Normalize Making Mistakes

Hello, welcome to my podcast Empowered to Thrive. I'm so glad you joined me today. I'm your host Corinne Powell. I'm an intuitive mentor and I help people pleasers to find happiness embrace courage and experience peace of mind. 

But say you're not a people pleaser and you're desperate for change and not sure how to make it happen? Then I'm here to help. 

In this place you're gonna find motivation to live a life full of joy and resilience we'll talk all things inner wellness and because I'm a mom we'll throw in some knock-knock jokes. I'm just kidding. We'll talk mom hacks and parenting sometimes.

Whether it's your first time here or you listen week after week. I’m wanting you to know, as I’m always wanting you to know, that your life is so significant, you are so valuable and I for one am happy that you are alive.

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Guess what we're gonna talk about today? Making mistakes and how we can normalize and get comfortable around making mistakes. I wonder do you identify with me when it comes to the idea that making a mistake was a huge deal. I grew up and continued to live out my adult life thinking that failure wasn't okay and that making a mistake meant I was failing.

I also was very familiar with performance-driven perfectionism and the idea of creating anything meant I had to go over it and over it and over it and make sure it was perfect before I could put it out to others. And then if I discovered it wasn't perfect, I needed to pull it in and and correct it before again, I could put it back out for anyone to see. 

That's a lot of pressure, that's a really heavy way to live life. I definitely appreciate and hold value for things being done well, we can do things in an excellent way but if that means that we cannot do things until we think we are excellent or what we're doing is excellent something is off. I am super comfortable now with making a mistake and letting other people see that happen or with saying to somebody you know what? Hey, I'm in process. I'm learning as I go and know everything is not gonna look perfect before I put it out there. 

I'm now at a point where I'm willing to let my life be seen for what it truly is. I believe that I always had that within me, that a part of me always wanted people to know the reality the truth and like letting people see what's really there. It's no different now, it's just more intensified. 

Now I've actually come to absorb the truth for myself that it's okay if I make mistakes like when I say that to you, I really feel it in the deepest parts of who I am It is perfectly okay if I make mistakes. It's okay if I don't get it right all the time and I want you to know that too. 

I understand there are certain situations, there are certain professions that are life or death. We're gonna hope that it's we are in the OR being operated on that whoever is working with us is not planning to make a mistake we are going to hope that they are proficient in what they do and very sure of themselves but many of us do not live our lives where what we do and what we say and how we present things is that high stakes. 

So I'm speaking to those of us that know we operate in the everyday in a way that really like to make a blunder to make a mistake to do something in a way that wasn't perfect. It's okay. That's who I'm talking to. Because many of us grew up where a spilled cup of water became a big deal, people were freaking out and raging over a glass of water being spilled.

I mean, come on. It's a glass of water. It's not even a glass of soda that's gonna be sticking when it spills. Water is the easiest thing to wipe up and yes, it can damage something as it spills but again let's look at all of life. What got damaged can it be rebought? Can it be remade? Can it be dried off? Really, we create such stress and anxiety around this idea that we just have to have it all together. We have to be perfect. We can't let somebody see our mistakes because well, what will they think of us? Will they criticize us? Will they judge us? Will they start talking about us behind our back? 

Friends, like it or not, people are gonna judge us and criticize us and talk about us behind our back. Even if we think we're doing everything exactly as we need to, if we think we're doing everything perfectly. It's a part of living life. Being judged, being misunderstood, being criticized having people not like you and talk about you behind your back.

I mean, it sucks. It's not what I applaud, but I know that it's a part of living. 

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I can look to be someone who doesn't engage in judgment and criticism, nitpicking and talking about people behind their back, sure. But I also accept the fact that it's gonna happen to me and then what am I gonna do with it when it happens? For now, I'm gonna remind myself. “Hey Corinne, it's fine if they judge yo.  It's okay if they dislike what you're doing or if they dislike how you did something” and then I'm gonna remind myself you get to make mistakes.

Corinne you get to allow people to see your process. You can be messy and it's okay. You're actually creating beauty out of a mess. I'm not sitting here saying we all need to sit and do nothing about everything we know something should be done about. If you've heard me once or if you've heard me 30 times, I am the type of person who is totally the go-getter. 

If I learn something that I need to implement I'm probably gonna start implementing, I'm gonna start practicing. Whatever it is that I want to make a way of living but I'm also gonna have compassion on myself and be easy towards myself when it comes to the fact that hey somebody else might do it better than me. They might do it neater than me. They may be more organized than me. That's right, maybe it's not a strength of mine. Maybe it's just not how I work and operate. Maybe it's not even who I want to be. 

I am okay with that, but I wasn't always it's been a process so I just want to share with you really briefly what happened in my process to help me get from where I was to where I am. It began by first speaking out things that didn't feel true to me. So that I was actually starting to hear a different narrative, because we're always thinking something or verbalizing it and because I grew up around really critical judgmental people. I absorbed that I learned that way of living I was very conditioned to live that way and it was very unaware of the fact that I was living that way. 

So it started by me saying making statements like I've said here and this in these last several minutes “I get to make mistakes or I like who I am It's okay if everyone doesn't like me”. These statements that felt like truth bombs that weren't yet true. I was saying them before I felt them as truth, but it's where I wanted to get. I knew you know what it's gonna be much better for my entire psyche to be okay with making mistakes. 

It's gonna be better for my body. My body is going to be less stressed feeling less pressure. I am mentally going to have less pressure and less anxiety. In every way, it's gonna help me out to know “Oh I get to make mistakes”. So when I know that then it's easier for me to speak out something even before it feels true to me. And as I say it I am actually allowing every other part of me to catch up with that true statement. 

In addition to that I needed to start having compassion on myself. I needed to start loving myself more deliberately. So say I was in the middle of something and I made a mistake. Instead of beating myself up saying “Oh how stupid, never get it, right? Corinne when are you going to figure out how to do this?” 

Okay, because that is the tone that I use towards myself in the past. Instead of that I needed to rein that in and deliberately say hey, “I see you you just did something you wish you hadn't done. I get it. You're frustrated. It's very frustrating to keep trying something and to not get it the way you want it but I just want you to know it's okay. I'm okay with you taking longer. I'm okay with you figuring this out as you go. I'm okay with you not getting it right”? 

So I'm literally giving to myself the compassion, the nurturance, the love and care support. That I needed I probably needed it when I was a little girl and I wasn't getting it.

But as a grown woman, I can now offer that to my inner child or just to my present-day self. It is healing it is transformative, so offering that compassion towards yourself and then lining up your language with really where you want to get? So if you want to be comfortable but with making mistakes, if you want to be comfortable with being messy in your process then start making statements that also line up with that.

Allow people, safe people, loving supportive people, in your process so that while you don't get it right every time while you're in the mess they can be there to say “Hey, I'm here for you”. It's okay. I'm okay with where you're at because that is a tremendous help and that's really what I offer to people through my mentoring they show me their process.

They show me what they think is messy and I sit there and say “Hey it's alright. You're getting where you want to go. I'm here with you. I understand what you're talking about. I've been there and together, one foot in front of the other, we're gonna get you more in the direction that you want to go”. 

The end goal is not perfection. That's not the point of life. Living and thriving and being able to experience joy and love and peace within, this is the point of life. So, I hope that what you're hearing is not just creating at ease within you because I do want you to feel your shoulders relax I want you to be able to breathe deeply knowing that hey You don't have to have yourself all put together all the time. You often don't have to have yourself all put together. Yes, society would say you do, many people would say you do but come on, we've been fed that idea it doesn't mean that it's the way you have to live.

I hope that as you've heard me share You're actually getting you know, you're kind of seeing. “Oh Okay. So this is what she means and this is what she's talking about” because I know sometimes you hear that statement like “You're allowed to make mistakes. You don't have to have it right all the time”. And it's kind of like well, what do you mean? So that's what I mean, and we could talk about this much longer. 

If you have specific questions, would you drop those to me? I'll be able to come on and answer those for everyone to hear because I'm sure you're not the only one with some of the questions you might have right now. I'm sure there's others that are thinking along the same lines that have the same sort of questions. So let's open up the conversation and between now and when we speak again, go ahead. Have some fun. Try out some new things and be kind to yourself in the process.

It's okay if you make mistakes You don't have to get it right all the time.

[Ending] Here we are we've made it to the end. What'd you think about what you heard today? Is there something you heard that you know, you need to take action on? I'm one of those people who loves to not just sit and hear something but to sit in here and then go ahead and start implementing, taking action on what I hear, what was stirred up in me and I encourage you to do the same. 

If you enjoyed today's episode or perhaps you heard an episode in the past that really stuck with you, would you go ahead and share that with some of your friends and your family? It would mean so much to me and also if you want to connect with me, remember, you can always find me throughout the week. On Instagram I'm @corinne_changeradically⁠ or you can email me anytime corinne@changeradically.com. I'd love to be in touch and if there's any way that I can help you, please seek me out.

Until we speak again next week. I hope that you will remember in the moments that are loud and busy and in the moments that are quiet and Still that who you are is super important. You are valuable and I am so glad that you're alive