November 7, 2023 • 23 mins
Mistakes are a crucial part of career growth, a necessary stepping stone to mastering your new role. Yet so many of us are terrified of making a mistake at work. This fear can be the culprit behind overthinking, procrastination, and even most common, burnout.
In today's episode, Erin helps you to reframe your perspective and expectation around mistakes. She offers clear strategies to help dial down your fear around mistakes so you can learn and perform effectively.
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erinmfoley.com/freeguide
We're also eager to hear from you, so don't hesitate to reach out with your queries or topics you'd like us to cover. Email us at NewRoleNowWhat@gmail.com
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Fear of making a mistake.
You are not alone in havingthis fear.
Let's dive into today's episode, where I'm gonna help you dial
this way down.
Hey everybody, thank you somuch for tuning in.
I am back to bring you a newepisode.
No, I have not ghosted you, Iam still here.
(00:20):
I am still going to be makingepisodes.
I know it has been a minute.
I've been really busy workingwith all of my clients, but I
have not forgotten about you alland I'm excited to be bringing
you a new episode today.
So today we're going to betalking about a very hot topic.
We're going to be talking aboutmistakes and generally this
shows up for my clients in twoways.
(00:42):
One is the fear of making amistake and how that impacts the
roles that you take, the levelof anxiety you have in the new
role, how you show up for yourjob, what you avoid doing, how
much you overthink.
And the other piece of mistakesis what to do after you've made
a mistake.
So today's episode I'm going toreally focus on your fear of
(01:03):
making mistakes and help youdial that down.
And the next episode I'm goingto dive into what to do if
you've made a mistake and howyou can bounce back and recover
from that.
So one of the reasons why thisis such a significant topic for
so many of my clients is becausefor some of you, who are highly
ambitious and you have ahistory of being pretty
(01:25):
successful, you don't have a lotof exposure to making mistakes.
So you literally don't have alot of resilience around this
because you've managed to staykind of in your box and in your
zone.
You've been good at a lot ofthe things that you've done.
Or maybe you've made somemistakes like way in the past,
(01:48):
but in your previous role youreally mastered it.
So you didn't have a lot ofopportunities where you felt
like you were going to mess up,because you felt pretty
confident and comfortable.
It was easy for you to sort ofmove through your work day
without missing things.
You know your job and your rolewasn't changing or challenging
you significantly.
So what happens is thensuddenly you're leveling up and
(02:11):
you may be in a new company,maybe just a new department, but
the risk of making a mistakecertainly increases because you
are now in the position ofchallenging yourself,
challenging your skills,challenging your knowledge.
So it is tricky in that to getthrough the fear of making a
mistake.
We really kind of want youexposed to making mistakes right
(02:34):
.
The more exposure you have toit, the less you become so
fearful of what's going tohappen and the more you get to
practice being resilient.
So if you have this reallyreally strong fear of making
mistakes, I want you to knowthat if you are in a role that's
feeling challenging for you,where this is showing up, this
is the perfect place for you todo this emotional work and to
(02:56):
create this resilience that themore you are being stretched,
the more you're going to be ableto work through this fear and
also work through what to dowhen mistakes happen.
So let's just talk about aquick review on why it's really
important to dial down the fearof making a mistake.
It's not because I want you tolike move through your role or
(03:17):
through your career beingcareless.
Obviously, it's really normalto want to mitigate mistakes as
much as possible, but it'sproblematic because it can
really affect the fear of like.
Trying to avoid mistakes canreally affect how you're showing
up in your role and it canlimit you substantially.
So one of the things that Ioften see is that people who
(03:38):
have a really strong fear ofmaking a mistake will avoid
really diving into anything.
So it will create aprocrastination pattern that's
extremely strong, because you'reconstantly afraid that you
don't know enough or that youcan't perfect it enough, that
you need to sort of wait untilyou have more information or you
(03:59):
feel more confident or you candive into it more substantially.
Before you'll dive into thingsBecause you really really want
to make sure that you're doingit perfectly.
And so you end up working onlyunder extreme pressure of a
deadline.
And it's fine.
It works for some people.
Some people just sort of workon deadlines all the time.
But I find for many of myclients, myself included, that
(04:23):
Procrastination pressure canreally burn you out.
It's just it can becomeuntenable as you grow in your
career, as the pressures becomestronger and you really are
trying to Figure out how tocreate a pattern for yourself
where you're able to dive in andchip away at work so that
you're not feeling that intensepressure at the end.
But if you have an intense fearof making a mistake and having
(04:45):
to do it perfectly, you'll oftenfind yourself avoiding diving
into the work the over.
The other thing that can happenif you have an extreme fear of
making a mistake is that youoverthink, you overcheck, you
over prepare everything.
So it means that you're workingat a hundred and fifty percent
all the time, and this alsocreates creates a lot of
(05:06):
exhaustion and a lot of burnout.
You know, working at a hundredfifty percent is not only not
possible to maintain, but what Ialso find that's interesting is
that for many of my clients,putting in the hundred and fifty
percent does not create ahundred and fifty percent impact
.
So you might be working onsomething and you are going over
(05:28):
it and over it and over it andover preparing it and checking
it, and the difference betweenwhat you completed two hours ago
and what you've completed nowis not significant.
So you've spent an additionaltwo hours on something because
you're so terrified that you'regoing to miss something or make
(05:48):
a mistake, and it hasn'tactually created a outcome or a
product that is significantlybetter.
So you're putting in a ton moreeffort and time and that effort
and time is not, on the otherend, creating an impact.
That is that significant.
The third reason why I thinkit's really important to address
(06:11):
the fear of making mistakes isthat it can make you just like
your work.
It can really make you feel alot of anxiety and a lot of
resistance to your role, yourjob, that when you clean that
piece up, people will find thatthey actually enjoy the work and
they're able to dive in moreand they're able to Contribute
more, and it's much morefulfilling because they're not
(06:32):
in that constant state ofanxiety.
So what I want to offer youtoday is an easy way to start to
address this fear of making amistake.
Certainly for some of you, thisfear will be buried in some
stuff from your past.
When I'm doing one-on-onecoaching, I'm really looking at
if this fear of making a mistakecomes from a trauma from your
(06:53):
past, or just a pattern that wasdeveloped or Something that
happened to you when you were inschool or with your parents, or
if it's cultural.
There's a lot of differentthings that can affect this and
certainly it can be reallyhelpful To tease those out and
look at how those are showing upfor you now.
But I also think sometimesreally simple reframes can help
(07:14):
the brain significantly to easethis fear and to have a more
neutral, open and rationalapproach to Mistakes.
That can really help you feelmore free.
So the first thing I want togive you as an important reframe
when it comes to the fear ofmaking mistakes is that avoiding
mistakes avoids progress.
Avoiding mistakes avoidsProgress.
(07:37):
It's kind of like the lean intofailure bumper sticker that's
everywhere.
And I want to be clear becauseI hate slogans that we have in
the self-help world, because Ithink they often oversimplify
things and sometimes they soundreally good in theory, but the
brain is like, yeah, no thanks.
Like yeah, that sounds great,but I'm obviously not going to
walk around my life just tryingto fail at everything left and
(08:00):
right.
We don't want you walkingaround your job just failing
everywhere you go, because thereare real consequences to that
and certainly, depending on yourrole, the impact of a mistake
is different in different roles.
We don't want our doctor to bemaking careless mistakes left
and right, so I'm not going tosay that you just need to be
(08:21):
trying to fail all the time.
Failure is good, sometimes it is, sometimes it's impactful, but
I think it is really importantto get clear and specific that
if you are truly trying to avoidmistakes at all costs, you will
end up avoiding progress.
(08:42):
You don't gain progress byperforming perfectly.
You actually gain it by yourwillingness to dive into the new
challenge, which means that youare opting into having a
learning curve, which meansthere's going to be some
mistakes that are made.
So I don't want you failingleft and right, but I want you
(09:04):
to really get clear on theenvironments and the times that
it makes sense for you to bemaking mistakes in ways that you
can lean into that.
So I think it's reallyimportant to look at your role
and to look at what it is thatyou need to grow in terms of
your knowledge base, your skillbase, maybe their systems.
(09:27):
You're learning, maybe you'retrying to move to the next level
and you're looking at all thethings that you want to develop
in yourself to get there.
And I want you to list out allof the likely mistakes that
happen when someone isprogressing to that level,
whether it's mastering this roleor moving into the next role.
(09:50):
What are the likely mistakes inthis role?
Because I think we can reallybe confused about our
expectations when we go intosomething.
If we're looking at it from theoutside, we likely are able to
see.
If we just plug Sally into thatrole and we're not Sally and
we're watching Sally it makessense to us that she's going to
(10:12):
have to adjust, learn, she'sgoing to have things that she
misses, things she doesn't knowand mistakes that she makes.
And if you're looking at therole from the outside, you can
probably see where those likelywill be.
Is there a lot of systemsinvolved?
Are there logistics that shemay miss?
Are there things that she mightget confused about in a meeting
(10:32):
and she might say the wrongthing?
Just look at all the placeswhere, if she were really
throwing herself into that role,into learning, into
contributing, into askingquestions, what are all the
mistakes that would likely occurat some point?
And then I want you to askyourself are you willing to opt
into those mistakes in order tolearn and master this role?
(10:55):
Because avoiding mistakes willavoid your progress.
So if you want to master therole, you are opting in two
mistakes at some level, andthere are lots of low impact
mistakes that come with many ofour new roles and in fact,
(11:15):
there's a level of mistakesthat's often expected when we
take on a new job, that oursupervisors and teams kind of
understand.
A lot of times there's systemseven to catch those or there's
double checking, and I will findthat my clients, even who have
maybe management or someone whohas been in the role longer, who
(11:37):
is kind of a backup check whenthey're finding the mistakes or
finding the errors.
My clients are really takingthat to heart and feeling
terrible and making it mean abunch of things, despite the
fact that the very reason whythe system is created to catch
your mistake is because there'san understanding that there's
going to be some mistakes.
(11:57):
Sometimes the environment you'rein is less forgiving of
mistakes than others, but oftenthe environment is more
forgiving of mistakes than youare of mistakes.
So I'm going to say that againMost of the time the environment
you're in is more forgiving ofthe mistakes than you are,
particularly for my clients, forthe type of people that are
(12:17):
attracted to the work that I dotuning into this podcast.
So many of you have such highexpectations of yourself and
such perfectionistic tendenciesthat you tend to hold yourself
to an incredibly high standardand your mistakes are just like
not an option for me.
I'm not comfortable with them.
You make it mean a bunch ofthings about yourself and so,
(12:38):
while the environment might besaying it's fine we understand
this happens, we understand whyyou missed that you're really
making it mean that you're notcompetent in some way, but
opting in at the beginning byreally reminding your brain of
all of the ways in whichmistakes are going to probably
show up in this job can be sohelpful.
(13:00):
I did this in business building.
I do this with anyone who I'mtalking to who is building a
business.
I always talk to them aboutreally making a list of all the
things that aren't going to workand opting into that, because
when you're building a business,there's a million things that
don't work.
When you're learning sales andyou're learning marketing and
you're creating content and allthe things and you have to opt
into that and know that you'regoing to make mistakes, things
(13:22):
are not going to work, you'regoing to feel like things are
failing and it can help thebrain a lot to just see them
written out and hear yourselfsaying, yeah, I opt into that, I
want the progress.
So I'm willing to be resilientwith the mistake because I want
the progress in learning this.
The second reframe that I wantto offer you that has really
(13:46):
helped me throughout my life andI have the privilege of seeing
from the inside because I workwith so many incredibly
successful, talented, smart,ambitious people is that
competent, successful peoplemake mistakes.
Competent, successful peoplemake mistakes.
(14:09):
One of the things that I seethat creates a lot of mistake
tension in my clients is thatthey have an assumption that
competent people don't mess up,don't make mistakes and don't
have failures.
In theory, you may know like,oh yeah, successful people fail.
(14:29):
You know like successful peopletell the stories of their
failures.
But really in your day to daylife, you're sort of moving
through the world with thisassumption that you can't have
mistakes and competency together.
And it's not true.
And it's so important that yoube like that you open your eyes
(14:50):
to this and you really lookaround the room and allow your
brain to see.
Look at the people in the roomwho you see as so unbelievably
competent.
They not only have mademistakes, they still make
mistakes.
They've not only made them inthe past, they're still making
mistakes today.
(15:11):
Competent, successful peoplemake mistakes.
And so you have to reallydisconnect this idea that making
a mistake means you're notcompetent.
Right, competency is reallyabout the overall outcomes you
produce over a period of time.
It's about consistency.
It's not about never making amistake.
(15:31):
I'm also not saying that ifsomeone is showing up in their
job and they are making highimpact mistakes over and over
and over and over and over again.
Perhaps they're not competentin that specific job, perhaps
there's a skill they don't have,perhaps it's not a fit Right?
I understand that this is anuanced topic, but what is also
(15:52):
true is that people who are verycompetent, have mastered their
role, are extremely successful.
Their competency is not aboutthe fact that they never make a
mistake, never misspeak, neverdon't have an answer.
It's that when you look at them, you're able to see that
overall, they produce positiveoutcomes consistently, and
(16:15):
that's what makes you trust them, right?
So if you look at someone who'sin the room that you see as
really competent and you imaginethat they make a mistake, you
can't really see that.
Imagine that they make amistake and ask yourself what
you would make that mean.
And most of the time, myclients will be like it's fine,
like I get it, because I knowthey're competent, I trust them,
I trust their output.
(16:37):
If you are avoiding mistakes100% of the time, you aren't
going to grow your knowledge oryour skills, and so the reason I
know that competent people andsuccessful people make mistakes
is because, in order to becomecompetent and successful, they
have to be willing to have somemisses.
They have to be willing to notknow.
They have to be willing to messsomething up, because if you
(17:00):
aren't willing to do that,you're not challenging yourself
truly.
Not just like in the inspiringway of challenge yourself, but
in the practical way of you know, if I want to learn how to
create a webinar, I have to bewilling to have things mess up.
To have things not work, I haveto be willing to sit down and
do it wrong.
There's just no way for me toavoid making mistakes at all
(17:24):
costs and also grow that skill.
So competent, successful peoplemake mistakes and the final
reframe that I want to offer youis that confident people can
handle making mistakes.
Confident people can handlemaking mistakes.
So many of my clients will say Ijust want to feel confident.
I want to confident.
(17:45):
I just smashed the wordscompetent and confident together
, which they do want to feel.
I guess confident is how theywant to feel, but many of them
talk about wanting to show upwith confidence that they are.
If I could just fill in theblank, I would feel confident,
and oftentimes we think like ifI performed perfectly, if I
(18:05):
never made mistakes, if my workwas always given positive
feedback, I would then feelconfident and calm.
I wouldn't have anxiety, I'dskip into work.
And it's just not true.
To feel confident, you actuallyhave to believe you can handle
making mistakes.
(18:26):
So when I'm in a coachingsession this is such a good
example of this and I am workingsomeone through something early
on I really felt connected tomy ability as a coach.
I felt confident in my abilityas a coach and I also felt
confident in going in adirection that wasn't working
(18:47):
and backing up and moving to adifferent one.
So if I made a mistake and Ithought, oh, I'm sort of going
down a road that I thought wasgoing to get us to loosen
something and I've made amistake, this isn't the right
road, this isn't the rightquestions, this isn't the right
exercise, I have no problemsaying this doesn't feel right.
(19:09):
I kind of feel like I've movedyou in one direction and it's
not working.
I want to back up and move youin a different one.
I get it.
It's not like a blatant mistake,the way you might think about
it, but what I'm trying to sayis like I'm not afraid to be
wrong when I'm coaching.
I'm not afraid of making amistake where someone is like I
don't like this or I don't wantyou to be doing this or I don't
(19:32):
want to do this exercise and I'mlike, ok, and I back up and do
something different.
I'm not afraid to say, oh, I'msorry, I made a mistake with
that, because I really dobelieve in this particular skill
.
I can handle it.
I can handle making a mistake,I can handle getting feedback
that someone doesn't likesomething, and knowing that I
(19:53):
can handle that makes me feel somuch more confident in pushing
that skill and showing up anddoing the work and growing it
and progressing it.
So the confidence does not comefrom not making mistakes.
It comes from knowing you canhandle making mistakes.
(20:13):
So I want you to really shiftinto realistic expectations that
making mistakes is going to benecessary.
You're going to have to optinto them in order to master
this role.
And, rather than making yourgoal to not make mistakes, make
(20:34):
your goal to be confident thatyou can handle it.
And in the next episode I'mreally going to talk to you
about when you make a mistake.
What do you do?
How do you show up for yourself?
How do you address it?
How do you deal with it in away that it doesn't become
something that spins or you arereally hard on yourself for.
But I want you to start withtoday's episode of really just
(20:56):
pushing your mindset aroundmistakes in general and I really
want you to play around withthese reframes that avoiding
mistakes avoids progress, thatcompetent, successful people
make mistakes and that to beconfident, you have to believe
you can handle making mistakes,because confident people can
(21:17):
handle making mistakes.
So your work is in writing downall of the mistakes that you're
opting into, all of the mistakesthat will be likely as a part
of the journey of learning thisrole and mastering this role and
really, ahead of time,reminding your brain that you
are making a decision to optinto these, to showing up for
(21:40):
yourself even though you knowmistakes are going to happen,
and for you not making them meanthat you're not competent, and
for you to remember that to gainthe confidence that you're
wanting, you have to be willingto make those mistakes.
So I will be back with the nextepisode on what to do when a
mistake happens.
(22:00):
Thank you, guys, so much fortuning in.
Please feel free to rate andgive comments on this podcast,
especially, if you like it, youcan do that on Spotify and Apple
.
It really helps to get reviewsand ratings and I'll be back
with more great info for you all, and I hope that you guys have
(22:20):
an amazing week.
Fear of making a mistake.
You are not alone in havingthis fear.
Let's dive into today's episode, where I'm gonna help you dial
this way down.
Hey everybody, thank you somuch for tuning in.
I am back to bring you a newepisode.
No, I have not ghosted you, Iam still here.
(00:20):
I am still going to be makingepisodes.
I know it has been a minute.
I've been really busy workingwith all of my clients, but I
have not forgotten about you alland I'm excited to be bringing
you a new episode today.
So today we're going to betalking about a very hot topic.
We're going to be talking aboutmistakes and generally this
shows up for my clients in twoways.
(00:42):
One is the fear of making amistake and how that impacts the
roles that you take, the levelof anxiety you have in the new
role, how you show up for yourjob, what you avoid doing, how
much you overthink.
And the other piece of mistakesis what to do after you've made
a mistake.
So today's episode I'm going toreally focus on your fear of
(01:03):
making mistakes and help youdial that down.
And the next episode I'm goingto dive into what to do if
you've made a mistake and howyou can bounce back and recover
from that.
So one of the reasons why thisis such a significant topic for
so many of my clients is becausefor some of you, who are highly
ambitious and you have ahistory of being pretty
(01:25):
successful, you don't have a lotof exposure to making mistakes.
So you literally don't have alot of resilience around this
because you've managed to staykind of in your box and in your
zone.
You've been good at a lot ofthe things that you've done.
Or maybe you've made somemistakes like way in the past,
(01:48):
but in your previous role youreally mastered it.
So you didn't have a lot ofopportunities where you felt
like you were going to mess up,because you felt pretty
confident and comfortable.
It was easy for you to sort ofmove through your work day
without missing things.
You know your job and your rolewasn't changing or challenging
you significantly.
So what happens is thensuddenly you're leveling up and
(02:11):
you may be in a new company,maybe just a new department, but
the risk of making a mistakecertainly increases because you
are now in the position ofchallenging yourself,
challenging your skills,challenging your knowledge.
So it is tricky in that to getthrough the fear of making a
mistake.
We really kind of want youexposed to making mistakes right
(02:34):
.
The more exposure you have toit, the less you become so
fearful of what's going tohappen and the more you get to
practice being resilient.
So if you have this reallyreally strong fear of making
mistakes, I want you to knowthat if you are in a role that's
feeling challenging for you,where this is showing up, this
is the perfect place for you todo this emotional work and to
(02:56):
create this resilience that themore you are being stretched,
the more you're going to be ableto work through this fear and
also work through what to dowhen mistakes happen.
So let's just talk about aquick review on why it's really
important to dial down the fearof making a mistake.
It's not because I want you tolike move through your role or
(03:17):
through your career beingcareless.
Obviously, it's really normalto want to mitigate mistakes as
much as possible, but it'sproblematic because it can
really affect the fear of like.
Trying to avoid mistakes canreally affect how you're showing
up in your role and it canlimit you substantially.
So one of the things that Ioften see is that people who
(03:38):
have a really strong fear ofmaking a mistake will avoid
really diving into anything.
So it will create aprocrastination pattern that's
extremely strong, because you'reconstantly afraid that you
don't know enough or that youcan't perfect it enough, that
you need to sort of wait untilyou have more information or you
(03:59):
feel more confident or you candive into it more substantially.
Before you'll dive into thingsBecause you really really want
to make sure that you're doingit perfectly.
And so you end up working onlyunder extreme pressure of a
deadline.
And it's fine.
It works for some people.
Some people just sort of workon deadlines all the time.
But I find for many of myclients, myself included, that
(04:23):
Procrastination pressure canreally burn you out.
It's just it can becomeuntenable as you grow in your
career, as the pressures becomestronger and you really are
trying to Figure out how tocreate a pattern for yourself
where you're able to dive in andchip away at work so that
you're not feeling that intensepressure at the end.
But if you have an intense fearof making a mistake and having
(04:45):
to do it perfectly, you'll oftenfind yourself avoiding diving
into the work the over.
The other thing that can happenif you have an extreme fear of
making a mistake is that youoverthink, you overcheck, you
over prepare everything.
So it means that you're workingat a hundred and fifty percent
all the time, and this alsocreates creates a lot of
(05:06):
exhaustion and a lot of burnout.
You know, working at a hundredfifty percent is not only not
possible to maintain, but what Ialso find that's interesting is
that for many of my clients,putting in the hundred and fifty
percent does not create ahundred and fifty percent impact
.
So you might be working onsomething and you are going over
(05:28):
it and over it and over it andover preparing it and checking
it, and the difference betweenwhat you completed two hours ago
and what you've completed nowis not significant.
So you've spent an additionaltwo hours on something because
you're so terrified that you'regoing to miss something or make
(05:48):
a mistake, and it hasn'tactually created a outcome or a
product that is significantlybetter.
So you're putting in a ton moreeffort and time and that effort
and time is not, on the otherend, creating an impact.
That is that significant.
The third reason why I thinkit's really important to address
(06:11):
the fear of making mistakes isthat it can make you just like
your work.
It can really make you feel alot of anxiety and a lot of
resistance to your role, yourjob, that when you clean that
piece up, people will find thatthey actually enjoy the work and
they're able to dive in moreand they're able to Contribute
more, and it's much morefulfilling because they're not
(06:32):
in that constant state ofanxiety.
So what I want to offer youtoday is an easy way to start to
address this fear of making amistake.
Certainly for some of you, thisfear will be buried in some
stuff from your past.
When I'm doing one-on-onecoaching, I'm really looking at
if this fear of making a mistakecomes from a trauma from your
(06:53):
past, or just a pattern that wasdeveloped or Something that
happened to you when you were inschool or with your parents, or
if it's cultural.
There's a lot of differentthings that can affect this and
certainly it can be reallyhelpful To tease those out and
look at how those are showing upfor you now.
But I also think sometimesreally simple reframes can help
(07:14):
the brain significantly to easethis fear and to have a more
neutral, open and rationalapproach to Mistakes.
That can really help you feelmore free.
So the first thing I want togive you as an important reframe
when it comes to the fear ofmaking mistakes is that avoiding
mistakes avoids progress.
Avoiding mistakes avoidsProgress.
(07:37):
It's kind of like the lean intofailure bumper sticker that's
everywhere.
And I want to be clear becauseI hate slogans that we have in
the self-help world, because Ithink they often oversimplify
things and sometimes they soundreally good in theory, but the
brain is like, yeah, no thanks.
Like yeah, that sounds great,but I'm obviously not going to
walk around my life just tryingto fail at everything left and
(08:00):
right.
We don't want you walkingaround your job just failing
everywhere you go, because thereare real consequences to that
and certainly, depending on yourrole, the impact of a mistake
is different in different roles.
We don't want our doctor to bemaking careless mistakes left
and right, so I'm not going tosay that you just need to be
(08:21):
trying to fail all the time.
Failure is good, sometimes it is, sometimes it's impactful, but
I think it is really importantto get clear and specific that
if you are truly trying to avoidmistakes at all costs, you will
end up avoiding progress.
(08:42):
You don't gain progress byperforming perfectly.
You actually gain it by yourwillingness to dive into the new
challenge, which means that youare opting into having a
learning curve, which meansthere's going to be some
mistakes that are made.
So I don't want you failingleft and right, but I want you
(09:04):
to really get clear on theenvironments and the times that
it makes sense for you to bemaking mistakes in ways that you
can lean into that.
So I think it's reallyimportant to look at your role
and to look at what it is thatyou need to grow in terms of
your knowledge base, your skillbase, maybe their systems.
(09:27):
You're learning, maybe you'retrying to move to the next level
and you're looking at all thethings that you want to develop
in yourself to get there.
And I want you to list out allof the likely mistakes that
happen when someone isprogressing to that level,
whether it's mastering this roleor moving into the next role.
(09:50):
What are the likely mistakes inthis role?
Because I think we can reallybe confused about our
expectations when we go intosomething.
If we're looking at it from theoutside, we likely are able to
see.
If we just plug Sally into thatrole and we're not Sally and
we're watching Sally it makessense to us that she's going to
(10:12):
have to adjust, learn, she'sgoing to have things that she
misses, things she doesn't knowand mistakes that she makes.
And if you're looking at therole from the outside, you can
probably see where those likelywill be.
Is there a lot of systemsinvolved?
Are there logistics that shemay miss?
Are there things that she mightget confused about in a meeting
(10:32):
and she might say the wrongthing?
Just look at all the placeswhere, if she were really
throwing herself into that role,into learning, into
contributing, into askingquestions, what are all the
mistakes that would likely occurat some point?
And then I want you to askyourself are you willing to opt
into those mistakes in order tolearn and master this role?
(10:55):
Because avoiding mistakes willavoid your progress.
So if you want to master therole, you are opting in two
mistakes at some level, andthere are lots of low impact
mistakes that come with many ofour new roles and in fact,
(11:15):
there's a level of mistakesthat's often expected when we
take on a new job, that oursupervisors and teams kind of
understand.
A lot of times there's systemseven to catch those or there's
double checking, and I will findthat my clients, even who have
maybe management or someone whohas been in the role longer, who
(11:37):
is kind of a backup check whenthey're finding the mistakes or
finding the errors.
My clients are really takingthat to heart and feeling
terrible and making it mean abunch of things, despite the
fact that the very reason whythe system is created to catch
your mistake is because there'san understanding that there's
going to be some mistakes.
(11:57):
Sometimes the environment you'rein is less forgiving of
mistakes than others, but oftenthe environment is more
forgiving of mistakes than youare of mistakes.
So I'm going to say that againMost of the time the environment
you're in is more forgiving ofthe mistakes than you are,
particularly for my clients, forthe type of people that are
(12:17):
attracted to the work that I dotuning into this podcast.
So many of you have such highexpectations of yourself and
such perfectionistic tendenciesthat you tend to hold yourself
to an incredibly high standardand your mistakes are just like
not an option for me.
I'm not comfortable with them.
You make it mean a bunch ofthings about yourself and so,
(12:38):
while the environment might besaying it's fine we understand
this happens, we understand whyyou missed that you're really
making it mean that you're notcompetent in some way, but
opting in at the beginning byreally reminding your brain of
all of the ways in whichmistakes are going to probably
show up in this job can be sohelpful.
(13:00):
I did this in business building.
I do this with anyone who I'mtalking to who is building a
business.
I always talk to them aboutreally making a list of all the
things that aren't going to workand opting into that, because
when you're building a business,there's a million things that
don't work.
When you're learning sales andyou're learning marketing and
you're creating content and allthe things and you have to opt
into that and know that you'regoing to make mistakes, things
(13:22):
are not going to work, you'regoing to feel like things are
failing and it can help thebrain a lot to just see them
written out and hear yourselfsaying, yeah, I opt into that, I
want the progress.
So I'm willing to be resilientwith the mistake because I want
the progress in learning this.
The second reframe that I wantto offer you that has really
(13:46):
helped me throughout my life andI have the privilege of seeing
from the inside because I workwith so many incredibly
successful, talented, smart,ambitious people is that
competent, successful peoplemake mistakes.
Competent, successful peoplemake mistakes.
(14:09):
One of the things that I seethat creates a lot of mistake
tension in my clients is thatthey have an assumption that
competent people don't mess up,don't make mistakes and don't
have failures.
In theory, you may know like,oh yeah, successful people fail.
(14:29):
You know like successful peopletell the stories of their
failures.
But really in your day to daylife, you're sort of moving
through the world with thisassumption that you can't have
mistakes and competency together.
And it's not true.
And it's so important that yoube like that you open your eyes
(14:50):
to this and you really lookaround the room and allow your
brain to see.
Look at the people in the roomwho you see as so unbelievably
competent.
They not only have mademistakes, they still make
mistakes.
They've not only made them inthe past, they're still making
mistakes today.
(15:11):
Competent, successful peoplemake mistakes.
And so you have to reallydisconnect this idea that making
a mistake means you're notcompetent.
Right, competency is reallyabout the overall outcomes you
produce over a period of time.
It's about consistency.
It's not about never making amistake.
(15:31):
I'm also not saying that ifsomeone is showing up in their
job and they are making highimpact mistakes over and over
and over and over and over again.
Perhaps they're not competentin that specific job, perhaps
there's a skill they don't have,perhaps it's not a fit Right?
I understand that this is anuanced topic, but what is also
(15:52):
true is that people who are verycompetent, have mastered their
role, are extremely successful.
Their competency is not aboutthe fact that they never make a
mistake, never misspeak, neverdon't have an answer.
It's that when you look at them, you're able to see that
overall, they produce positiveoutcomes consistently, and
(16:15):
that's what makes you trust them, right?
So if you look at someone who'sin the room that you see as
really competent and you imaginethat they make a mistake, you
can't really see that.
Imagine that they make amistake and ask yourself what
you would make that mean.
And most of the time, myclients will be like it's fine,
like I get it, because I knowthey're competent, I trust them,
I trust their output.
(16:37):
If you are avoiding mistakes100% of the time, you aren't
going to grow your knowledge oryour skills, and so the reason I
know that competent people andsuccessful people make mistakes
is because, in order to becomecompetent and successful, they
have to be willing to have somemisses.
They have to be willing to notknow.
They have to be willing to messsomething up, because if you
(17:00):
aren't willing to do that,you're not challenging yourself
truly.
Not just like in the inspiringway of challenge yourself, but
in the practical way of you know, if I want to learn how to
create a webinar, I have to bewilling to have things mess up.
To have things not work, I haveto be willing to sit down and
do it wrong.
There's just no way for me toavoid making mistakes at all
(17:24):
costs and also grow that skill.
So competent, successful peoplemake mistakes and the final
reframe that I want to offer youis that confident people can
handle making mistakes.
Confident people can handlemaking mistakes.
So many of my clients will say Ijust want to feel confident.
I want to confident.
(17:45):
I just smashed the wordscompetent and confident together
, which they do want to feel.
I guess confident is how theywant to feel, but many of them
talk about wanting to show upwith confidence that they are.
If I could just fill in theblank, I would feel confident,
and oftentimes we think like ifI performed perfectly, if I
(18:05):
never made mistakes, if my workwas always given positive
feedback, I would then feelconfident and calm.
I wouldn't have anxiety, I'dskip into work.
And it's just not true.
To feel confident, you actuallyhave to believe you can handle
making mistakes.
(18:26):
So when I'm in a coachingsession this is such a good
example of this and I am workingsomeone through something early
on I really felt connected tomy ability as a coach.
I felt confident in my abilityas a coach and I also felt
confident in going in adirection that wasn't working
(18:47):
and backing up and moving to adifferent one.
So if I made a mistake and Ithought, oh, I'm sort of going
down a road that I thought wasgoing to get us to loosen
something and I've made amistake, this isn't the right
road, this isn't the rightquestions, this isn't the right
exercise, I have no problemsaying this doesn't feel right.
(19:09):
I kind of feel like I've movedyou in one direction and it's
not working.
I want to back up and move youin a different one.
I get it.
It's not like a blatant mistake,the way you might think about
it, but what I'm trying to sayis like I'm not afraid to be
wrong when I'm coaching.
I'm not afraid of making amistake where someone is like I
don't like this or I don't wantyou to be doing this or I don't
(19:32):
want to do this exercise and I'mlike, ok, and I back up and do
something different.
I'm not afraid to say, oh, I'msorry, I made a mistake with
that, because I really dobelieve in this particular skill
.
I can handle it.
I can handle making a mistake,I can handle getting feedback
that someone doesn't likesomething, and knowing that I
(19:53):
can handle that makes me feel somuch more confident in pushing
that skill and showing up anddoing the work and growing it
and progressing it.
So the confidence does not comefrom not making mistakes.
It comes from knowing you canhandle making mistakes.
(20:13):
So I want you to really shiftinto realistic expectations that
making mistakes is going to benecessary.
You're going to have to optinto them in order to master
this role.
And, rather than making yourgoal to not make mistakes, make
(20:34):
your goal to be confident thatyou can handle it.
And in the next episode I'mreally going to talk to you
about when you make a mistake.
What do you do?
How do you show up for yourself?
How do you address it?
How do you deal with it in away that it doesn't become
something that spins or you arereally hard on yourself for.
But I want you to start withtoday's episode of really just
(20:56):
pushing your mindset aroundmistakes in general and I really
want you to play around withthese reframes that avoiding
mistakes avoids progress, thatcompetent, successful people
make mistakes and that to beconfident, you have to believe
you can handle making mistakes,because confident people can
(21:17):
handle making mistakes.
So your work is in writing downall of the mistakes that you're
opting into, all of the mistakesthat will be likely as a part
of the journey of learning thisrole and mastering this role and
really, ahead of time,reminding your brain that you
are making a decision to optinto these, to showing up for
(21:40):
yourself even though you knowmistakes are going to happen,
and for you not making them meanthat you're not competent, and
for you to remember that to gainthe confidence that you're
wanting, you have to be willingto make those mistakes.
So I will be back with the nextepisode on what to do when a
mistake happens.
(22:00):
Thank you, guys, so much fortuning in.
Please feel free to rate andgive comments on this podcast,
especially, if you like it, youcan do that on Spotify and Apple
.
It really helps to get reviewsand ratings and I'll be back
with more great info for you all, and I hope that you guys have
(22:20):
an amazing week.
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