that you wouldn’t accept from a boss. Notice with compassion, and then consider swapping in the dream supervisor’s voice, the one who’s going to be the exactly the supervisor you need.
Don’t worry if you find this difficult – just notice and persist. Even just pondering the idea that you ARE your own supervisor is a useful reflection. This is going to be a lifelong process. We are going to be supervising ourselves every day on this earth. Let’s start making ourselves the very best supervisor that we can be.
UoB PGR Development 