Getting Out of Your Own Way

What if the biggest obstacle in your doctoral journey isn't your research, your committee, or your schedule—but the voice in your own head? Join TiffianyAnn Lundine and author Dr. Suzanne Uhl as they explore practical tools for overcoming self-doubt, quieting the inner critic, and moving beyond perfectionism and fear. This encouraging conversation will help you recognize what's holding you back and remind you that you are more capable than you think. 

Transcript

TiffianyAnn Lundine (00:01)
Welcome back to Dissertating in the Trenches and Behind the Scenes. I'm your host, Tiffany Ann Lundine. I have a question for you. Have you ever found yourself staring at a blank page, questioning whether you're capable, overthinking every decision, or convincing yourself that maybe you'll move forward only when you're ready? Then today's conversation is for you. The truth is, most doctoral learners don't actually struggle because they lack intelligence.

They struggle because of the stories they tell themselves. Stories about not being enough, not knowing enough, or not even being ready enough. Today's guest, Dr. Suzanne Yule, helps people recognize those stories and replace them with healthier, more empowering ways of thinking. Dr. Yule is the author of Silence the Saboteurs and the Ultimate Mindset Tool, Kit.

And is dedicated to her work to helping people overcome fear, quiet their inner critic, and move forward with confidence. In this episode, we talked about perfectionism, procrastination, comparison, fear, self-compassion, and practical strategies for getting out of our own way. More importantly, Dr. Yule shares simple tools you can begin using even today to reclaim your thinking and keep moving toward your goals.

If you're just beginning the doctoral journey or you're somewhere in the middle, wondering if you have what it takes, I hope this conversation reminds you that your greatest obstacle may not actually be the dissertation itself. Maybe it's simply the voice that's been telling you you can't. And as Dr. Ewell reminds us, you are not shackled to that voice.

TiffianyAnn (01:54)
I am really, really excited about today's guest. this woman is full of life and full of knowledge, lots of experience. And so I'm really excited to introduce you Dr. Suzanne.

Suzanne M Uhl (02:07)
the Christmas party girl.

TiffianyAnn (02:10)
And she does bring all the party for sure. Suzanne, can you please tell our audience who you are, what you do, where you come from? Give us a little bit background, please.

Suzanne M Uhl (02:22)
Sure. Well, I live in Southern California and I had been, have been, where's my grammar, a college professor for almost 40 years, just recently retired, just not even a year yet. So currently exploring writing, three, I'm working on my third book, speaking, coaching, consulting, having a blast, playing in the dirt, you know, loving life.

TiffianyAnn (02:46)
Yeah, and what I know about you is you love to play in the dirt. I love that. And tell us a little bit about these books. Is there a central theme?

Suzanne M Uhl (02:50)
I swear it was this afternoon.

Sure,

I did a TED Talk before I left my particular college and I decided to do that TED Talk on fear because I'm in communication studies, is my discipline, my degrees are, and obviously public speaking, number one fear of adults, so I was frequently in a right front seat of a whole lot of fear on a whole lot of brilliant students who were absolutely crippled by that.

had my own battles with that demon. So I decided that was going to be the topic of my TED Talk. And then proceeded to get thoroughly freaked out myself, which seemed very appropriate and totally acceptable. Worked through that and had a phenomenal experience with that. And then that script became the basis for a workbook on, it's called Silence of Saboteurs, which was what my official title of the TED Talk was.

Then the second book I wrote was called The Ultimate Mindset Toolkit. so it's basically about mental strategies for resilience, covers some of the same concepts in the little workbook, but much more robust. And now my third book, you'll get a kick out of this. My third book is called Retired, Rewired, and Slightly Rebellious.

it's basically a mindset book for retirement and that whole transition which has been massive. so I'm doing that and then coaching on the sides and life is really full.

TiffianyAnn (04:21)
Yeah.

I love that you bring so much life into every room that you present yourself in. I was immediately attracted to Dr. Yule because of the fact that she gives off so much energy and she has a lot of experience. This is one of the things that I love about you is that you bring your experience as humanly messy as it is to the forefront and you allow your

community

to work through that with you. And so I kind of wanted to do that with you today, because a lot of our doctoral listeners may have or are experiencing some of that human messiness. And we call it oftentimes we call it one thing. And when we scale it back, when we unpack it, it looks like something different. And something I think that we can get some control over.

Dare I say and so I wanted to bring you on to talk a little bit about that I couldn't think of any more perfect for this. So thank you for showing up. I appreciate it The first thing that kept coming to my mind is it like get out of the way

Suzanne M Uhl (05:17)
Yep.

Really glad to be here. It's gonna be fun.

TiffianyAnn (05:34)
get out of the way. And often, going back to what I had said just a moment ago, we call it something else. But it's, it's not that. And so when we call it something else, it could be blame shifting or something like committee doesn't do this, my, my family's this or my schedule is too tight, or whatever. And all of those are real circumstances, I think they can all be real circumstances. But I think

at the heart of it, we are the ones that are in our way, oftentimes. And so what I didn't call it was get out of my own way. But that's kind of where I want to go. So what does it actually look like when somebody is getting in their own way? Could you describe that for us a little bit?

Suzanne M Uhl (06:20)
Yeah, I think it can take a lot of different forms. I don't think it's a one size fits all. I think we all have different tendencies, you know. I think for some people it's the instant, fear. Some people it's self-doubt, you know. It's all of those things that you question yourself and that's where that'll tie in with that inner critic conversation that we'll talk about later.

Sometimes we have limiting beliefs, to use more of an official term. we've just convinced ourselves of a truth that is not true. But we act as though it is true. So we create our own self-fulfilling prophecies. so some of us are over-thinkers. That was me, paralysis of analysis. Man, if there's not a problem, give Suzanne five minutes. She'll come up with one. That was me.

So yeah, I can think circles, circles around people. sound like you're my sister in that.

TiffianyAnn (07:09)
Yeah.

100 % work. was. Am? Am. That's the right term. I am. My chair will often tell me, you're overthinking this again. And I appreciated that because it always just put me back in my place. Not that I didn't realize it, but you know, then it would tie into perfectionism. And well, I just want to get it right. I mean, I could come up with a thousand justifications.

Suzanne M Uhl (07:17)
You

Mm.

Right.

TiffianyAnn (07:40)
but the end of the day was I was just overthinking it. there's so many things at the root of it. I talk to hundreds of doctoral learners. And some of them,

Suzanne M Uhl (07:43)
Yeah.

TiffianyAnn (07:53)
understand imposter syndrome. And I think that's a very real thing, but it doesn't have to be because I think that you don't get to this level of academia if you don't have the skills. this is 80 % effort and 20 % intellect. We already know you have the intellect. It's the 80 % that you have to give, And

Suzanne M Uhl (07:56)
yeah.

TiffianyAnn (08:16)
I mean, that's just my opinion. You may have a different one. Obviously, the intellect continues to grow, but it only grows if you give of that time and that effort.

Suzanne M Uhl (08:26)
Right? Yeah. I remember when I

was accepted to the school where I ended up getting my PhD and when I got the letter that I was accepted, I was just shocked because I was fully expecting rejection. Like, are you kidding? Fully, fully. For me, there had been 20 years, at least between the masters and the PhD. So, know, smart Suzanne, that was decades ago. And, you know, and so I thought, well, OK, this clearly was an error. And

I'll give them one month to then send me the whoops. I'm so sorry clerical error So yeah, I'm posture system our syndrome, I know that one well, so definitely

TiffianyAnn (09:05)
Yeah,

yeah, yeah. And so I hope that we can uncover some of these things so that, because we all know that you on the other side of this recording are capable of doing it. We know this. And so hopefully this conversation will help kind of pull some of that back so that you can see that for yourself.

Let's talk about that inner critic. You seem to be an expert on this.

Suzanne M Uhl (09:30)
too my shame.

I'm really grateful for my inner critic.

TiffianyAnn (09:34)
You say that a lot and

I've heard several sprinklings of ideas coming back to.

who we are naturally and how we can be more courteous and grateful to that person, for showing up, that's who we were created to be. And one of the things that comes up for me is it brings about an awareness of something, I don't know if you experienced the same. I'm probably not even at the working level that you are at. You've really dove into this.

you've now experienced it as an expert to give to others. So let me ask you, how do we know it's the inner critic versus just being realistic? Because that would be my go-to. Like, this is just who I am. And, you know, I just got to live with it.

Suzanne M Uhl (10:23)
Usually the inner critic has a tone of condemnation.

TiffianyAnn (10:27)
Okay.

Suzanne M Uhl (10:28)
And realism may not. It may just be more fact-based. So there's a judgment associated with the inner critic in a much more pronounced way.

TiffianyAnn (10:39)
Okay, you say pronounced. Could it be subtle?

Suzanne M Uhl (10:42)
sure, like you know there's a big difference and a subtle difference between I can't do it and I can't do it yet. Yet is three little letters but doesn't have a condemnation because there's no certainty of a period at the end of that sentence. And so inner critic might scream usually coming at you you can't do it you aren't enough you know or worse you're lazy you're stupid or you know what you're gonna fail you always fail.

So it catastrophizes, it takes what may have happened, maybe a couple failures sprinkled in your past, know, because you're not perfect. I hate to break that to anybody, but that you're destined to continue that forever and always. And so there's that element of certainty and with it that tone of condemnation that it won't ever change. So don't even bother. Just hang it up. Yeah.

TiffianyAnn (11:29)
⁓ It's an absolute.

Yeah. Yeah. It's an absolute that we take away can you give us some examples? I know you did already. Like, I can't do it versus I won't do it yet. Do you have any other examples that you might run into?

Suzanne M Uhl (11:44)
Sure, think, you know, like it's frequently said that I'm not enough, to do whatever, whether it's, you know, get a PhD, whether it's write a book, whether it's whatever task is in front of you. And you're at the beginning of that process where if you were to go to ask everybody who's already gotten a PhD or everybody who's already survived the terrible twos or whatever the thing is in front of you.

Was there ever a time when you thought I'm not enough? The vast majority of people are going to say, yeah, yeah, yeah. But that becomes so much the mantra in our own head. And we think we're the only ones that I cannot do this. I am not enough and never will be. And again, it's got that certainty behind it. All of us struggle. mean, none of us get mad at a little

kid is learning to walk and falls down a gazillion times because it's the early stages. so learning to have that self compassion is like one of the best ways you can start to refute and turn the narrative around within your head because self compassion is not what you're going to hear from your inner critic. Really low on that.

TiffianyAnn (12:51)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Yeah. So what would that self-compassion look like coming into that moment if you were, I'm not enough? Can you give us an example of what that could look like?

Suzanne M Uhl (13:03)
Well, it could be.

Okay, I can definitely do better at that. It's a good thing that wasn't the final draft. That was my first. Yeah. Yeah. So because it's my first draft, it was awesome. Because I went from zero to moving, instead of us in our overthinking hats who just sit there and do nothing. You know, and so I think that you have to that's what I mean by give yourself grace. there's a saying that I know you've heard done is better than perfect.

TiffianyAnn (13:11)
Ooh, I like that one.

Suzanne M Uhl (13:30)
A little timely example kind of related to what we're talking about before we were on camera. The whole social media. I have sat and thought about a social media campaign to help market the next book and I wrote out a bunch of stuff, the demographics of my audience, who I was appealing to and approximately how long, short, different methodology, what kind of equipment did I need, the whole thing. I went to chat GPT, I had...

21 days of short little social media posts and as I'm doing this I'm on month three of thinking this is a good idea I should do this and all of a sudden I stop and I realize my son who's moved back home briefly before he gets married is in his room recording a social media post he was just talking yesterday to a buddy about this idea of doing it and 24 hours later he's doing it

three months. hadn't even thought about actually doing it. So I said if he can do it, I'm going to do it and recorded my first one that afternoon because my gosh, I can prep for months. He just had to do it.

TiffianyAnn (14:41)
Yeah, I mean, that's really interesting. And going back to, I guess we could call that overthinking,

Suzanne M Uhl (14:49)
Yeah.

Some of it is good, but those of us who get stuck there and we all know who we are, it's dangerous waters.

TiffianyAnn (14:58)
Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. And as I'm experiencing even this podcast, find that, that didn't go well. And there are times when I'm like, maybe I should put everything on pause. instead, I'm choosing not to put things on pause. I started this, and.

Hopefully there will be grace from the audience when, I missed the launch date or what have you. It's coming, it's coming. But I'm learning. But to stop in the tracks stops my growth. To say, OK, well, I don't have this figured out, so I'm just going to come back when I do. I will never have it figured out without the action every day. And I tell this to students now, and I laugh at it.

Because every day I looked at my dissertation and I said, I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know how to do this. And for probably about a year and a half, it really did stall my progression because I wouldn't do anything with it. I'd go overthink some more. I'd go read some more or what have you. Even with a paper, I don't feel like I know enough yet to write this paper, this five page paper.

Suzanne M Uhl (15:46)
Okay.

Yeah.

Yeah.

TiffianyAnn (16:10)
You

know, but at some point in time, you got to say enough is enough. I know what I know. And I'm going to report on what I know.

Suzanne M Uhl (16:19)
There

isn't the standard. It's not the goal. Let me just do the best I can and that will be good enough. And if not, my professor will let me know how to get better. So like I no longer think of failure as failure. I think of it as what can I learn from this?

TiffianyAnn (16:23)
Yeah, yeah. ⁓

Yep, there you go.

Hmm.

That's really good. let's talk about some tools and strategies

I mean, I would be the first one to applaud you and say, she went to chat GBT. She went and developed a whole strategy and everything else. took her only three weeks to do so. I don't know. But you had three weeks of content. So I would have applauded you. But yet, at the same time, I could have missed the fact that that's what you were doing, was you were overthinking.

Suzanne M Uhl (16:57)
every month. Yeah.

TiffianyAnn (17:05)
we can often confuse, I think, still some of those tools and strategies as tools and strategies when they're actually just procrastination. But give us a little bit of some suggestions. Walk us through one tool somebody might be able to use today.

Suzanne M Uhl (17:14)
Yeah.

Bye!

it's important that you know yourself. And for some of us, that means learning to recognize the voice in our head. And so for me, a lot of that is journaling and writing. And I will see things on paper when I spit it all out on paper.

I can walk away, come back to it, and then all these assumptions, fears, doubts, limiting beliefs, rise up out of the paper. So obvious. But when I'm in the midst of all the emotional dumping, know, right or otherwise, I don't see them. They're all they're all fact. So if I if I can learn to hit that pause button and then go back and reassess, I have many times gotten into a gazillion pads of paper.

And I fill pages after pages. And then I go to bed. And the next morning, I have a pen. And it's time for fact versus assumption. And I go through everything I wrote the day before. What is fact? Write it in the margin. What is assumption? And every fear-based thought is going to be an assumption. And so fact or assumption, fact or assumption. And I have had a whole page of convictions. This is true. are, no, they were all assumptions, every single one of them.

But I couldn't see that at the time because there's so much emotion involved. so Eckhart Tolle calls this this idea of being an observer of yourself that you have to step outside yourself and watch yourself and listen to yourself. And if you can learn to do that, you'll learn to spot your inner critic a lot better. it's meta communication where you know, you're really literally watching and listening to the way that you communicate. And after a while, you can you can spot it.

And then when you're open about it, this is why I love just being transparent and just like, okay, this is who I am with all my flaws. Hello. is that other people know that too. I was talking to my girlfriend, Amy, one time about something and going on about why something might be really difficult for me. And she leans back and she goes Suzanne, is that really true? Or is that just an asses your inner critic talking? How do you know her name?

No!

TiffianyAnn (19:25)
your mouth.

Suzanne M Uhl (19:27)
I her, you know, I named my inner critic in NASA's, you know, backwards as Suzanne. she had the information, she, you know what I mean? So sometimes you need those people in your life. I call them your tribe, you know, the ones that will help you out. Cause sometimes we're blind, we have blind spots. But I think learning to write, learning not to respond to your first emotional reaction and finding that pause button will really help. And then doing that fact versus assumption, it was really powerful for me and continues to be.

TiffianyAnn (19:55)
Yeah, I hadn't thought about that. and we talked about this, I was in a group last week, and we discussed this idea of vulnerability and.

I can give you all the facts and I can sound like I'm being really vulnerable at the moment, but there's a difference. The same is true when I'm writing down what I consider the facts, As you were talking, I was like, I'm not getting it.

But when you went back and you established, okay, there's a day two of this, we're not visiting this just in one setting in the moment, We're gonna come back to this because I'm gonna think clearer about these in a reset.

And then I'm going to think more intentionally, what is the assumption here in this statement? I love that idea. That sounds so productive.

Suzanne M Uhl (20:45)
You know, and I can't say

that I thought of it myself. You know, I read it somewhere and started applying it and was a little bit embarrassed about how often I was responding to things that were not even true. They were assumptions.

TiffianyAnn (21:00)
It takes a little bit more work to do this, but the payoff seems so great thank you for that strategy. Any other strategies you want to share with us?

Suzanne M Uhl (21:06)
It's

Well, I think if you're really stuck, then I would give you a challenge. Like stuck with this narrative in your head is, okay, so you're in this pattern, hypothetically you, whoever, is in this pattern of negative self-talk. And that's every day, every week, every month, so whatever, long, long time. So how about take a one week challenge of absolutely nothing, nothing but compliments to yourself for one week. That's all.

Pour all the negativity, the other 51, can you be positive to yourself for one week? Sometimes doing that will make you realize how much negativity you douse yourself with. And that can be really A, sobering, and you start to identify, no, this is a problem I want to fix. And do a little bit of research. Obviously, we all know the dangers of pessimism and extreme negativity. You'll kill yourself, put yourself in the grave a lot earlier.

with that kind of mindset. So you really have nothing to lose by going positive for one week and so much to gain. And that could be really powerful. I think the idea of, you know, we talk about being strength-based. I think that that matters. will, used to tell my students to literally, they had to go find seven to 10 people and ask them for three strengths.

And they would just, my gosh, you would think I had asked them to do the most horrendous and embarrassing thing ever. I can't do that. And I'm like, yes you can. And you will, and in writing. they would come back. The day after that assignment was one of the best days of class because everybody's grinning. Everybody is just chattering. And then I get them talking. And it's like, my gosh, someone else said this. They said that.

And it's all so much positivity that they're just not accustomed to. essentially, they're gathering evidence. They're gathering testimonials from people who know them and use that evidence to refute the voice of the inner critic who tells you you're not enough. You're like, no, that's not true because I've got four out of my five best friends who say I'm X, Y, and Z. And they see me, they walk with me, they know me. That is fact. Your voice is not.

And so you start to refute it. The day I wrote my inner critic and eviction notice, I sat down, I got challenged to do it. And it was probably one of the most empowering things in my life. And I said, I really doubt you're gonna up and leave, but I want you to know your voice is not welcome here anymore. I'm not smart enough to identify you and I have never been what and who you think I am. So you can just, she's still there. I'll, I tend to see her off on this side in assets.

I see you but I have time for you because I got stuff to do. Yeah.

TiffianyAnn (23:52)
Absolutely. when you were talking about the negativity that we just douse ourselves with, I can't help but have this vision of how much joy that steals from us in what we're doing. Like when we think about the day we were accepted into the doctoral program and how...

exciting that felt. I've been chosen to do this great big thing, then after that, every day after that, that we douse ourselves with negativity, it steals our joy from doing what we were called to do.

in the first place. for all those that are listening, let this be something that you hang your hat on for a second. I don't want your joy to be stolen when you finish because I mean, how exuberant can you be is what I much rather see, at the end is just how much joy can you express about the trials and the tribulations and the things that you learned and the exciting like

twists and turns along the way. But you can't do that if you're giving yourself negativity time and time again. You don't see the joy in it.

Suzanne M Uhl (25:01)
And I think that's one of reasons we have to be careful of comparison.

people always call that the thief of joy. And but there is nobody like you. Absolutely nobody. is statistically impossible for there to be somebody like you. And that makes you in a unique position to do what you do better than anybody else. Nobody else can do it. we're all pretty awesome, one of a kind, individuals. ⁓

TiffianyAnn (25:23)
Absolutely.

we've talked about fear, perfectionism, overthinking. Let's talk about this a little bit deeper. So, excellence versus perfectionism. How do we know the difference?

Suzanne M Uhl (25:35)
well, like...

there is that tone of condemnation with perfectionism because if you don't hit this standard, then you're less than, then comes the diatribe, the self condemnation. The excellence usually is a goal that we push ourselves toward and it doesn't have that tone, with it. I'm really happy to be imperfect because man, the pressure is gone.

TiffianyAnn (25:55)
I love that.

Suzanne M Uhl (25:56)
I would rather have somebody else tell me that they think I'm perfect than me to try to achieve it myself. I can come up with all the reasons why somebody else's might be quicker than me or I'm just doing my best and I think I said something relatively coherent and then later get all these comments about how brilliant whatever it was I said. Really? Well, I'm glad you think so.

in the sense that what matters is our striving to be better. That'll also help you to reframe any failures into learnings because it's your goal. It's going to take you to closer to, improving. I think one of the things I am most grateful for is the incredible opportunity it is

that it is to be different, that I have an opportunity tomorrow to be a better version of me than I am today. And the Suzanne that's gonna be here on May 9th, a month from now, that Suzanne is gonna be better than the one sitting here April 9th. And so it's like change becomes an opportunity. I'm gonna grow, I'm gonna develop. I'm constantly in process. That's why retirement doesn't totally freak me out because it's like a whole different world.

of learning and being. was pretty good at the other one, academia, and I got that. But this redefining, coming up with my own without somebody telling me what I have to do, board of trustees or state of California, it's just phenomenal opportunities. And so you start to dig in and relish those chances, those opportunities which occur all the time to grow and evolve and be better.

with that, you can eliminate a good portion of the self-condemnation.

TiffianyAnn (27:34)
Yeah, as we learn and grow, we get to, experience joy in who we could be,

experienced that moment of, I didn't know I could do that. That's pretty cool that I can, I can problem solve through that or whatever it is. I think that that's fantastic. Another one that comes up is procrastination. And I know for me, this is what this looked like. So no shame in my game. ⁓ Every Friday night.

Suzanne M Uhl (28:02)
Light it out, Susan.

TiffianyAnn (28:06)
I'd close the books for work. fix dinner. watch a Netflix something, for a period of time, it was I'll watch 15 minutes of a TED talk because it's shorter. And then 15 minutes turned into 45, turned into an all night. Oh, I fell asleep on the couch after I ate all the pizza.

then on Saturday morning, just berate myself I didn't do the things that I said I was going to do. And one of the things that kept coming up was you're so lazy. You're so lazy. And

I may have steered off a little bit, but what I realized in that was you're tired. Why don't you just give yourself the space to refresh yourself, so what if it looked like pizza last night? So what if it looked like an all night Netflix?

When I was able to give myself permission to do that and stop calling myself ugly names, It looked differently. The productivity on Saturday looked different because I didn't spend the first couple hours berating myself. Now I had a plan, What can you tell us about?

fear and how that shows up as procrastination.

Suzanne M Uhl (29:19)
Well, think it's, fear and procrastination are interesting because each one can trigger the other. Sometimes because we are afraid, we walk into a circumstance with fear, we'll procrastinate getting started. That may have been me in the social media posts.

TiffianyAnn (29:35)
That was definitely me and the pizza on the couch.

Suzanne M Uhl (29:37)
And sometimes it's the procrastination that allows fear to jump in and so little short little story part of my gift to myself after I retired was to go on a six-week road trip and I just drove over the Western US at a big huge circle connected with friends I didn't see in a long time had a blast as I'm coming around

coming down from like Seattle, Oregon into Northern California, my sons fly up to Sacramento to meet me up there. We're going whitewater rafting. They're going to be with me just for the tail end of the drive. So we're whitewater rafting. We are having a blast and we stopped for lunch, And it's like two big rafts of people. There's maybe, 25, 30 of us. Almost everybody is young except for me and one other mom.

And where we stop, there's this enormous boulder that's like 20 feet above the river, It's the most amazing place to climb to the top and jump into the river. And then the guide turns and looks at me entirely optional. And I was like, you did not just look at me and say that, you did. And I scrambled, I'm like pushing all these 20 year olds to the side.

TiffianyAnn (30:42)
Wow.

Suzanne M Uhl (30:57)
let me go first and I'm at the top and I didn't even stop I just ran jumped airborne thinking what water didn't really have time for fear to get in because I wasn't going to procrastinate I would have thought about it it would have all jumped in there now that's not always an ideal strategy because sometimes you do want to things through I'm not necessarily promoting you know impulsivity but but I mean I knew it was safe he takes

The guide takes people to this particular rock, every time they're down this place in the river, I knew it was safe. there's no way I'm going to let fear stop me from doing this. And then the whole rest of the trip, my boys are like, man, mom, you're such a beast. I'm like, yeah.

it's funny how they can feed each other, So which one is dominant? Is it the fear that triggers the procrastination for somebody or for somebody else? Are they in the habit of procrastinating maybe because they're overthinking? And that's what opens the board of fear. You know, I think it might be both. But sometimes that's where the done is better than perfect comes in. That's where me here and my son in the other room doing his post.

Well, I'm still analyzing it.

TiffianyAnn (32:05)
we both kind of talked about certain things that we've done, experienced recently. What does it look like to take action before you're ready?

Suzanne M Uhl (32:13)
I think it depends on the circumstance. So if I'm thinking about what you do, Tiffany, with the dissertations and a lot of, near the end of the journey, PhD students, there's plenty of times where you can think yourself into a corner, but most of us will start from an outline or we can create an outline. We may not know exactly what to write in terms of full sentences for the next paragraph.

but I know roughly what chapter four needs to be like. So I'll start with a basic outline. I'll review my basic outline. If I feel utterly stuck, I go back to my outline. If I don't have one, I write one. And it might be super skeleton. And then I'm like, okay, well, let's put some bones on the skeleton. And then I elaborate on my outline. then it's time to add some ligaments and muscles. And I elaborate on what I've elaborated on. And before I know, I'm writing full paragraphs.

And so that will get me thinking because I started with just bullet points. So therefore I'm not writing the thing that I'm so afraid of at that particular moment. I'm flushing out my outline before I know it I'm writing. The other thing that's an interesting strategy, it doesn't always work. It depends on what the circumstance is. But sometimes you can jump ahead and then work backwards. you're stuck here at B.

TiffianyAnn (33:22)
Okay.

Suzanne M Uhl (33:24)
You can't move from B. The next letter is C, but somehow you can't get there. You're stuck at B. So you jump to G and you work backwards. And before you know it, you're at B. And so it's just a way of kind of fooling your brain. And that will, that will help me. ever, sometimes I'll do a voice recording I'll talk it through and then on a voice memo. And then I listen to myself.

speak it and there's plenty in there. I'm like girlfriend you know what you need to do. You know where this needs to go. I just heard you say it. That gets me going.

TiffianyAnn (33:59)
interesting I know

I paid over $2,000 to go into this class, and it was eight weeks. I produced one golden sentence.

Now, what I did at that time was I asked my chair, can I please work on chapter three? I basically had to renegotiate what we had already agreed on, but I was stuck. I mean, and for those of you listening, chapter two is really a different beast than chapter three. the purpose of it is different. Every chapter...

in the dissertation has a different purpose. And so you have to know the purpose of the chapter. chapter three for me was much more logical and it seemed more doable to me. And so we agreed. OK, I'm going to write chapter three, but I'm going to also write chapter two. Now, I could not write chapter two in chapter three on the same day because different beast.

I had to strategize, okay, will reserve chapter three for the weekdays and chapter two weekends, And that was just my strategy. this is to your point of sometimes you could jump ahead and it works.

Because in that process,

I developed more confidence in my writing ability, which was really what I was struggling with with Chapter Two. was like, there's no direction. There's no directions for Chapter Two. And so that, for me, was an example of jumping ahead.

it doesn't always have to look the way you originally set out to do.

Suzanne M Uhl (35:31)
Right. Which is

why, again, you want to be careful of comparing yourself to the that somebody else happens to write their dissertation. And they went linearly right in proper order, one through four, one through five. And you're going out of order. So again, be careful of that. So I think right along with that, I would add is start to gather around you.

TiffianyAnn (35:48)
Yeah.

Suzanne M Uhl (35:58)
a good tribe who will speak good. And you probably, this is true for most of us, need to make some space between those who just negatively tear us down and just a little bit of space, especially at certain seasons of your life. know, normally I have the bandwidth to deal with X, Y, Z, you know, person. But right now, at this particular time in my life, I just don't. And so for now, I'm just going to...

a little bit of distance and I'm going to gather around me the more supportive positive voices because that's what I need right now. And so it's taking care of yourself just like the pizza and the the movie night you just you got it that self-care is important nothing wrong this is impossible to tell a PhD student there's nothing wrong with relaxing everything in moderation but

You have to take care of yourself. Otherwise you implode I remember Standing in the hallway right there. Here is my office. Here's my computers. I'm you know full-time college professor I'm full-time in a PhD program. I have two little boys in the bedrooms right there and I come around the corner because I was finishing cleaning up dishes and my husband is sitting at this computer staring at a different monitor that was quite a while ago

And I freaked out because I have my work up there. I have all my tabs open. You're sitting at the computer. literally freaked. Literally, what are you doing? I was totally irrational. My kids are right there. They're like just falling asleep. I'm shrieking. I sound like, I don't know what. And my husband's like, honey, I didn't touch anything. Opened up a brand new window. Looking up prices on tires for your car or whatever. And I am just as if he has done the most catastrophic thing.

It was because I was exhausted, because I was depleted, because I hadn't taken care of myself. I had a deadline that night at midnight. And so I was pushing, pushing, pushing. And I know there's times you have to do that in a doctoral program. But by and large, you cannot consistently pour from an empty cup. And so you have to take the time to refill. And maybe that's, hey, after midnight.

TiffianyAnn (38:09)
Yeah.

Suzanne M Uhl (38:10)
We'll refill. But yeah, you just got to take care of you because you're worth it. You are enough and you're

TiffianyAnn (38:15)
Yeah, and it's not like

your ideas and everything that you've been working on leaves you when you get up from your computer. It walks with you. And you are carrying it with you.

Suzanne M Uhl (38:27)
Yeah, I

hear you. One of the things that I used to do is, we had a trampoline, the boys were obviously much little, and we'd go on the trampoline and it'd be mommy and daddy versus the two kids and we're playing trampoline soccer. We have a large net around the trampoline. And I don't know about you, but I cannot bounce and kick the soccer ball at the same time.

TiffianyAnn (38:41)
how fun.

That

sounds awful.

Suzanne M Uhl (38:54)
And and before you know it everybody is piled in the center of the trampoline Just laughing hysterically and when I'm in total hysterics, I can't help I'm crying I'm laughing so hard and all the stress that was just Chewing me up 20 minutes ago is gone I'm hugging my kids and it's just that laughter it I can go back and be so much more refreshed and able

to do so much more, so much more productive, just because I took the time to fill up my cup. And so it can be different things for different people. And so whatever that is, it's part of that self-compassion. I think you gotta take care of yourself.

something else that I wanted to mention Sometimes we need something external to kind of shake us out of something. Like I have a ring that says, it's engraved on the inside and it says, are enough. I have another ring that after I did the Ted talk, it's engraved with, you can do hard things. I put, after I did all my work on the inner critic, I

I printed out tiny little stop signs and taped them everywhere and it was stop. You are exactly who you are meant to be. And I didn't even have to be able to read the font on it. You are exactly who you're meant to be. All I had to do was see that stop sign. It was just, it was something external because I had been so accustomed to living with this negative narrative in my head. I needed something to visually get my attention.

And for me, was stop signs everywhere. People, they were in my car, they were in my bathroom mirror. I had three of them in the office. I them in my office on campus. And now there's one in my house, but I will always keep that one up.

TiffianyAnn (40:35)
I often look for touchstones that help me through I love the way you incorporate those. Let's talk a little bit about what happens when you start to make these shifts.

How much of it is identity versus behavior? Because you talked about those stop signs. so you've kind of leaned into this a little bit. Something happened between when you first started putting all those stop signs up and when you realized. And I would suspect that you did realize, it didn't just go away unintentionally. You realized, I don't need that any longer. So talk to me a little bit about what that looks like, please.

Suzanne M Uhl (41:15)
Well, think a lot of it is you have to, well, to give you an analogy, if you've ever encountered anybody who says a lot.

you're speaking you don't hear yourself saying it you know you're just talking about what you're talking about and sometimes it's not until you listen back to yourself with the intention of I'm gonna count my arms that suddenly you hear them and they're present everywhere and so I think it's because of that kind of mindset that sometimes I lose track of

pattern of my thinking because I'm too busy just going to where I'm going doing what I'm going to do whatever I'm not thinking I'm not in that metacognition kind of mentality and so those little visual external reminders kind of get my attention so I find that to be really helpful and in terms of identity that's where that real big work is I mean my inner critic was

was born when I was in third grade, because I failed third grade. so I had decades to listen to her and decades of that voice in my head. And so it literally wasn't until just a couple of years ago that I really fully identified her. And so meanwhile, she had been the dominant voice in my head for decades and was not going to go quietly into the night.

And so it took a lot for me to realize I am not that voice. I am not my inner critic. And I began to create space, that separation. And that's what's behind the power of learning to observe yourself, because it creates a bit of separation. But when you identify yourself with that inner critic, Enasus is me, I am Enasus, and then it's very hard to fight it, because it's you. You've identified it as you.

when you create the space, then you can begin to refute the stuff that your inner critic is saying and counter it and come up with rebuttals. And that's why I think it's good for people to know their strengths, to have evidence like those testimonials we talked about, to be able to refute the voice of your inner critic with hard evidence. I do think it's an interesting thing. Identity is, it's funny. It's a big part of the book that I'm writing now.

the 3R book because I've been Dr. Yule for like a really long time. Nobody calls me doctor anymore.

I'm I have a plaque around me somewhere. My dissertation is on the wall. But here in my office, right, nobody else sees it. And I'm not a college professor. I'm not the sage on the stage or nothing ever wanted to be that role. But you know how it goes. It's completely different. All of that gone. Just, you know, the day I turned my keys in, that's gone. And so that was hard. It was especially hard for me because

I absolutely love being a college professor. I really felt like it was who God created me to be and it is where I did my best work and super, super proud of those years. And so to shift that, who am I without that? Not who am I without the PhD, but who am I without being a college professor? And for some people that's no big deal to leave their job. But for others of us who

It becomes your identity and identity you you you are proud of and you relish it's very hard to make that shift and figure out who you are outside that because despite what you think or Despite what your inner critic says there's still a lot of you even though that particular, Identity doesn't apply anymore

TiffianyAnn (44:47)
What does it mean to unshackle your mind in everyday life?

Suzanne M Uhl (44:53)
Hmm.

I think understanding that...

You are only obligated to those people to whom you give away your power to.

And so, like I refuse to give an ass this power over me. I'll still acknowledge her. I'll even say hello. But I'm going this way and she's over there. So I think it's, it's sort of a reclaiming. That's why what was so powerful for me to write an eviction letter. The other thing that I think it's important to do that will unshackle your mind is write down your limiting beliefs and then write your reputations of those. And that's a

common strategy that's super, super powerful. And like for me, the fact and assumption labeling was very powerful. But a lot of it is being grounded in who I am and that comes to how, for me, it's how I spend my mornings. My morning rituals, you I have the things I do every morning. I can have two hours in the morning and it's about being grounded in who I am and it is not based on what anybody else thinks of me. It is not based.

on a piece of paper, it is not based on my job, it's based on the essence of who I am. because of that, I'm free to just love life, have a blast, and go forward. And I think when you get to that place, I don't have to worry so much about what other people think of me, really.

TiffianyAnn (46:16)
I wanted to ask you, know, what's for anybody who's listening is thinking, What can I do?

today or tomorrow, what can be that first action step? Because it all, for us overthinkers in the room, for us emotional, like, my gosh, this was a lot of weight. It was so good, but it was a lot of weight. What's the next step?

Suzanne M Uhl (46:40)
I think you have to carve out some space where you can really think through all the great things that you do, all your strengths. you really fall in love with that side. I think that's really important because I think that that's often the anti-narrative to the other one that you get in your head. And sometimes people need to sit with that.

And that's where I think those testimonials, it's a fun, awkward conversation. tell me the three great things you like about me. But I think that there is a lot of power in that and and realize that you if you have that voice in your head, you are not shackled to it. can you make it go away never to be heard from again? I highly doubt it. But if you can, gosh, let me know how to do it.

But I think you can turn it down and you can counter that voice and it's your life It is nobody else's it is not your inner critics life It is yours and there is no battle worth fighting than reclaiming your headspace For your betterment for your everything that is good in in the future of your life is this battle is worth it I get in there and

Fight there's so many resources whether somebody does professional therapy and I have no qualms at all with that That could be highly highly beneficial or whether you just apply some strategies you picked up from a self-help book at the Isles of Barnes and Noble or a book he got on Amazon I mean, there's so many resources things we talked about today

our practical resources every journey starts with that first step so you can make the first step to reclaiming the power that you may have given away to that voice it's your life and don't let anything stop you

TiffianyAnn (48:26)
Hello. Thank you so very much for meeting with us today, Dr. Yule. I have enjoyed it as much as I enjoy you. As a human being, I just enjoy your spirit. So thank you for being here.

TiffianyAnn Lundine (48:40)
Did you notice that Dr. Yule did not promise a life without fear or self-doubt? Instead, she reminded us of those voices that don't have to make our decisions for us. One idea that continues to stay with me is the difference between fact and assumption. How often do we get to accept, or how often do we accept, assumptions as truth without ever stopping to examine them?

That simple practice of pausing, reflecting, and asking ourselves what is actually true has the power to change how we move through our doctoral journey and perhaps every area of our lives. As you leave this episode, I encourage you to reflect on one question. What story have you been telling yourself that may no longer deserve your belief? Maybe it's you're not ready. Maybe that's not your that you're enough.

Maybe it's that everyone else has figured it out except for you. Whatever the story is, perhaps today is the day that you begin to writing a different one. If you enjoyed this conversation, please consider following the podcast. Leaving a review, it's super helpful. And sharing this episode with any somebody, anyone who may need the reminder that they are far more capable than they believe. Until next time, remember

That every dissertation tells a story, but so does every person who writes one. Thank you for joining me for another episode of Dissertating in the Trenches and Behind the Scenes. Until next time, I hope you keep writing, keep believing in yourself. You've got this.