How To Deal With Mistakes

This blog post was sparked from a recent incident I shared on Instagram where I totally forgot to record a tarot reading. I could have easily blamed “technology”, but instead I admitted that I’d fucked up, created a detailed written overview of the session (thereby giving them more value as I went into further detail than we’d had time for in the session), and then… let it go. I moved on.

Ooooh Shit.

What’s the hardest part of making a mistake?

Owning it.

Right?

I don’t know about you, but when I screw up, the first place my brain goes is “How do I cover this up?”

But that’s the worst thing you can do. For several reasons.

Goodbye Control

We’re always talking about how important it is to let go of our controlling tendencies. But that’s not the same as giving our control to somebody else.

When you lie, you give up control. It may feel like you’re taking charge of the situation so that you don’t look bad, but in fact, you’re relinquishing any sort of freedom in your exchanges as you’re constantly navigating your brain to keep the lie alive.

Here’s an example: let’s say your Manager asked you for a report at the end of the week. At several points during the week, your child (doing school remotely from home) needed tech support, and so you had to dedicate countless hours helping them stay afloat. In the meantime, you weren’t able to get to your report. On Friday, you write to your Manager to say that your computer died and you’ve lost everything - that you’re going to need a few more days to redo the report and to have your computer fixed.

Phewf - you dodged a bullet, right?

Not even a little. First of all, now you have to monitor the implications of every single conversation or exchange to make sure it lines up with your fib. And not just with your Manager - with colleagues, as well, so that they don’t inadvertently reveal your lie during casual conversation. You’re also technically set back several days, which means you are going to fall behind while you’re pretending that your computer is getting fixed. The list goes on.

Inner Moral Compass

Here’s the other thing: when we lie, we are creating shadows. I’ve talked a lot about shadow work over the past few months (grab my free Me and My Shadow workbook book here) as I begin to see the deeper and more prominent ways that your shadow (i.e. fear, guilt, shame - all of the icky stuff that lives below your conscious surface) can make it really difficult to do all of the things you want.

If you’re a person with a conscience (and not everybody is, which has been exceptionally obvious for the past, ahem, 4 years), you can’t just lie without consequence. Whether or not you feel the guilt consciously, it’s either going to be putting a lens over everything you do because you have a sense of right and wrong, or else you think you feel fine but underneath, running amok in your shadow, you’re solidifying the idea that you’re not strong enough to tell the truth.

Not very helpful, right?

Not Good Enough

If you feel the need to lie, then you believe you didn’t do a good job. You’ve somehow drank the kool-aid that you should have done this super human feat, but you didn’t. As if anybody could.

And that contributes to your feelings of insecurity, of not good enough. Instead of meeting yourself where you’re at, accepting reality and giving yourself grace (which your Manager should also do), you’re continuing this perception that you’re able to do it all, which will come back to bite you later when something similar happens, and you have to continue to lie.

We have been conditioned to blame ourselves for not being able to achieve what no human could achieve. It is the stupidest lie we’ve ever been told.

Just Say The Truth

No matter the situation, we all have found ourselves knee deep in a problem and we want to escape.

As soon as your brain starts coming up with ways to avoid the short term pain of coming clean, stop yourself. Short term pain is better than long term pain. In the short term, you feel uncomfortable, might experience some flack, but generally (unless you’re dealing with really complicated or emotionally unintelligent people), if you give yourself grace, you’re showing others how to treat you, as well.

Let me repeat that: if you own your mistake, but give yourself grace, others will give you what you’ve given yourself.

We show other people how to treat us by how we treat ourselves. It’s one aspect of boundary building. (Here’s another blog post I wrote about setting boundaries.)

(Think of how people who can’t self advocate get walked all over - if you don’t think you’re worthy, certainly very few others will.)

But how.

So we really want to own up, but fear is stopping us from speaking. How do we own our mistake when our voices are shaking, we’re sweating, shaking, blushing, our brains feel fuzzy, our breath is shallow…

If you’ve followed me for any period of time, this is starting to sound familiar.

And like we always do, we go back to the basics: standing, breathing, speaking and reading.

If you haven’t yet downloaded my free public speaking guide, grab it here.

Stand tall to allow energy (especially nervousness) to move through your body instead of getting stuck, let’s say in your neck and causing a muscle spasm. Breath deeply and using controlled breathing to stimulate your parasympathetic nervous system (the one that keeps you calm), and send a signal to your brain that you’re not in fight/flight/freeze mode. Your brain, in turn, stops spiking your bloodstream with the stress hormones cortisol and adrenaline, which are the root cause for all of the physical symptoms I mentioned above. Speak using your optimum pitch (which sounds authoritative to others). And if you need to write it out before saying it, use your text mapping skills while reading. (Again, all of this is explained in further detail in the free guide.)

Move on.

Once you’ve owned your mistake, the next day or so are filled with the challenge of constant reminders from your brain that you fucked up. You might be worried about backlash, or about getting penalized, or about somebody being angry.

Remind yourself that you area not obligated to take on anybody else’s energy, and if somebody is angry with you, that is fine. It’s also temporary. And might even be justified, depending on the mistake.

Keep moving forward, staying gracious with yourself and not allowing uncertainly to cloud your vision. It’s always the right thing to own your mistakes.*

*NB and this is really important: if you’re being threatened by violence or could otherwise invite danger upon yourself, tell whatever lie is necessary. Self protection is necessary.

What do you think? Do you agree that owning your mistakes is always the right choice? Tell me why or why not in the comments!

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