3 Reminders For The Next Time You F*ck Up
Recently I really f*cked up.
All I wanted to do was tuck the moment into my shame vault, pretend it never happened, leaving any reflections for when I woke up cringing at 3am.
But progress doesn't happen when we hide, it happens in when we process and integrate.
So let’s talk about it.
I had an opportunity the prove myself at something that was really important to me. It was only 20 minutes and I spent well over 20+ hours preparing.
Regardless of my rigorous prep, I botched it.
I got off the call, head in my hands, stomach in knots feeling deeply disappointed in myself.
I’m not here to share what happened in those 20 minutes but, instead, what happened in the hours that followed.
Because that is what counts.
No matter how prepared, confident or experienced we are we will still have moments when we mess up and painfully let ourselves or others down:
🫣 Accidentally missing the second round interview call
🫣 Freezing up in the highly anticipated pitch presentation
🫣 CC'ing the wrong person on an email (that they shouldn't see)
It’s not about moving through life never f*cking up, it’s about having the right tools and support to lead yourself through the aftermath with resilience.
When I lifted my head up out of my hands I wasn’t ready to combat my self-criticism alone. So I sought support.
Here are three insightful gems that fueled my resilience:
💎 Know your 8-minute friends
Earlier this year I was introduced to the concept of 8-minute friends. I heard it from Simon Sinek in his podcast episode with Christina Tosi.
“When someone is struggling or in need all they need is 8 minutes from a friend to hold space with them to make them feel better.” - Simon Sinek
It times of struggle we often retreat inward, whether from shame or fear of being a burden, but suffering in silence doesn’t heal us faster, it perpetuates it.
✨Your 8-minute friend is a lifeline, use it, you’ll both be glad you called.✨
I know I was when I called two of my 8-minute friends.
💎 One moment does not define you
The first 8-minute friend picked up straight away. She didn’t try to make me feel better or find the silver lining, she listened. She sat with me in my disappointment and ended our conversation with:
“This is a hard moment, Lindsay, but one 20-minute call does not define you.”
We often become sucked into the magnitude of single moment that we forget to zoom out to view the entirety of ourselves and our achievements.
✨One moment may feel like everything, but everything does not live in that one moment.✨
💎 Is it a failure or just a redirect?
In conversation with my second 8-minute friend she promptly interrupted my recounting by asking:
“You keep referring to the call as a failure. How do you know that you failed? When something doesn’t go as you expected is it really a failure or could it be a redirect?”
Damn.
Immediately my narrative was one of failure but that was just one perspective of many, and an unproductive one.
The perspective of possibility tells me that this wasn’t ‘the thing’. The learnings and clarity from this moment will define the one waiting in the wings I haven’t met yet.
✨We always have a choice of the perspective we take action from. Don't forget to try on the perspective of possibility.✨
Too often we spend our energy ensuring we learn all the lessons, never to make that mistake again instead of allowing ourselves to process and shift our mindset around the experience.
💪 Powerful self-leadership emerges when we shift our energy from striving for perfection and avoiding mistakes to building resilience, enabling us to grow through setbacks rather than getting stuck in them.