4.05 How to send that scary email

Today I’m sharing a real life coaching experience we had in the membership this week. One of the members came to an online coaching session because she had a “scary” email to send and she realised she’d been procrastinating for what felt to her like ages. You have likely experienced this too! The trouble is, when it feels scary, we often end up overthinking it, making it more complicated than it needs to be, and/or putting off actually sending the email for a long time. In this episode, I take you through the process I took my member through to go from “I’m too scared” to “let’s get this done”.

If you found this episode useful, you might like this client Q&A episode, where I discuss post-deadline slumps, uncommunicate supervisors, and judging your own work.

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I'm Dr Vikki Wright, ex-Professor and certified life coach and I help everyone from PhD students to full Professors to get a bit less overwhelmed and thrive in academia. Please make sure you subscribe, and I would love it if you could find time to rate, review and tell your friends! You can send them this universal link that will work whatever the podcast app they use. http://pod.link/1650551306?i=1000695434464

I also host a free online community for academics at every level. You can sign up on my website, The PhD Life Coach. com - you'll receive regular emails with helpful tips and access to free online group coaching every single month! Come join and get the support you need.

Transcript

[00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach Podcast. Now, this is not the episode that I'd planned to record for today, but I had such a good coaching session yesterday on a topic that just super resonated with everybody in the room that I decided to turn it into an episode and give you guys a sneaky peek inside what happens within the membership. So in the PhD Life Coach membership, I have students that have joined the membership to get the support they need so that they can enjoy their PhDs and get. The stuff done, you know, achieve the goals that they want to achieve. And we have these online group coaching calls. So you dial into a webinar, you can't see yourself, you can only see my big face.

And then if you've got particular challenges, you can either ask them in the chat or more often and you raise your little zoom hand and come on. And so you appear next to me as if by magic. And we have what feels like a one-to-one coaching conversation while everybody else gets to see sort of your [00:01:00] thoughts coming out and the realizations that we have.

Okay. And it's a wonderful learning experience because you get that one-to-one support, but also watching other people getting coached makes you realize that other people worry about the stuff that you worry about too. And it helps you see all the different options that are available.

Anyway, I'm sharing this one with permission, but anonymously. So one of my regulars, she's been in for two quarters now, so she's been with me about five months at this stage came because she'd been putting off writing an email to her supervisor. She's at the tail end of her PhD. She's feeling like she's not quite as far ahead as she would like to be, and she hasn't been in that much contact with her supervisors for the last couple of months and feels like she really needs to update them. So that's sort of where we were at.

And she came on and she was telling me that she was very scared about sending this email, that she'd been procrastinating it for [00:02:00] ages. She'd sort of written it and rewritten it. She'd avoided it, she'd ruminated on it. She'd done all the stuff that is so normal when we've got something that we kind of think we have to do, but that we're also really scared of actually doing. And as soon as she said this, everybody in the chat, 'cause the people watching are able to drop in the chat, right? Everyone in the chat was like, oh my God, this was me last Friday. Oh my goodness, this happens to me all the time too. And so people were really, really empathizing with it. And I also got quite a bit of grief and I got my chat over here 'cause I record the chat. I got quite a bit of people laughing with me, because I used some fun and analogies to make my point as we were going through the coaching.

So some of you'll know I'm a big fan of using analogies to kind of understand complex ideas and particularly analogies that relate to things that are either [00:03:00] relevant to me and my life or relevant to the clients that I'm working with. And one of my other regulars commented in the chat, I live for Vikki's Circus analogies, so I thought why not? If this was such a common topic, it was something that everyone was really resonating with, that really helped the client. And where people seem to enjoy the randomness of the analogies, why not also share it on a podcast? So that is what we're gonna think about today. We've all had it right where we need to send an email to somebody and for whatever reason it feels scary. Maybe we're applying for a job, maybe we're asking somebody if they'll have a mentoring conversation and we're not sure what they'll say, or we are telling our supervisor, we're not gonna hit a deadline, we're asking for an extension, we're asking for feedback.

All these things can feel quite scary, and that act of kind of pressing send on an email can feel like a massive deal.. Everybody's had that feeling, right? [00:04:00] So you know, you're tight in your chest, you feel a bit sick in your tummy, your brain's spinning with all the possible consequences of what you're about to do. It can feel terrifying. And when it feels terrifying, it's no wonder that we don't just crack on and get it sent. And that was where this student was at. Because she's been in my membership for a little while. She kind of knew that a bunch of this was about stories that she was telling herself that weren't necessarily true, and that definitely weren't helpful, but she couldn't quite get herself outta that herself.

Now, the first thing I always remind my clients is. That's completely normal, right? This is why people need coaching. This is, I have a coach. This is why people need these sorts of things, because even if you've learned the stuff, even if you've actually got quite a lot of insight into your own behaviors and things, you get better at dealing with it yourself.

But when it's something super challenging, you can't necessarily just do it on your own. And that's the gorgeous thing about these sessions is you, [00:05:00] they run three times a week so you can just drop in whenever you've got something that you need to talk through and get that sort of immediate support and cheering up.

So she stuck a little zoom hand up. She'd actually given me a little note in advance that she had something that was quite urgent that she wanted to, and I always try and prioritize people that do that. So she'd drop me a little note and say, she was my first person that I promoted on. And as soon as she came on, I could see how tense she was and how upset she was about this.

She knew that she wanted to get it sent, but she was really struggling to do it. And so I took her through a process. That I'm gonna take you through today, and it's based on doing bungee jumping. It's based on bungee jumping, skydiving, any of these sorts of things. And so the first question I asked was, are you actually going to send this [00:06:00] email?

Sounds like a really weird question to ask. She was wanting to update her supervisors and she thought she had to send an email, and I wasn't saying don't send an email, but I was just checking in. Do you actually have to contact them? You could not contact them. You could talk to them in person. You could contact them in some other way. Right. Do you actually need to email them? And she had a little think about it and said, yep, I do. I do want to contact them and I do want to do it by email.

The reason I asked that based on my skydiving and bungee jumping endeavors is I remember being on an airplane in New Zealand, which is where I did my skydive, and I did one of those ones where you've got a dude strapped your back. Right. I'm not brave enough to do the actual technical stuff myself, [00:07:00] and we're on the way up. We're in the back of this funny little airplane that had no seats or anything. We were just sat on the floor and I had a little cry because I was really scared and he was a lovely, lovely fella.

And he said to me, look, I'm not gonna jump until you give me the okay. Because the thing with partner skydiving. Once the door opens, he's sat on the side of the plane, you are hanging off him. So the choice is his when you go. And he said to me, don't worry, I will never jump without your consent. If at any stage you don't want to do this, all you need to do is tell me, we'll just land the plane again. It's not a big deal. People have done it before. And through my tears, I said to him, if that was on the cards. I wouldn't be crying, I would just be deciding I wasn't gonna do it. The reason I'm crying is because I know I am gonna do this, and that's kind of [00:08:00] terrifying.

And so that's what I wanted to check in with this client is are you actually gonna do this? 'cause if you are not, or if you are not sure, we need to have a different conversation about how you are gonna decide rather than focus solely on how do we get it done? Because sometimes this fear and dread and everything is you or your body saying, I don't actually wanna do this.

And if any of you are sitting there thinking, I would never have got in the plane, or I have got on a plane and gone up and come back down again on a skydive and not done it, fair play to you for making a brave decision to decide to come back down is a super brave decision, to decide you don't want to do it, super brave decision. But it's a separate decision. So first we check, is this just my gut and intuition telling me I don't actually want to do this. In this case though, it wasn't that she did want to send this email. She did think it was necessary. She was just very scared.

Next, I asked her why does it [00:09:00] feel so scary? What is it that's making this scary? And this is not to kind of decide if it's legitimate scariness or not. You're allowed to decide what's scary and what's not. We all have different conceptions of that, right? Some of you might think I'm an absolute fool for the things I've jumped off in my life, but you could not pay me. Well, you probably could now, to be fair, I have very little shame these days, but when I was like 25, you could not pay me enough to make me sing in front of people. Like literally could not pay me enough money to make me sing in front of people. I'm a terrible singer. If I was a good singer, I would be dangerous. You just never get me off stage. But I'm a terrible singer. I'm mortified, embarrassed at how bad or I used to be, at least at how bad a singer I am, and it would be terrifying. You'd never get me to do it. So no, like judgment or shame here, but we get to ask ourselves, why is it so scary? Because sometimes things are scary because there are consequences, [00:10:00] potential consequences that are feasible and potentially scary feeling.

And sometimes it's scary 'cause we're telling ourselves a load of junk that's not true. Okay? And we do that stuff 'cause of culture and whatever, right? Habit, upbringing, blah, blah, blah. But we can decide whether the reasons it's scar are actually kind of legitimate to us. And so for her, I think the scariness was stuff around, you know, feeling like not scared necessarily, but sad that the relationship's not better with her supervisor. Scared about what feedback the supervisor's gonna say, whether she's gonna give her loads of changes and things like that. There was certainly some fear or worry about disappointing her supervisor or frustrating her supervisor. And I'm pretty confident all of you're sitting there going, yep. Yeah. Yeah, I've been there.

So a lot of it was around the sort of fear of what might happen, fear of what they might think, and fear of what that might mean for the [00:11:00] future. So we get to go. Are there any bits of that? Any bits of these stories I'm telling myself that make me feel scared that I am able to refute or minimize or put down or whatever.

Again, not to like de-legitimize your scaredness, but to take the edge off some of the bits that are unnecessary perhaps. And the one I always point out to my clients, is the ones about micromanaging your supervisor's emotions. This does not mean you shouldn't considerate, this does not mean you shouldn't be polite, act in a reasonable way and all those things, but your supervisor's emotions are your supervisor's responsibility. Your supervisor is allowed to be disappointed if they think thoughts that make them disappointed. They're allowed to be disappointed. They're allowed to be frustrated. Should we try and disappoint 'em on purpose, frustrate 'em on purpose? No, obviously not, but we have no actual control over their emotional responses.

They might have absolutely [00:12:00] unrealistic expectations of you, and that's why they feel disappointed. They might have very low expectations of you, and that's why they feel really disappointed. There's loads of reasons, they're responsible for them. We get to decide how we act and we get to decide what's we believe is reasonable and in line with our own personal, ethical code and all that good stuff.

Right? They are responsible for their emotions. The reason that's important is partly it can take the edge off some of their scariness. If they have, if they're disappointed, they're disappointed. If they're frustrated, they're frustrated, they can manage those emotions. I don't have to like put that on me.

The other reason that's so important to remember is because worrying about disappointing someone, worrying about frustrating someone is the first route to making you behave like a right weirdo. Okay? It makes you massively apologetic. Or it makes you avoid talking to them entirely, right? Because you don't wanna disappoint them, so let's not tell them anything.

So it might feel like a kind thing to worry about their emotions, but actually when [00:13:00] we worry about their emotions and take them on as our own responsibility, crucially, then we start behaving weird and that don't help anybody. So we dealt with a little bit of that stuff.

We kind of felt like, yes, she was a bit trying to micromanage some of her supervisor's emotions, but that there was some other stuff that was actual consequences to her. She was a bit scared about what her supervisor would say, and she was a bit scared about the implications for whether that meant she could hit her deadline, what quality of work she could produce and things.

So we got really clear on what specifically she was scared of. And the gorgeous thing there was, she started to notice more specifically that the scaredness was all stuff that was being made worse by waiting.

That actually it was things, am I gonna have enough time to make the changes? What if I can't make the deadline? Now? All of these things are actually avoiding that sensation of scaredness was making it more scary. Now, it was [00:14:00] just interesting for her just to kind of notice, so we've asked ourselves, am I actually gonna do this thing? We've asked ourself why we're scared, are there any of these I can put aside? So as an example, right? Go back to the bungee jumps or whatever. Why am I scared? I'm scared 'cause I'm jumping off of fricking bridge with a thing tied around my ankles. Of course I'm scared. It's inherently scary. It's scary 'cause I'm up high. It's scary because evolutionarily we're not really designed to be falling like that and just enjoying it. I'm scared because I'm worried it might go wrong. I'm scared about, you know, potential consequences. Is it gonna hurt? Am I gonna enjoy it? Am I gonna be sick? All of these sorts of things. Yeah. So why am I scared?

And then you get to ask yourself, okay, which ones of these do I actually legitimately believe it. So, well, people do these things all the time. Obviously there's some risk associated with it, but there's risk associated with everything. So, you know what, I'm not gonna tell myself the, I might die story because I [00:15:00] probably won't. The. I'm scared because I'm jumping off something and that's an inherently scary thing to do. I'm gonna take that, that's fine. I'm not gonna be able to mindset myself out of that, but I can stop telling myself that the equipment might all fail and I'll die 'cause that's just not helpful if I'm gonna do it anyway.

So we are clear on those things. Then what we do is we do our best to make it safe to do the thing while scared. So a really useful mantra to keep in your head is, I'm capable of doing things while I'm scared. This is a good one for any of you who are scared of doing presentations or any of those sorts of things, right? I'm capable of doing things while scared. We get to think about how can we make this safe. Now, in the case of bungee or skydive, that's quite obvious, right? I did things like, I checked in with the guy who was strapping me up to say, you know, , am I ready? Are you comfortable? I'm ready? Is I looked down, but I've got any expertise, right?

But like, it seems like it's fixed. [00:16:00] I've watched him do it up, all that stuff? So you check anything physically safe. Obviously that's not quite the same when you are talking about e sending an email. But how do we make it safe? We make it safe by not telling ourselves stories about how terrible it's gonna be if it goes wrong.

We make it safe by saying to ourself, it's okay if you can't see me. If you are watching me on video, you can, on YouTube, you can see me. But on podcast, I've like put my hands on my chest, right just below my neck. And that always just feels like quite a calming place to put your hands. And you just say. It is okay that I'm scared. I don't have to not be scared, but I'm gonna be kind. This is where the self-talk comes in, right? Part of being safe is deciding what you are gonna say to yourself. So I'm not gonna tell myself that it's all gonna be awful. I'm not gonna tell myself that she thinks I'm an idiot. I'm gonna tell myself that I need support with this next step, and that's what I'm asking for. These are my reasons for [00:17:00] messaging and it's perfectly reasonable for me to send this message. It's perfectly understandable for me to ask for this help or to tell them this. It's okay to be scared, but I can do this anyway. And that can help you feel kind of psychologically safe as well.

We are not trying to make the emotions go away often. We think I will send it once. I'm not scared anymore. I don't know when that not scared anymore comes. Usually what actually happens is we end up sending it, not when we are not scared anymore, but when the deadline gets so close that we panic overcomes that fear. Yeah. When the panic is higher, then the fear of sending the email, then we send it. But that's a horrible way to live your life. Many of us did it or are doing it for a long time, but it's not fun. So we get to say, I don't have to stop being scared. I just have to make it safe to be scared. Sometimes it can be, especially if it's an important email, don't do this other thing. Getting somebody else to check it through, making sure [00:18:00] they think it's clear and reasonable, all of those sorts of things.

Another way you can make it safe is by just double checking that you've made it really clear and easy for the person that's reading the email. So you're not over justifying. It's one of the things we do when we're scared. One of the things we do when we're worried about other people's emotions is, you know, we're asking for an extension or whatever. I used to have this as a, oh my goodness. I used to have this as a academic so much that people would ask for an extension. And they'd give me pages and pages and pages of why their life was so terrible. Why? It was like I felt for these kids, right? I felt for, these were my undergrads. I felt for them so much, but it was so unnecessary.

They needed to give me a quick thing as to that there was a legitimate reason for this, and beyond that, that was all they needed to do. There was no need for that massive story. So checking you're not over justifying, checking that you're making it very explicit what you need from the person that you're asking and making it real easy for them.

So we're [00:19:00] talking reattaching the thing you want them to read or having, my two key questions are X and Y, making it super, super easy. That's another way to make it feel as safe as possible, that you are sending something that is as likely as possible to get the responses that we need.

 And then after we've checked we wanna do it, checked why it feels scary, made it safe, decided how we're looking after ourselves, we get it done. So this was advice I actually had to call on last weekend, so it's a long time since my bungee jumping days, right? But when I did my, I did my bungee in Australia, and when I was there I was so scared.

I was so, so scared. And I saw somebody else go up before me. It wasn't anyone I knew, but I saw her go up and she stood on that platform for gotta be 20 minutes. [00:20:00] She just would get herself all ready to go and then be like, no, no, I can't. And come back again. And then she'd get herself ready to go and then she'd went, no, no, I can't.

And I remember, and we are talking over 20 years ago, and I can just so vividly remember watching this and just seeing how much harder she was making it for herself. And I mean that with all the love and whatever in the world, right? I am not judge. I have no idea who she is. I'm not judging her in any way.

It is terrifying when you have that physical freeze response. It's awful. But it was so much worse 'cause of the time she was taking. And so I decided then and there with scary things. If you're gonna do 'em, you've gotta decide you're doing them. Make sure you're safe, say nice things to yourself and just do it.

So when I went up for my bungee. I literally [00:21:00] went up the queue and I decided in the queue I wasn't gonna look down. 'cause you're going up this tower, right? Total to toddle up the steps. And I'm like, I'm not gonna look down. I'm just gonna look at the horizon. I'm gonna admire the beautiful countryside and I'm just gonna look at the horizon.

And I went, got to the top and the guy said, you're next. And I said, thank very much. Excellent. He said, you're okay? And I said, yes. He said, you're not looking down. I said, no, I'm not going to either. He said, okay, that's fine. And he did my ankles and I said, are they all safe? Yes. Are you happy? Yes.

Everything checked. Am I ready to go? Yes. He said, stand there. He said, yes. He said, I'm gonna say with 3, 2, 1, bungee, you go on Bungee. And I said, okay, fine. He said, 3, 2, 1, bungee. And I jumped and I actually ended up loving it to be fair. I'll tell you a funny story about that in a second. But I actually ended up loving it and I decided I wanted to do it again.

And so when I went back up again, he said to me, and I so remember this, he said to me, no one does that. No one doesn't look down, puts it around their ankles and jumps. And I was like, but it meant I was scared for about 14 seconds where she was scared for 20 [00:22:00] minutes. It's like, if I'm gonna do it, I might as well do it.

And he was like, I think you're right. But most people don't do it. So I decided that time I was gonna do the same again, but go off backwards. High recommendation for you. Don't bungee backwards. Don't, just don't. I have a beautiful photo of me swan diving gracefully, backwards, which I'm very proud of. But other than that, it makes you boing around in a horrific way. So after the first one I was like, oh, bungee's not that bad. And then after the second one I was like, okay, bungee is awful. And I never do, so, never go backwards. Anyway, I digress.

The point is, if you are definitely gonna do it. Don't take too long over it. I passed this on, I was at a holiday park last weekend with some friends and their kids, and the kid, and I did one of these drops, right where you go up a tower and you jump onto one of those big, like, I don't wanna say air bed, do not picture a domestic air bed.

I mean like a stunt person type air bed. And he was [00:23:00] scared. Gave him exactly the same advice, little time as possible, and we go.

So that's my final tip for you with your, these emails. Once you've decided, make it safe by making it as clear, as informative, as straight to the point. Short. If possible, people who know me well will laugh, but that's something I've learned over my career. Keep it short, um, and get it sent. We get it done.

I hope you found that useful. I know my client found it super useful and so did everybody in the room. They could all apply it, even if you haven't got a scary email to send, which most of us do at some point, but even if you haven't, you can apply it to most other things that are quite scary, particularly where they're self-paced like that, right?

It's a bit different if you've got a booked presentation or whatever, but if it's something where it's like, I can get this done sooner. Let's decide we're doing it, make it safe and get it done. I really hope you found that useful. I'm actually off to teach another workshop now. So, if you wanna find out more about the membership, it we open quite soon.

Actually, we [00:24:00] open in about three weeks time. So make sure you go to my website, the PhD life coach.com, click on the membership and find out all the details. Get on my newsletter and you'll be the first to hear. When we're open and all the different things that we're gonna be doing next quarter. So make sure you sign up.

Thank you so much for listening, and I will see you next week.

Thank you for listening to the PhD Life Coach podcast. If you like this episode, please tell your friends, your colleagues, and your universities. I'd appreciate it if you took the time to like leave a review, give me stars, stickers, and all that general approval as well. If you'd like to find out more about working with me, either for yourself or for people at your university, please check out my website at the PhD life coach.com.

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