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Hello, and welcome back, this is the Get a 6-Figure Job You Love podcast. And this its episode 88, The Mistake is Never the Problem. Hey there, welcome to the Get a 6-Figure Job You love podcast. I’m your host, Natalie Fisher. I’m a certified career mindset coach who also happens to want to skip all the BS and get to what it really takes to create real results for you in your career. On this podcast, you will create real mindset shifts that will lead to big results and big changes in your career and your income. No fluff here. If you want to get a six figure job you love and create real concrete results in your industry and make a real impact, you’re in the right to place. Are you ready? Let’s go.
Hello. We’re back with another episode. So I love these episodes. I feel like I’m just hanging out, talking to you guys. We’re just having a conversation. It’s a bit one sided, but I’m just telling you about experiences I’ve had, about things my clients have gone through, about how it plays out, and you guys are all getting help from it. You’re all getting value from it, or wouldn’t keep coming back, right? And it’s amazing. It’s so much fun.
So, the thing I want to talk about today was something that came up on one of the coaching calls inside my program, which was, afraid to fail, afraid to make a mistake, afraid to do something wrong. And we all kind of operate from this place. And I started kind of diving into that, and thinking about why, and how it actually stops you from living a bigger life, from going after bigger things, from doing what you really want to do, what causes a lot of people to give up, and I came up with this, it’s because we think that the mistake or the failure or the thing we did, quote unquote, wrong. What is wrong? I mean, I’m not talking about stealing or lying or whatever, I’m talking when you did something and it didn’t work, or when you got an answer wrong in an interview or on a test or something, right? Like quote, unquote, wrong.
We think this is a problem, and what if it actually wasn’t a problem at all? Making a mistake, what if it was actually the best thing that you could have done was made that mistake, or that failure was the thing that opened up a huge possibility or a huge breakthrough or huge shift for you, then would it still be quote unquote wrong? So I want to invite that opportunity to think that a problem, a failure, a mistake, is not anything that has gone wrong. And why we always think it has is because we’ve been brought up as kids that way, right? And even me, even now, I catch myself thinking… I was getting a massage today and she left the room and I’m positioning myself on the table and I’m like, oh, what’s the right way to have my arms? Should I have my arms on the table backwards? Or should I hang them down? Or how am I supposed to have my arms? And I found myself thinking that, and then I thought, no, there’s no right way. Right? It’s like, what’s comfortable for me right now? What works for me?
And I’ve been doing this for a long time and I’m still kind of questioning myself on, well, what’s right? What am I supposed to do? Right? How would they want me to be? Right? Instead of the default question being, what works for me or what’s comfortable for me right now or what feels good for me right now? That’s really the question that we need to be asking more often, instead of what’s right? What are we supposed to do? What would they want? Right? And so I just caught myself doing that this morning, and I thought, it’s incredible how ingrained that is because we’re taught as kids growing up, that we want to do things, quote unquote, right. That we want to get the answers, quote unquote, right. That we don’t want to make mistakes.
Even when we do a science experiment, in the classroom, it’s very tailored to getting the result that we’re supposed to get. It’s like, if you do the experiment and it explodes or whatever, or you get the little reaction you’re supposed to get, then you have done it, quote unquote, correctly. If you don’t, then you failed at the experiment, but it’s like, it was an experiment, so how can you fail from an experiment? Right? The result is going to be what it’s going to be, and there’s always something to be learned from that result, no matter what it is. Right?
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So we’re just so conditioned, and everything is so structured, and it’s kind of taught us to think in that default way of, what is right, what is wrong, what are we supposed to do, that was wrong, that was a mistake. Right? And then we, automatically, when we don’t do it right, or we don’t, quote unquote, do it right, we don’t get the specific result that was planned or that we are supposed to get, decided arbitrarily by the teacher or by whoever it was, we beat ourselves up. We talked to ourselves horribly on default, right? So we’re like, oh, you messed it up. You did that wrong. Now you’re going to have to do it again. Or you failed, put that away, don’t show me. I’m appointed in you. That was wrong. That was bad. Right? And we’re hard on ourselves from that point as well. Right? That’s the default way to go.
And when you’re talking to somebody like that, so imagine you’re talking to a child or a colleague or your partner or something, when you’re always telling them you did that wrong, that was wrong, I’m disappointed, I don’t like that you did that wrong, that was terrible, what were you thinking? How could you have not known that? Right? When we talk to somebody else like that, what do you think is going to happen in their brain? Right? It’s not going to make them feel very good, and subsequently, when we talk to ourselves like that too, it doesn’t make us feel very good. Right? And what it leads to is us not wanting to make mistakes again, not wanting to take risks, not wanting to try new experiments, and being afraid to do so because of how we are talking to ourselves.
And it’s very easy to illustrate this when we’re comparing it to talking to another person, because many of you probably don’t talk to other people like that, but you probably talk to yourself like that without even knowing. Right? And this is what my client was saying, she’s like, well, on my team, I’m known for being really patient and for digging into seeing what’s wrong, and people come to me, they feel comfortable coming to me because they know that I’m just going to help them solve it or I’m going to problem solve with them. Right? They know that I’m not going to get mad at them. Right? And that’s what creates comfort in a relationship, that’s what creates that trust, right? Is that, you know you can go to somebody, you can tell them, Hey, I messed this up really big. This is what I did. This is what I think I need to do to change it or get the different result, what do you think? And that person can trust to go to another person with that information if they know the person’s going to be like, oh yeah, let me see. Let me see. And they start just immediately going to the solution instead of spending any time lecturing them on, how could you do that? Why did you do that? Like very judgmentally being like, what is wrong with you? Right?
So the thing that we need to do is create that relationship with ourselves, where we’re okay to make a mistake, because the real problem is not that actual mistake, because the mistake is going to happen, right? There’s no way we live a life without making a single mistake. There’s not a single human on earth who has done that, right? It’s not possible to live a mistake free life, right? Yet that’s what we’re all trying to do.
So the mistake is not actually the problem. The real problem is how you talk to yourself after the mistake has been made, and then how you feel from that self talk. Right? And when you talk to yourself horribly, when you’re just mean to yourself and hard on yourself, and you’re doing that whole, I’m my own worst critic and that’s normal and that’s what I do, thing, that routine when you’re doing that, then you create a fear inside you, a fear failing. And therefore you do less things. You try less things. You make yourself smaller. You make less progress. You move slow or you don’t move at all, or you give up and you just stick to what you know. You’re like, I know what I’m going to be doing here. There’s very little chance of me making a mistake here, so that’s safe. You pick what’s safe. You don’t pick the challenges that are really going to push you. Right?
And if you want to grow, if you want to create more value, if you want to expand your career, if you want to make more money, you will need to take more risks, not less. You will need to fail more, not less. You will need to make more mistakes, not less. Right? And so that’s why it’s such a huge problem in
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the way that we talk to ourselves. Right? So in my program, I coach a lot and I teach a lot about self-compassion and how important that is. And a lot of people might say, well, who cares? Why are you talking about me loving myself and all this crap, why does that matter to me?
And it’s for this reason, it’s because when you talk to yourself like crap, you’re not going to be very motivated to do more. And this is the thought error that we have, is we think it does motivate us to do more. We think, oh, well, if I’m hard on myself, then I’m going to do more. It’s like the people that are hard on their kids and believe that is for their own good, right? We’re like, yeah, I’m really hard on my kids because they need that in order to succeed and excel. Right? But if you watch that, your kids, and anybody that is on the receiving end of that, is just going to be more scared, right? They’re not going to be fearless to go out there, and take more risks and do more things. They’re going to be more likely to constrain in and try to avoid doing anything wrong or saying anything wrong. Right?
And that makes sense. It’s the human’s brain trying to protect them. It’s kind of like, if you keep putting your hand out and somebody keeps hitting your hand, right? So it’s like, you keep showing somebody, oh, I made this mistake and they keep slapping you, and it really hurts every time they do it. You’re not going to want to put your hand out anymore. You’re going to want to hide the mistake or you’re going to want to try to avoid making it at all costs because your brain now associates taking that risk, doing that uncertain thing, and getting it wrong with a big slap that hurts. Right? And nobody can blame anybody for that. It’s normal, right? You put your hand out a bunch of times and it keeps getting hit, why would you keep putting it out? Right? You wouldn’t. You would do everything possible to avoid that. Right?
I was talking to my mom about this and I was like, I used to lie a lot as a kid, I used to tell them things that I wasn’t supposed to be doing, and sometimes they would find out and I would get in trouble, and I was thinking about it and I’m like, mom, of course I was going to lie to you because you were going to get mad at me if I told you the truth. So, of course I was going to do it and then lie to you anyway.
So we think that being hard on people is helpful, but if we look at the results, if we look at the data and the evidence, being hard on people creates the result of them curling up into a ball and being afraid or them hiding things or them avoiding. It doesn’t cultivate a relationship of honesty and problem solving and solution finding, or it doesn’t create what we want, it just creates the opposite. Right? But we’re just so ingrained that this is how things operate, that we don’t stop to question it.
So, the mistake is not the problem, right? It’s how we handle the mistake, how we decide we’re going to talk to ourselves after the mistake, and how you talk to other people after they make a mistake or what think of them after they make a mistake. Right? And just knowing we’re all humans here in the world, sharing the same planet, and we all share the same functions of the human brain, and we all have that same opportunity to either feel fear of a mistake or to move into a solution focus, immediately after the mistake. Because there isn’t really any productivity in sitting there and lecturing somebody for an hour after they’ve already made a mistake. Right? And I had a boss who did this, and I’m just sitting there like, Yep. Yep. Yep. I know. I know.
It’s like, in some cases, when we’re talking about staff, they already feel bad about it. They already feel terrible about it. Right? And you adding on to that isn’t helping them. What they need now is somebody to help them find solutions, help them think about it more productively, help them move forward so they can be stronger from it. Right? So if the mistake is not the problem, and we go ahead and assume that mistakes are always going to happen, they’re always going to be part of your life, they’re going to be a circumstance, then what do you want your thought about that mistake to be? So how you talk to yourself after, is something that you can plan, right? So you can plan.
And if you’re like most people, you’re on default to just beat yourself up, feel bad, feel disappointed, or maybe you already kind of move on and move into solution mode. Maybe you out with other people,
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but not with yourself. Right? So you want to assess where you’re at, and then you want to plan for how you’re going to talk to yourself if you make a mistake. And it’s, quote unquote a mistake, because really, it’s data. It’s just, I did this thing, I got this result. We don’t even need to use the word mistake or failure or problem. Those are all just word. Really, it’s just, I did this and I got this result. This happened, right? So it’s like, I applied for these jobs and I still don’t have a job. Or I applied for these jobs and I did not get selected for any of them. Or I got a certain amount of interviews. When we’re talking about it in factual terms, there’s no mistake or failure. It’s just what happened. Right. So how you’re going to talk to yourself after that, is what is the problem, in most cases, and the thing that we need to change.
So considering how you can talk to yourself is completely different than the way that you have been, or the normal way, can be as simple as, okay, when I make a mistake, this is what I would want to hear. Say, from a boss or from somebody who’s important to you, what would you want to hear? Right? And it might be something like, oh, that sucked. Dammit, I wish I got that. Oh, well, what are we going to do next? Or it could be something like, okay, that’s interesting. I think I know maybe what I did that I want to do differently next time. I think I know exactly how to fix that. Or, oh, I learned these things from that mistake and that was so helpful. So I learned this, this and this, and now I’m excited to go implement this, this and this, after having learned that. Right? Or, yeah, t’s no big deal. I’ll just try again with this company, or I’m just going to try again with this. I’m going to try this different wording on my cover letter, or hmm, let’s get into scientist mode here, how can we problem solve this? Or like, hmm, okay, that hypothesis wasn’t right, that didn’t go as I planned, what other hypotheses could I come up with? Right?
It’s like, if you’re playing a game and you lose a game, like you’re playing a strategy game, board game, you lose the game or you lose at the video game, you can just play again. Right? It’s not like you’re devastated, a knife was just jabbed into your heart. It’s nothing like that. It’s just, okay, we can just play again. Even if you’re playing poker and you lose a bunch of money, if you’re like, oh my God, I’ve lost it all. What am I going to do now? Life is over, versus, okay, maybe I play a different game or maybe I play again. Right? I could just bet in again. Right?
So the actual problem is how we talk to ourselves after we make a mistake or after we don’t get the result we want or after we fail. It’s how we talk to ourselves. That is the actual problem in most cases. And if you’re able to solve for that, then you’re not afraid of whatever. You’re not afraid of the failure. Right? So why this works so well is because imagine if you just grew up like this, imagine if when you came home from school and you’re like, oh, I failed this test, your mom or dad, or whoever was like, oh, okay, tell me more about that. Why do you think you failed it? And you had no preconceived ideas, you didn’t even know the word failure was bad. You just knew that you’d written this test, you didn’t know all the answers, and you got an F on the paper. There’s an F written on the paper and you come home and you show your parents. You don’t have any preconceived ideas about what this means. You’re just like, yeah, this is what happened.
And imagine that they dove into you with curiosity and compassion and just like, oh, okay, cool, so why do you think you failed? What do you think about this answer? Where do you think you could find that answer? Right? And then your brain just starts moving in that direction of problem solving, instead of shame, embarrassment, disappointment, the trauma that gets created in that moment when we believe there’s something wrong with us, because we’re stupid or we should have known or we didn’t study, so therefore we’re bad, right? We’re not worthy because of all these things that we were led to believe as kids.
So that’s why we need to undo all that now, because we need to be able to move forward, and if we want to move forward and grow and expand and evolve and create more for ourselves and our lives, we need to be able to take risks. We need to be able to fail freely. We need to be able to make mistakes.
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And we need to have our own back with those mistakes always. And we need to know that, right? You need to be your own greatest advocate. It’s like, you say to you, I got you. It’s okay. You want to try that? Go do it. If you don’t get it, we’ll know how to handle it. We won’t beat you up. We promise. Right? And then what is there to be afraid of? Nothing, right? Like, let’s go.
And then taking that massive action is so much easier because, and massive action just means you keep going til you get the result. No question, no stopping, no fear, just you keep going til you get the result, which is why my clients are always successful because they never give up. Right? So it makes it so much easier. What stops us is that shame and blame and talk that we give to ourselves, right? The stuff we metaphorically throw at ourselves.
And some of you are really good at beating yourselves up, some of you are great at it, and it takes undoing, right? It’s like if you were in an abusive household for a long time, and then you moved to a household that is loving and open and they are not going to get mad at you. That happened with me, I was in a relationship for 10 years where he was always getting upset with me for everything that I did. I ask a question, he was mad. Like, ah, I don’t know, why don’t you know that? And it was just a reflex that I had like, oh, okay, yeah, he’s going to be mad.
And moving into a relationship where he hasn’t gotten mad at me in a year. We’ve been together a year and a half now, and he has never gotten mad at me, but I realized that I still have a little bit of that fear. The other day, I was late to go pick him up from work, and I sent him a message and I’m like, Hey, I might be five minutes late, maybe not, but the traffic’s a little bad here, so I’m sorry, I’ll be right there. And he just responds with, okay, no problem. And in my head I realized I was concerned he might be upset with me for being late. Right? For being five minutes late to pick him up. I was afraid he might be mad because that’s what I used to. Right? And I had to remind myself, I had to kind of coach myself and be like, look, he has not gotten mad at you in over a year, and this is innocent. You communicated well. You did everything you’d want someone to do for you. You did nothing wrong.
You have to kind of talk to yourself in a different way and have compassion along the way when you’re making those changes, because your brain is still going to be like, oh, how could you not have known that. Oh, you should have done better on that, because it’s so used to it. Right? So it’s an adjustment, right? Once you make that adjustment, you start to feel more free, and then you start to leap frog forward in ways that you never imagined. Right? Because it’s not the mistake that’s the problem, it is the way that you talk to yourself after the mistake has been made. And I’m careful to even say mistake, it’s the way you talk to yourself after you don’t get the result that you wanted. Right?
And if you look up failure in the dictionary, the actual terminology for it is just saying, it is not getting the result that you plan for. Right? So it’s not even a bad or a good thing, it’s just a fact, right? So the definition of failure is, the omission of expected or required results. The omission of the result. You didn’t get the result that you were looking for. Right? And I would like to say that the real failure, the biggest failure, is actually not willing to take any action towards it, or stopping yourself from taking action because you’re afraid of that failure happening. That is the bigger mistake.
So if somebody were to say, I don’t want to go on that interview. I’m not going to go on it, even though I was invited to it, because I don’t think I’m going to get it anyway. So then they fail ahead of time, and then they don’t even give themselves the opportunity. That is real failure. Actually going to the interview and not getting the job, that’s more worthy failure. That is a valiant failure. That is courageous, right? That means you moved yourself forward. That means you now open yourself up for an opportunity to learn something you didn’t know, to take knowledge from the world that was offered to you, that you didn’t have before. Right. Versus, I decided just not to do it because I was afraid that I wasn’t going to get the result. So I didn’t even give myself the chance to get the result. Right?
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And if we can master the way we talk to ourselves afterwards, then we really don’t have anything to be afraid of. And some other quotes that I love are, rejection is guidance in the right direction. Right? So if you simply took that as guidance, then there’s no reason to take it personally. When you run into obstacles on your way, those are just guidance in the right direction. And that is a very intentional choice of how you can look at your journey versus the way that most people are looking at it, which makes them feel crappy, which slows them down. So that inner self critic, it can be there, but you can talk back to it, right? Just kind of how I did, when I was like, oh, he’s going to be mad. He’s going to be mad at me for being late. He might not say anything, because he’s really nice, but he’s going to be mad and then he’ll resent me. And then I talked myself off and I’m like, no, he’s not been mad at you for over a year and a half, it’s not fair for you to assume he’s going to be mad based on 10 years of past trauma. That’s something you created within yourself, it’s not a fact. Right?
And so, same goes for you when you’re talking to yourself when you make a mistake or you don’t get the result that you were hoping to get. You have a choice as to how you talk to yourself and that will change how you feel, and that will be a game changer that will change everything for you. So I hope you enjoyed this episode. This is something we really go deep on inside my program. And it makes you lots of money, I’ve realized.
One of the things that I’ve realized once I’ve become more self-compassionate with myself is, I move a lot faster, I can go to a lot more things, I’m not scared anymore. I’m like, yeah, if something comes up and it doesn’t work out, I’m like, meh, dang it, that sucked. I really hope that had worked out. Or yeah, I’m a little disappointed about that. Yeah, I’m human. And then I’m very quickly able to move myself into solution mode. And it’s like a practice, right?
And actually, somebody commented on one of my LinkedIn posts earlier, and she said, well, intellectually, I understand this, but it can be very difficult to actually not get your feelings hurt. And I get it, right? It’s because she thought, when she was making that comment, that it was the circumstance that was creating her feelings. It was the mistake outside of her that was creating how she felt. But it’s like, when you have a practice of talking to yourself differently, it’s actually not that hard to not get your feelings hurt, because you’re now in the habit, because you’re used to having your feelings hurt a lot. You’re used to being in frustration, pain, disappointment, struggle, not enoughness. If that’s a habit for you, if you’re used to feeling those feelings on a daily basis, then it’s going to be more difficult to just all of a sudden not feel them. Right? And to be able to just be like, yeah, that was something I did and it didn’t work. That was something I failed at, right?
It’s going to take a little bit more to get there, but it’s just like a practice and you can easily do it, which is what we coach on inside my program. I have a process for it, an exercise for it. I have the tools for you to apply that and actually do it, so that you can start feeling that way. And when you have the support, when you have somebody who’s done it, when you’re working alongside other people who are doing it, you can do it a lot faster and a lot easier. So if it seems like a little bit far away from you right now, there where you’re like, oh, I don’t think I could ever stop being myself up, I’ve been doing it for so long. Just know that there is definitely a way to do it, and I’m here for you with all the support that you could need.
So yeah, get inside my program. Right now we’re having a very special promotion going on where when you join us, you are going to get a hard copy of the workbook sent to your house. So, it’s this workbook. It divides up everything that you need to know to get your premium offer, in eight weeks or less. It drives down everything we talk about here on the podcast. We apply it, and you actually will go work through it by actually doing, not just passively listening, but actually doing it. And you’ll have support. You’ll be able to ask questions. You’ll be able to be involved in the process. And that is what creates the
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results for you faster. So, job search doesn’t take time, it does not take effort, it’s not really, really, really hard, and those are just beliefs that we’ve formed outside, and we’ve just seen evidence for them.
So if you want to come into a place that’s supportive and smooth sailing, after you’ve kind of rewired your brain, I can show you how to do that. And yeah, it doesn’t end, it’s literally lifetime access. You pay once, you’re in, and then you benefit from everything that is created after. And we’ve already got a lot of really amazing bonuses in there, and including this hardcover workbook that you’ll get sent to your house. You do need to sign up for that before the end of March. So you need to get in there immediately, because the longer that you wait, the longer you’re waiting on your results. So I hope to see you in there. We have everybody who’s in there already is already going to get this. And yeah, I’m excited to support you. So I will see you inside. Talk to you next week on the podcast. Bye bye.
Working with Natalie for about three months, we really honed in on some gaps that I had. Networking was one of them, that I was so reluctant to do. I think I was looking at it as it was a big begging anyone for job. I think that’s how I looked at networking in the past, and that’s not what it is. When I actually got down and spoke with him, it always was supposed to be like a half an hour or 20 minutes, and ended up being so long because this is not on a burden, this actually ended up being so much fun. And I actually had three job offers all in the same timeframe, within a week. I ultimately decided to stay with my organization and I’m really happy to be in the role that I am.
Did you love this podcast episode? This is only a tiny fraction of the kind of breakthroughs, mind blowing explosions, and career upgrading magical stuff, that happens when you join the 6-Figure curriculum, and it’s all available to you right now. Join to get immediate access to the video modules and get started. And the kind of things that you’ll end up saying are going to stick with interviewers for hours after they talk to you. They’re going to be obsessed. They’re going to perceive your value so much higher once you start seeing it yourself. And when you join us before March 31st, you’re going to get a hard copy of The 6-Figure curriculum workbook, mailed to you. Yeah, that’s right, like in the mail. It’s really satisfying to have that in your hands. If you’re anything like me, you really like to have a tactile thing to work with. And if I might say it, it’s not like any book you’ve really read. It’s not like what you imagined.
It’s a deep, interactive, best friend, so to speak, that will keep you on track and deeply focused in the work, to land your premium offer in the next eight weeks or less. I can’t wait for you to get your hands on it. And if you’re impatient like me, there’s all the information for you to get oriented and get started right away. And you get immediate access to that, as well as the live Zoom calls every week and the LinkedIn party that we’re having inside the private LinkedIn community, as soon as you sign up. I will see you in there. And remember, March 31st, get your hard copy.