32. So, You Made a Mistake…
As a recovering perfectionist & people pleaser, I used to spend a lot of time trying to avoid making mistakes.
Spoiler alert - it did not work.
For one thing, as human beings, we all make mistakes sometimes. Beyond that, my perfectionisty, people pleasy brain could find ways to see any choice I made as a mistake.
I can look back on situations I faced in the past and see how my brain would have made any possible choice mean something bad. (That’s part of what is so paralyzing about perfectionism and people pleasing.)
But this week I want to talk about another kind of mistake: things we did in the past that we maybe felt fine about at the time or maybe just a little bit cringey, but now we can see that they don’t actually line up with who we want to be and the values we want to live by.
I, for one, want to spend more time focusing on this kind of mistake.
I want to be clear about this - by focus on, I don’t mean beat myself up for these mistakes or make them mean something bad about me (although, before I coach myself, that’s sometimes exactly what I do, because, again, human being here with former perfectionisty, people pleasy tendencies that I still manage with coaching tools).
Here’s what I do mean when I say I want to focus on this kind of mistake: I want to notice where my past (and current) behavior does not align with who I want to be. I don’t want to be so uncomfortable with the idea of having made a mistake that I can’t stand to look at it.
I have updated values from the ones I had when I was younger (or the same values but updated expectations for how I reflect them). Some of my past behavior doesn’t measure up. And that’s ok.
Actually, it’s not just ok. I want to celebrate that. I want to see it as evidence of my growth rather than proof of how terrible I used to be. (Because I wasn’t terrible. I was a human with the mindset and skills I had at the time, trying things, not all of which I would like to repeat. And if I want to be able to continue to grow and evolve, I have to celebrate my growth rather than make it mean I used to suck.)
If you feel tortured by your past choices or anxious about potentially making choices you’ll come to regret, be sure to check out this week’s podcast. When you level up the way you think about mistakes, you get so much more freedom. Freedom from your own judgments about past you, yes, but also freedom to be who you are now and live up to your values now as well as you can, even knowing that future you might have opinions about that and updates for how you can do better.
If you love the podcast and want to take this work deeper, I have great news! I have space for new one-to-one coaching clients starting this month, so click here to schedule a call with me and we’ll see if we’re a good fit to start working together!
If there are topics y’all want me to teach and talk about on the podcast, feel free to write in and let me know by clicking here! I’d love to hear from you!
WHAT YOU’LL LEARN FROM THIS EPISODE:
Why the painful part about mistakes isn’t making the mistake.
What I see my clients making their mistakes mean without really considering that’s what they’re doing.
Why our stories about our mistakes make us want to hide away from them or numb out.
How shame about our past self stops us from learning from our mistakes.
Why it is okay to make mistakes, and how to start thinking about them in a more useful way.
What you can do to reframe the way you think about your past decisions, even if you do want to think of them as mistakes.
LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE:
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FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
This week we’re talking about how to handle mistakes.
You are listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It, the podcast for ambitious, high-achieving women who are ready to stop feeling stressed about work and kiss burnout goodbye forever. Whether you’re starting a business or staying in your day job, this show will give you the coaching and guidance you need to start loving your work today. Here’s your host, Career Coach, Kori Linn.
Hey y'all, how are you doing this week? I am doing very well. I’m getting very excited about being in California soon. Right now we're in the process of packing up our house in Seattle, which I'm going to be honest, is not my super favorite thing to do. I don't like packing, I don't like going through all my things and deciding what I want to keep and what I don't want to keep. And I get kind of anxious sometimes about like, how I pack things and making sure stuff is like protected and that nothing will get lost.
So definitely, it's been an opportunity for me to use a lot of my own tools on myself and get some coaching from my own coaches. And it's interesting too because moving away from Seattle, which is a place I've lived for a long time and a place I've really loved. Like, I'm really excited to move to California, but there is like that little tiny piece of my brain that's like, “What if it's a mistake? Like, what if I don't like it? What if it's not what I thought it would be? What if California is way too hot for me? Like what if I thought I wanted to be somewhere sunny, because I've been in Seattle for 10 years. But then when I get there, I don't like it?”
And the truth is like I have no idea what will happen when I get to California. I can't read the future, and I can't control it. But here's what I can control, I can control what I choose to think. As a coach this is the tool set that I teach my clients and I know very well, that, yeah, when I get there, my unmanaged brain will have a lot of shit to say. And then I get to choose which of those thoughts that I want to keep and which of those thoughts I want to revise and turn into something different.
And that's one piece, but I think the other piece and the piece I want to talk about today is even if I get there and like chose my thoughts, but then decided like, “Okay, it's not for me.” Like even if I got to the point at which I thought like, “Oh, this was kind of a mistake.” Or like, “Oh, like I thought I was doing something that made sense. But turns out like now I have this new information and I don't feel that way anymore.”
So the thing that makes mistakes, the most painful isn't even that we've made them. All humans make mistakes, like it's just a fact of life. It's part of what we're gonna do, it's part of what's going to happen. But what makes them so painful is the story we tell about the mistake, or the story we tell about like what the mistake means. What it means about us or what it means about the world.
And a lot of times we have very painful stories about this. We have stories like this mistake means I'm a bad person. This mistake means I'll never be successful. This mistake means past me with a bad person. This mistake means I'm never going to have the career I want to have. This mistake means I'm not cut out for this field. This mistake means any number of things. And those things we make it mean, those are very painful. And they make us not want to look at the mistake, they make us want to hide from it or run away from it.
This is an area where I see a lot of people, sometimes myself included, turned to like numbing and avoiding behaviors, right? We’re like, “Oh, I don't want to think about that mistake I made so I'm just going to go scroll on Tick Tock for a while. I don't want to think about the mistake I made and the possible repercussions for it. So I'm just going to like go to happy hour and have a glass of wine and like pretend it never happened.” Or like, “Oh, I don't want to remind my boss I made that mistake two years ago. So I'm like, not ever going to bring it up again, and just hope that he doesn't remember even though every time I have a meeting with him, I'm obsessed with thinking about it. And so I'm like kind of giving myself the experience that he's obsessively thinking about it, whether he is or not. Or like oh, I did something that I'm perceiving as mistake and now I don't want to talk to this other person about it, because I don't want them to judge me. And then I miss out on like learning that could potentially help me be better, help me be more aligned to my values.
Like I have a podcast, it's about feedback. It's about how critical feedback can help us become more of who we want to be and help us like up level our skills and it can be in the exact blueprint. But if we're very concerned with like thinking something's a mistake and reflects badly on us, we won't want to get into that blueprint. Because we've made the mistake, a symbol of pain. We've made the mistake, a symbol of failure. We've made the mistake, a symbol of our shame, and then we're not able to learn from it.
It's like we take the learning that we could potentially get, and we put it into like a hostage situation until we renegotiate the story, we're telling ourselves about the quote unquote mistake, then we're not able to access that learning.
So this week, I was like on LinkedIn, you know, like you sometimes do. And I saw this post from someone that said, it's actually a Maya Angelou quote, “Do the best you can until you know better, then when you know better do better.” And the thing is, when I saw this quote, it really touched on something I've been thinking a lot about and something I wanted to share with y'all. It's a concept that I've been thinking about for myself as I grow and as I become the next version of me. And it's also something I think about for my clients as they become the next version of themselves. Like, there's so many things my younger self did, which is me, right? Obviously, I did when I was younger, that now don't measure up to who I want to be. And don't measure up to the values I want to stand for. Like I have different values now than the person I used to be had. And whether those things were like people pleasing, or saying something without thinking it through, or failing to speak up when something bothered me, there are so many things that I look back on now that I'm like, it's not that at the time I even thought they were mistakes necessarily. It's that now looking back, I have this whole new perspective about who I want to be in the world and what kind of person I want to be and how I want to show up. And the way I was showing up back then, through that current lens of what I want to be, doesn't match up.
But here's the thing, and y'all already know this but we still worry so much about the past that I think it's really important to say it explicitly. I can't change what I did in the past, all I can do is find ways to do better now. And all I can do is keep finding ways to know better. Like when we think about that Maya Angelou quote where she says, “Do the best you can until you know better, then when you know better do better.” All I can do is find ways to do better now and to know better now.
I mean, as a coach, I can also change my current narrative about my past self. But I think it's important to call out too that I can also change how I show up now whereas I can't change how I showed up then. Like I can look at the past and say like, “That was a mistake, and I was so young and dumb.” I don't actually think that's helpful. But I also don't think for me at least at this point, it's not helpful to look at the past and go, “Well, everything I did in the past was perfect because it's what I did.”
Like that is a coaching tool that some coaches use sometimes, and it's available, but I don't want to think some of what I did was perfect. I don't want to think that it was, you know, good, or right, or that it aligned to my current values, because it doesn't align to my current values. But what I want to be able to do is think like, “Yeah, I know better now and that doesn't align to my current values. And that's okay because that person became this person.” Like, I don't have to condone what past me did to feel okay now. And I don't have to condone what past me did to like learn from it.
It's like a very subtle difference, right, between thinking like I made a mistake and that makes me a bad person. That's going to wall me off from the potential learning, versus thinking like I made a mistake, and I can learn from it. Or even like, we don't have to call it a mistake. Like I was saying, like, I made this choice, when I was younger, I would not make this choice now. And I can learn from it. And I can enjoy the growth that I've experienced. And I can decide what I want to do from here.
Like for some mistakes we've made in the past, like we might, you know, if we did something when we were younger and we didn't think it was a mistake at the time and now we do, we might want to like reach out and since when email and be like, “Hey, I see this really differently now. And I'm sorry about that.” We get to decide what we want to do now. But when we layer all that shame on, and when we make having made a mistake mean there's something wrong with us or that we're bad, we don't want to do those things, right? Because shame makes us want to hide. Shame makes us want to shut down.
And that leads to another point, like in my work as a coach what I see is that judging our past self doesn't actually help us live up to our new values because, as I just said, shame makes us hide. Shame makes us shut down. Shame is actually not a good motivator. Like I think in our culture it's very interesting because we try to shame people to get them to change their behavior. Like that's a cultural phenomenon that happens, but it's not effective.
As a coach what I see again and again with my clients is if they're shaming themselves, they don't change their behaviors. In fact, shaming ourselves often leads us back to the very behaviors we're shaming. A really good example of this is things like substance use. Like when people drink, like let's say I drank like, I mean, I didn't but - Well in the past it did. So like there were times in my past when I drank like a bottle of wine and then the next day, I would be hungover and then I would feel like, “Oh, I'm such a shitty person. I'm hung over, like what does this mean about me?” Right? So there's like the “mistake” with the judgment where we're making it mean something. And then I would judge myself all day long and then by five or six o'clock I'm tired of like spending all my time with this judgmental person who is me. And then I want to have a glass of wine to get away from that, right.
So that's how judgment and shame can lead us back to the same behaviors that we're trying to get away from with the judgment and shame. So basically, judgment and shame, there's nothing wrong with them, you're always allowed to choose them. But they're not very helpful when it comes to wanting to create sustainable change.
Like sometimes shame and judgment can create performative change, where if you shame someone, they'll perform a different action in front of you. But internally, it doesn't work. Curiosity and compassion work a lot better.
If we believe that we made a mistake, and it means something's wrong with us, we're not really incentivized to be different because we think the problems with us. Something's wrong with us so then we're like, “I guess, I’m fucked, I may as well, you know, comfort myself in whatever ways I can. Get that wine back out.” Whereas if we're like, “Oh, I made a mistake, and it means nothing about me. It's something I can be really curious about, I can have compassion for myself and understand that all humans make mistakes sometimes.” Then we can be like, “Why did I do that? What was going on for me that that's the action that I chose? What was going on for me that that's how I showed up in the world?” And then we can learn something. And then if we do want to show up differently, we now have information that can help us do that.
Here's the other thing. I personally want to keep growing, and keep evolving, and keep changing. And that means that 10 years from now, like the me who exists 10 years from now, future me, she might have thoughts about some of the stuff current me is doing. The way I am right now I'm trying as much as I can to live up to my chosen values now. But future me might have different standards, and I might not live up to them. That's always the risk, especially when we're growing and especially when we're learning. And there's so much I'm learning about all the time that informs how I want to show up in the world.
So honestly, it's pretty likely that future me is going to have standards and ideas that currently doesn't. But I still want to show up now and do my best at my current level, even though I plan to keep leveling up and keep finding ways to grow and know and do better. And if I spend all my time thinking about how like future me probably will think some of my current actions are mistakes, that's going to give me paralyzed. And I just don't think that's the best service I can offer the world. I would rather show up out loud and do my teachings, and do my coaching, and know that I'm imperfect, and believe that I still have something of value to offer. And that future me can learn something from what current me does, even if she doesn't totally agree with every action I take.
And the only other option is that I just don't take any actions, right? Like I said, the only other option is that I stay paralyzed. If all I do is worry about the standards future me has, that I don't even know about yet and can't live up to, then I can't do anything now. And then I'm just stuck.
And I also think that like then I'm probably not learning as much because I think doing things and seeing how they feel, and then being thoughtful and reflective with ourselves really helps us decide like, do I want to act like that again? Do I like how I showed up in that situation? Is that something I want to repeat or would I like to try something different?
And here's the final thing I want you all to think about. Because I've been thinking about this a lot. And it's really blowing my mind. Even if you do have mistakes, even if you do have fuck ups, like if you have them in real time. It's different when we're like looking at something we did 10 years ago, a little bit, is it different? Maybe, let's find out. Even when you have fuck ups, even your fuck ups can be awesome opportunities to live up to your values, even if they don't feel great, right?
So let's think about this in real time. If you do something and then five seconds later, your brain is like that was a mistake. If we don't make it mean anything about us, it's like we can get that learning. But it's also just another opportunity to live up to our values. Who do I want to be when I make a mistake?
All humans are going to make mistakes, so I for sure am Who do I want to be when that happens? How do I want to show up when that happens? I want to be a person who can be curious and compassionate about the fact that I will for sure have fuck ups and make mistakes because I'm a human with a human brain with human capacities. And I want to allow my fuck ups like critical feedback to be data that I can use to become more of who I want to be, to live up to my values more, and to be better at my job, to be better at my relationship.
Dr. John Gottman is this like relationship researcher and he teaches that conflict can be an opportunity for intimacy. And that idea, I read about it I don't know like 10 years ago maybe, it really blew my fucking mind. And like I'm in a relationship, I'm partnered, and this idea really helps me think about like if Alex and I, my girlfriend and I, if we're having conflict it doesn't have to mean anything's gone wrong. It doesn't have to mean I'm bad. It doesn't have to mean she's bad. It can actually be an opportunity for her and I to connect more.
And that's kind of the same idea I'm offering you about this idea of like when we make a mistake. A mistake can be a chance for you to have a greater connection with your values, even if at first it seems like you're having disconnection from your values. At any point, you can step more fully into connection with your values. And I think mistake is a really beautiful opportunity to do that. And it's kind of like a next level opportunity to do that because it often doesn't feel good to step into your values about a mistake. Like I made one recently and I like texted the person was like, “Oh, I made a mistake.” And part of my brain, of course, was like, “Don't go over there. It's dangerous, it's bad, it's going to feel shameful.” But instead, I want to turn towards it and go directly into it and admit it and be like, “I want to make this right, here's what I would like to do.” And then they get to decide on their end, right?
Okay. So to review, mistakes happen to all of us. And they don't happen to us, we do them. They're part of life, though, they're part of being human. No matter how hard we try we're going to make mistakes. And also, often if we're evolving and growing, we're going to look back on shit we did in the past, and it's not going to measure up to who we want to be now. And all of that can be something you make into a symbol of shame and feel terrible about. Or it can be something where you're like, “Yeah, that totally doesn't align with who I am and who I want to be. And it's okay. And I can learn from it. And how do I want to make amends? Or how do I want to make reparations? What do I want to do now that I'm choosing to stand in, like, in this new value I have? Like what do I want to do about the fact that I made a mistake? How do I want to create this fuckup being an opportunity for me to be even more deeply in my values?
I think if you try this on, it will really revolutionize how you think about things you've done in the past that maybe don't align with your values anymore. And it's also going to allow you to show up more fully in the now. Because you'll know you'll have a tool that you can use to be curious and compassionate with yourself in the future if you look back and think something you did now is a mistake.
And if you love what I teach, and you want some help taking things a little bit deeper and figuring out how this all applies to your own life. I've got good news for you. I've got space for a few new one on one coaching clients starting this month. So let's hop on a call. I'll give you some coaching right away to help you get going. And if it seems like a good fit, I will share with you how we can work together. Just head on over to my website and click on the work with me button and get started there.
Also, bonus, my coaching offering is totally virtual so as to better serve my global audience. And yes, I do work with people who are not native English speakers, and we've had great success doing that. There's even a testimonial on my website with someone in that category. So you can check that out on the testimonials page. All right, y'all have a lovely week, and I will talk to you next time. Bye.
Thank you for listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It. We'll have another episode for you next week. And in the meantime, if you're feeling super fired up, head on over to korilinn.com for more guidance and resources.
You are listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It, the podcast for ambitious, high-achieving women who are ready to stop feeling stressed about work and kiss burnout goodbye forever. Whether you’re starting a business or staying in your day job, this show will give you the coaching and guidance you need to start loving your work today. Here’s your host, Career Coach, Kori Linn.
Hey y'all, how are you doing this week? I am doing very well. I’m getting very excited about being in California soon. Right now we're in the process of packing up our house in Seattle, which I'm going to be honest, is not my super favorite thing to do. I don't like packing, I don't like going through all my things and deciding what I want to keep and what I don't want to keep. And I get kind of anxious sometimes about like, how I pack things and making sure stuff is like protected and that nothing will get lost.
So definitely, it's been an opportunity for me to use a lot of my own tools on myself and get some coaching from my own coaches. And it's interesting too because moving away from Seattle, which is a place I've lived for a long time and a place I've really loved. Like, I'm really excited to move to California, but there is like that little tiny piece of my brain that's like, “What if it's a mistake? Like, what if I don't like it? What if it's not what I thought it would be? What if California is way too hot for me? Like what if I thought I wanted to be somewhere sunny, because I've been in Seattle for 10 years. But then when I get there, I don't like it?”
And the truth is like I have no idea what will happen when I get to California. I can't read the future, and I can't control it. But here's what I can control, I can control what I choose to think. As a coach this is the tool set that I teach my clients and I know very well, that, yeah, when I get there, my unmanaged brain will have a lot of shit to say. And then I get to choose which of those thoughts that I want to keep and which of those thoughts I want to revise and turn into something different.
And that's one piece, but I think the other piece and the piece I want to talk about today is even if I get there and like chose my thoughts, but then decided like, “Okay, it's not for me.” Like even if I got to the point at which I thought like, “Oh, this was kind of a mistake.” Or like, “Oh, like I thought I was doing something that made sense. But turns out like now I have this new information and I don't feel that way anymore.”
So the thing that makes mistakes, the most painful isn't even that we've made them. All humans make mistakes, like it's just a fact of life. It's part of what we're gonna do, it's part of what's going to happen. But what makes them so painful is the story we tell about the mistake, or the story we tell about like what the mistake means. What it means about us or what it means about the world.
And a lot of times we have very painful stories about this. We have stories like this mistake means I'm a bad person. This mistake means I'll never be successful. This mistake means past me with a bad person. This mistake means I'm never going to have the career I want to have. This mistake means I'm not cut out for this field. This mistake means any number of things. And those things we make it mean, those are very painful. And they make us not want to look at the mistake, they make us want to hide from it or run away from it.
This is an area where I see a lot of people, sometimes myself included, turned to like numbing and avoiding behaviors, right? We’re like, “Oh, I don't want to think about that mistake I made so I'm just going to go scroll on Tick Tock for a while. I don't want to think about the mistake I made and the possible repercussions for it. So I'm just going to like go to happy hour and have a glass of wine and like pretend it never happened.” Or like, “Oh, I don't want to remind my boss I made that mistake two years ago. So I'm like, not ever going to bring it up again, and just hope that he doesn't remember even though every time I have a meeting with him, I'm obsessed with thinking about it. And so I'm like kind of giving myself the experience that he's obsessively thinking about it, whether he is or not. Or like oh, I did something that I'm perceiving as mistake and now I don't want to talk to this other person about it, because I don't want them to judge me. And then I miss out on like learning that could potentially help me be better, help me be more aligned to my values.
Like I have a podcast, it's about feedback. It's about how critical feedback can help us become more of who we want to be and help us like up level our skills and it can be in the exact blueprint. But if we're very concerned with like thinking something's a mistake and reflects badly on us, we won't want to get into that blueprint. Because we've made the mistake, a symbol of pain. We've made the mistake, a symbol of failure. We've made the mistake, a symbol of our shame, and then we're not able to learn from it.
It's like we take the learning that we could potentially get, and we put it into like a hostage situation until we renegotiate the story, we're telling ourselves about the quote unquote mistake, then we're not able to access that learning.
So this week, I was like on LinkedIn, you know, like you sometimes do. And I saw this post from someone that said, it's actually a Maya Angelou quote, “Do the best you can until you know better, then when you know better do better.” And the thing is, when I saw this quote, it really touched on something I've been thinking a lot about and something I wanted to share with y'all. It's a concept that I've been thinking about for myself as I grow and as I become the next version of me. And it's also something I think about for my clients as they become the next version of themselves. Like, there's so many things my younger self did, which is me, right? Obviously, I did when I was younger, that now don't measure up to who I want to be. And don't measure up to the values I want to stand for. Like I have different values now than the person I used to be had. And whether those things were like people pleasing, or saying something without thinking it through, or failing to speak up when something bothered me, there are so many things that I look back on now that I'm like, it's not that at the time I even thought they were mistakes necessarily. It's that now looking back, I have this whole new perspective about who I want to be in the world and what kind of person I want to be and how I want to show up. And the way I was showing up back then, through that current lens of what I want to be, doesn't match up.
But here's the thing, and y'all already know this but we still worry so much about the past that I think it's really important to say it explicitly. I can't change what I did in the past, all I can do is find ways to do better now. And all I can do is keep finding ways to know better. Like when we think about that Maya Angelou quote where she says, “Do the best you can until you know better, then when you know better do better.” All I can do is find ways to do better now and to know better now.
I mean, as a coach, I can also change my current narrative about my past self. But I think it's important to call out too that I can also change how I show up now whereas I can't change how I showed up then. Like I can look at the past and say like, “That was a mistake, and I was so young and dumb.” I don't actually think that's helpful. But I also don't think for me at least at this point, it's not helpful to look at the past and go, “Well, everything I did in the past was perfect because it's what I did.”
Like that is a coaching tool that some coaches use sometimes, and it's available, but I don't want to think some of what I did was perfect. I don't want to think that it was, you know, good, or right, or that it aligned to my current values, because it doesn't align to my current values. But what I want to be able to do is think like, “Yeah, I know better now and that doesn't align to my current values. And that's okay because that person became this person.” Like, I don't have to condone what past me did to feel okay now. And I don't have to condone what past me did to like learn from it.
It's like a very subtle difference, right, between thinking like I made a mistake and that makes me a bad person. That's going to wall me off from the potential learning, versus thinking like I made a mistake, and I can learn from it. Or even like, we don't have to call it a mistake. Like I was saying, like, I made this choice, when I was younger, I would not make this choice now. And I can learn from it. And I can enjoy the growth that I've experienced. And I can decide what I want to do from here.
Like for some mistakes we've made in the past, like we might, you know, if we did something when we were younger and we didn't think it was a mistake at the time and now we do, we might want to like reach out and since when email and be like, “Hey, I see this really differently now. And I'm sorry about that.” We get to decide what we want to do now. But when we layer all that shame on, and when we make having made a mistake mean there's something wrong with us or that we're bad, we don't want to do those things, right? Because shame makes us want to hide. Shame makes us want to shut down.
And that leads to another point, like in my work as a coach what I see is that judging our past self doesn't actually help us live up to our new values because, as I just said, shame makes us hide. Shame makes us shut down. Shame is actually not a good motivator. Like I think in our culture it's very interesting because we try to shame people to get them to change their behavior. Like that's a cultural phenomenon that happens, but it's not effective.
As a coach what I see again and again with my clients is if they're shaming themselves, they don't change their behaviors. In fact, shaming ourselves often leads us back to the very behaviors we're shaming. A really good example of this is things like substance use. Like when people drink, like let's say I drank like, I mean, I didn't but - Well in the past it did. So like there were times in my past when I drank like a bottle of wine and then the next day, I would be hungover and then I would feel like, “Oh, I'm such a shitty person. I'm hung over, like what does this mean about me?” Right? So there's like the “mistake” with the judgment where we're making it mean something. And then I would judge myself all day long and then by five or six o'clock I'm tired of like spending all my time with this judgmental person who is me. And then I want to have a glass of wine to get away from that, right.
So that's how judgment and shame can lead us back to the same behaviors that we're trying to get away from with the judgment and shame. So basically, judgment and shame, there's nothing wrong with them, you're always allowed to choose them. But they're not very helpful when it comes to wanting to create sustainable change.
Like sometimes shame and judgment can create performative change, where if you shame someone, they'll perform a different action in front of you. But internally, it doesn't work. Curiosity and compassion work a lot better.
If we believe that we made a mistake, and it means something's wrong with us, we're not really incentivized to be different because we think the problems with us. Something's wrong with us so then we're like, “I guess, I’m fucked, I may as well, you know, comfort myself in whatever ways I can. Get that wine back out.” Whereas if we're like, “Oh, I made a mistake, and it means nothing about me. It's something I can be really curious about, I can have compassion for myself and understand that all humans make mistakes sometimes.” Then we can be like, “Why did I do that? What was going on for me that that's the action that I chose? What was going on for me that that's how I showed up in the world?” And then we can learn something. And then if we do want to show up differently, we now have information that can help us do that.
Here's the other thing. I personally want to keep growing, and keep evolving, and keep changing. And that means that 10 years from now, like the me who exists 10 years from now, future me, she might have thoughts about some of the stuff current me is doing. The way I am right now I'm trying as much as I can to live up to my chosen values now. But future me might have different standards, and I might not live up to them. That's always the risk, especially when we're growing and especially when we're learning. And there's so much I'm learning about all the time that informs how I want to show up in the world.
So honestly, it's pretty likely that future me is going to have standards and ideas that currently doesn't. But I still want to show up now and do my best at my current level, even though I plan to keep leveling up and keep finding ways to grow and know and do better. And if I spend all my time thinking about how like future me probably will think some of my current actions are mistakes, that's going to give me paralyzed. And I just don't think that's the best service I can offer the world. I would rather show up out loud and do my teachings, and do my coaching, and know that I'm imperfect, and believe that I still have something of value to offer. And that future me can learn something from what current me does, even if she doesn't totally agree with every action I take.
And the only other option is that I just don't take any actions, right? Like I said, the only other option is that I stay paralyzed. If all I do is worry about the standards future me has, that I don't even know about yet and can't live up to, then I can't do anything now. And then I'm just stuck.
And I also think that like then I'm probably not learning as much because I think doing things and seeing how they feel, and then being thoughtful and reflective with ourselves really helps us decide like, do I want to act like that again? Do I like how I showed up in that situation? Is that something I want to repeat or would I like to try something different?
And here's the final thing I want you all to think about. Because I've been thinking about this a lot. And it's really blowing my mind. Even if you do have mistakes, even if you do have fuck ups, like if you have them in real time. It's different when we're like looking at something we did 10 years ago, a little bit, is it different? Maybe, let's find out. Even when you have fuck ups, even your fuck ups can be awesome opportunities to live up to your values, even if they don't feel great, right?
So let's think about this in real time. If you do something and then five seconds later, your brain is like that was a mistake. If we don't make it mean anything about us, it's like we can get that learning. But it's also just another opportunity to live up to our values. Who do I want to be when I make a mistake?
All humans are going to make mistakes, so I for sure am Who do I want to be when that happens? How do I want to show up when that happens? I want to be a person who can be curious and compassionate about the fact that I will for sure have fuck ups and make mistakes because I'm a human with a human brain with human capacities. And I want to allow my fuck ups like critical feedback to be data that I can use to become more of who I want to be, to live up to my values more, and to be better at my job, to be better at my relationship.
Dr. John Gottman is this like relationship researcher and he teaches that conflict can be an opportunity for intimacy. And that idea, I read about it I don't know like 10 years ago maybe, it really blew my fucking mind. And like I'm in a relationship, I'm partnered, and this idea really helps me think about like if Alex and I, my girlfriend and I, if we're having conflict it doesn't have to mean anything's gone wrong. It doesn't have to mean I'm bad. It doesn't have to mean she's bad. It can actually be an opportunity for her and I to connect more.
And that's kind of the same idea I'm offering you about this idea of like when we make a mistake. A mistake can be a chance for you to have a greater connection with your values, even if at first it seems like you're having disconnection from your values. At any point, you can step more fully into connection with your values. And I think mistake is a really beautiful opportunity to do that. And it's kind of like a next level opportunity to do that because it often doesn't feel good to step into your values about a mistake. Like I made one recently and I like texted the person was like, “Oh, I made a mistake.” And part of my brain, of course, was like, “Don't go over there. It's dangerous, it's bad, it's going to feel shameful.” But instead, I want to turn towards it and go directly into it and admit it and be like, “I want to make this right, here's what I would like to do.” And then they get to decide on their end, right?
Okay. So to review, mistakes happen to all of us. And they don't happen to us, we do them. They're part of life, though, they're part of being human. No matter how hard we try we're going to make mistakes. And also, often if we're evolving and growing, we're going to look back on shit we did in the past, and it's not going to measure up to who we want to be now. And all of that can be something you make into a symbol of shame and feel terrible about. Or it can be something where you're like, “Yeah, that totally doesn't align with who I am and who I want to be. And it's okay. And I can learn from it. And how do I want to make amends? Or how do I want to make reparations? What do I want to do now that I'm choosing to stand in, like, in this new value I have? Like what do I want to do about the fact that I made a mistake? How do I want to create this fuckup being an opportunity for me to be even more deeply in my values?
I think if you try this on, it will really revolutionize how you think about things you've done in the past that maybe don't align with your values anymore. And it's also going to allow you to show up more fully in the now. Because you'll know you'll have a tool that you can use to be curious and compassionate with yourself in the future if you look back and think something you did now is a mistake.
And if you love what I teach, and you want some help taking things a little bit deeper and figuring out how this all applies to your own life. I've got good news for you. I've got space for a few new one on one coaching clients starting this month. So let's hop on a call. I'll give you some coaching right away to help you get going. And if it seems like a good fit, I will share with you how we can work together. Just head on over to my website and click on the work with me button and get started there.
Also, bonus, my coaching offering is totally virtual so as to better serve my global audience. And yes, I do work with people who are not native English speakers, and we've had great success doing that. There's even a testimonial on my website with someone in that category. So you can check that out on the testimonials page. All right, y'all have a lovely week, and I will talk to you next time. Bye.
Thank you for listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It. We'll have another episode for you next week. And in the meantime, if you're feeling super fired up, head on over to korilinn.com for more guidance and resources.
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