Sara Regester, Stress Mastery Expert was recently published in the September 20, 2016 blog of the Best Kept Self online magazine which promotes self-help for the self-employed. Read more here!
Here is the full article by Sara Regester:
Seven Tips to Turn Mistakes into Mastery
I was always stressing myself out from my striving for perfection. Perfection was a box I found myself in every time I set unrealistic goals for myself. The box was actually the limitations I put on myself that kept me playing safe and not taking risks. I was a good girl, a good student, a good partner. You could count on me to do a good job.
I was always striving and pushing to be perfect. My goal was to keep everyone happy. But their happiness meant that I was living to please others. My self-worth came from the external approval of others rather than from my own self-acceptance and internal self-worth.
I often said no to opportunities if I didn’t believe I would succeed at it. I lived in resistance and procrastination rather than diving in and letting the results reflect what I was willing to learn. I lacked the confidence to invest in myself with new opportunities. I never jumped into the unknown to uncover what was behind the door. When I finally did get out of my own way, I used a lot of energy to push my way through it exhausting myself to prove my value and self-worth by striving for perfection.
The success from this pattern of pushing and striving fueled my inner need for perfection so I could show up looking like I had it all together.
Then came my turning point, or should I say my “turn-around” point. I was receiving feedback from a mentor after an event where I had to stand in front of a group to lead them through a program. During the part of the program that I was leading, I jumped ahead in my head so I could anticipate my next steps. Jumping ahead meant that I lost connection to that present moment leading to a mistake. It was like a snowball. Once I made one mistake I felt flustered. Then I made more mistakes. After the event, I was in tears of shame about the mistakes that I made. It was at that point of total melt down when I heard the compassionate message from my mentor who said, “Let the mistakes happen.”
“Let the mistakes happen” is the mantra I used to align with performance anxiety so I could allow myself to get out of my box and step onto the edge where the real learning and growth takes place. Stepping out of my box meant I was out of my comfort zone and confronted by my stress. Allowing the mistakes to happen meant I could accept my lack of confidence and step into the experience to use my mistakes to learn and grow from. I learned that perfection is unrealistic and the real gift of my mistakes is about learning mastery.
Seven mindset hacks I used to re-frame my belief about mistakes are:
• Mistakes allow me to develop mastery so I can learn and gain more confidence and success.
• Toddlers frequently fall when they are learning how to walk. Learning to walk happens when the baby is willing to risk falling down to learn how to walk. My mistakes are how I fall down when I’m learning to walk.
• I already have already learned skills that I feel confident about. What strengths can I use from those arenas that will support me to learn something new where I lack confidence. It’s cross training what I know into an area that I don’t know.
• Mistakes are an opportunity to make adjustments or refine my actions along the way to getting better.
• Mistakes are character building. When I am outside of the box of my comfort zone I will be on the edge where the real growth opportunities exist. Hacking the old fear of mistakes gives me courage to be on the edge and out of my box.
• One of my favorite teachers used to say, “If you’re not living on the edge, you’re taking up too much room” I get what he was saying now.
• When I’m feeling performance anxiety, I remind myself that I’m really excited to perform well and to learn from my experience and that I’m not really anxious. My body responds with the stress response when I’m at the edge, but it’s my mindset the labels whether I call it feeling excited or feeling anxious.
Now that I have the freedom and compassion to allow the mistakes to happen, I can step into bigger opportunities with more presence and connection so I can stay in the present moment. I know how to stay calmer and less anxious so I can dance on the edge of my comfort zone knowing that mistakes will show me how to get better and are not a reflection of my value and self-worth. Allowing mistakes to happen during the course of learning or performing is allowing mastery to develop on a continuum. Striving for perfection is a set up for sabotage.
Sara Regester, Integrative Health Coach and Stress Mastery Expert, is the creator of the “Turn Your Stress into Success” Programs that support the new generation of success driven individuals stress resiliency mindset and strategies. Download her free ebook “The True Cost of Stress” at www.Directions4Wellness.com.
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