Latest / Overwhelmed Working Woman: Boost Productivity, Master Time Management, Overcome Overwhelm & Stop People Pleasing / #92| What To Do When You Screw Up - Without Overwhelm
Transcript
- 0:04Speaker 1: You're listening to Overwhelmed Working Woman, the podcast that helps you be more calm and more productive by doing less.
- 0:12Speaker 1: I'm your host, michelle Gothier, a former Overwhelmed Working Woman and current life coach.
- 0:16Speaker 1: On this show, we unpack the stress and pressure that today's working woman experiences, and in each episode you'll get a strategy to bring more calm, ease and relaxation to your life.
- 0:34Speaker 2: Hi friend, thanks for joining Quick Hit Thursday.
- 0:36Speaker 2: I have to tell you I had a whole podcast planned for today and I am now switching topics based on this interesting thing that just happened.
- 0:44Speaker 2: Today is Thursday, it's Thursday morning and I woke up at about three o'clock in the morning just randomly and thought to myself oh my gosh, I completely forgot to record the Quick Hit Thursday podcast and, as you know, I'm all about planning your week, planning in time to work on things, doing all these things ahead of time to reduce overwhelm.
- 1:10Speaker 2: And what happened is I just literally forgot to do this.
- 1:16Speaker 2: And for me, old me, what I would have done was get up at three in the morning and come to my office and record the podcast, and they go out at 4 30 in the morning, and come to my office and record the podcast, and they go out at 4.30 in the morning.
- 1:26Speaker 2: So I would have been able to schedule it for 4.30 in the morning and just been good.
- 1:31Speaker 2: And then, you know, been tired all day and probably beat myself up for forgetting it.
- 1:36Speaker 2: And so I wanted to talk about that today, because I think an important tool for all of us to learn is self-compassion, and to remind us all that, the goal is to try our best.
- 1:51Speaker 2: The goal is not perfection, but rather just consistent action over time towards the type of life that we want to have.
- 2:02Speaker 2: So here's what I recommend when you make a mistake like completely forgetting to do something, or my actual, very worst one is not too long ago.
- 2:12Speaker 2: I planned breakfast with a friend and I never put it on my calendar and I just never thought about it again, like if it's not on my calendar, it's very unlikely I'm going to remember it.
- 2:23Speaker 2: And so she texted me from the restaurant and I was like at home getting out of the shower.
- 2:29Speaker 2: I was mortified times a million.
- 2:32Speaker 2: Still makes me feel anxious just even thinking about it.
- 2:35Speaker 2: But however you have made a mistake this week or been imperfect, like all humans are, I just wanted to remind you to have compassion for yourself, and let's just talk a little bit about how to do that.
- 2:51Speaker 2: What I want to say first is why it's even important to be kind to yourself when you make a mistake, because I think our brains get wired sometimes to believe that we have to be mean to ourselves in order to correct this bad behavior.
- 3:06Speaker 2: So, for example, if you don't get up and work out in the morning when you meant to.
- 3:12Speaker 2: Then you're like oh, I'm such a slug, I'm so lazy, I should have gotten up and done it Instead of doing that, because that doesn't really help anything.
- 3:23Speaker 2: What I want to offer is for you to just have compassion for yourself.
- 3:27Speaker 2: The first thing that I recommend is to get curious about what happened.
- 3:32Speaker 2: So if you truly made a mistake of like I did, just totally forgot to do the podcast, or totally forgot to meet a friend for breakfast, or you hurt someone's feelings without meaning to, you know whatever it was, ask yourself with curiosity instead of judgment.
- 3:50Speaker 2: Why did that happen?
- 3:51Speaker 2: And when I asked myself that question in the middle of the night, I thought well, both of my kids have been sick this week and they were both home for two and three days, depending on the kid, and although they're teenagers so it's not like I'm holding them all day long or, you know, taking direct care of them like I would have when they were little it really threw off my schedule and I got interrupted a lot for work and, honestly, the time period that I had blocked to work on this podcast I was doing something with my kids, so that's why.
- 4:23Speaker 2: That's why that happened.
- 4:26Speaker 2: The next thing to do is just think about, if this happened to your best friend, what you would say to her.
- 4:31Speaker 2: So if my best friend called me and said, oh my gosh, I completely spaced a work thing.
- 4:36Speaker 2: My kids have been sick this week.
- 4:38Speaker 2: I'm feeling a little bit thrown off.
- 4:39Speaker 2: I totally messed up, what would I say to her?
- 4:41Speaker 2: I would say oh my gosh, that sounds really hard.
- 4:44Speaker 2: What a hard week you're having.
- 4:45Speaker 2: I hope you're able to just let that go.
- 4:47Speaker 2: I can understand why you'd be upset, but gosh, that's really, in the whole scheme of things, not that big of a deal.
- 4:54Speaker 2: And then just flip the script and say that to yourself and see how that feels.
- 5:06Speaker 2: Part of feeling upset or even a little shamey when you've made a mistake like I definitely would say I felt ashamed when I ghosted my friend for breakfast is to remember that we're all human and we all make mistakes and that other people have done the same thing and also felt bad about it.
- 5:20Speaker 2: Every client I have will say some version to me of I don't understand why everyone else can do this.
- 5:27Speaker 2: Everyone else can manage, like being a mom and having a big job and managing their house, but what's wrong with me and I think the truth is no one can actually manage that.
- 5:37Speaker 2: Nobody feels like they're really on top of that.
- 5:39Speaker 2: So when we try to tell ourselves that we're the only one, it makes it feel so much worse, when you think about common humanity, that we're kind of all in the same boat, we all make mistakes.
- 5:50Speaker 2: It just reminds you and makes it seem like much more than if you tell yourself you're the only one who's ever done this horrible thing.
- 5:58Speaker 2: And then the last thing I would recommend which is something that we talk about a lot on this podcast is just allowing whatever feelings you have.
- 6:06Speaker 2: Even though I gave myself grace because my kids were sick and I reminded myself that people make mistakes all the time and I'm just the people and that it's okay, I still felt upset.
- 6:18Speaker 2: And so just allowing however you feel, without trying to change it.
- 6:22Speaker 2: It's not helpful to say stop being upset, you're being ridiculous, whatever.
- 6:27Speaker 2: So I just felt the anxiety was the way that I would name the feeling that I was feeling.
- 6:33Speaker 2: Feel the anxiety that's caused and know that for me personally, someone who has worked hard on being able to not be a perfectionist and not focused on doing everything right quote-unquote all the time is to just remind myself that it.
- 6:51Speaker 2: Situations like that make me feel anxious, and that's okay.
- 6:55Speaker 2: I noticed what it felt like in my body.
- 6:57Speaker 2: I could feel it in my chest, and then I went back to sleep and I got up this morning.
- 7:03Speaker 2: At the time I would normally get up and here I sit recording this podcast several hours after it's already supposed to be out, and guess what?
- 7:10Speaker 2: Nobody died, everything's okay, and I feel okay about myself.
- 7:15Speaker 2: I hope you can give yourself some self-compassion today.
- 7:18Speaker 2: Have a great day.
- 7:27Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to the Overwhelmed Working Woman podcast.
- 7:29Speaker 1: If you wanna learn more about my work, head over to my website at michellegothiercom.
- 7:35Speaker 1: See you next week.