EP #25-What to do when you make a mistake.
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Welcome to grow your thinking podcast.
Speaker:It's all about expanding your thinking so you can build your dream life and
Speaker:start living an extraordinary life.
Speaker:I'm your host, Frida Howard.
Speaker:Hello, my friend, how have you been?
Speaker:And how is everything going on where you were today?
Speaker:I want to talk about how.
Speaker:or what you need to do when you make a mistake, or when you make a mess,
Speaker:especially when you're in public.
Speaker:And I'm going to give you a story that's going to inspire
Speaker:you and you can learn from it.
Speaker:So this morning I was dropping my, my children that is, to school and
Speaker:I was carrying, because there's a celebration going on today, so they
Speaker:were asked for a few things, and so I was carrying one of the items, which
Speaker:was the pillowcases, they were told to come with the pillowcases, and so I was
Speaker:carrying, so I have two of them in my in primary and when I got to the gate
Speaker:I was still rushing because I was late to take them to school so I was rushing
Speaker:not to get so late and I was carrying these pillows and so I was carrying the
Speaker:pillow and I was wondering like did I hear wrong because no one else I was
Speaker:like, am I the only one with scarring?
Speaker:Did they all forget that we were told they go with their pillowcases to school?
Speaker:And I was like, I thought maybe, maybe the letter that I saw was for my younger one.
Speaker:Not the other one.
Speaker:But I thought the celebration is the whole school, so I was mixed up.
Speaker:I'm the only one carrying this stuff.
Speaker:So when I got almost towards the door to my older son, I asked one of the
Speaker:mothers, I mean, did I hear it right?
Speaker:Like we were supposed to come with the pillowcases?
Speaker:I said, yes, the pillowcases.
Speaker:Not the pillow themself.
Speaker:Uh huh.
Speaker:And I was like, damn, I was like, okay.
Speaker:I saw that letter and when I read pillowcases and there was also a text
Speaker:to remind us, my brain thought they're supposed to come with a cushion with it.
Speaker:I just thought, you know, like it's a pillow, pillowcase.
Speaker:My head did not go that into that specificity.
Speaker:So I colored my pillow and this is me.
Speaker:I'm down.
Speaker:And when she told me just the cover, I was laughing.
Speaker:I was like, Oh my God, this is so embarrassing.
Speaker:And then my son was there and he could hear it.
Speaker:And so the teacher is just about there.
Speaker:So my son is about to go into class.
Speaker:So, I, I just feel like laughing because you're so embarrassing and I looked at
Speaker:my son's eyes and I could tell he's also feeling embarrassed about it because I
Speaker:said, Oh my God, I'm the only parent who came with a, with a cushions as well.
Speaker:And I could tell that my son is feeling embarrassed and I could
Speaker:also feel embarrassed myself.
Speaker:Actually, you know,
Speaker:I have two pillows.
Speaker:I'm carrying their bags.
Speaker:It's all heavy stuff, you will not even ask for this, it's just the bloody cover.
Speaker:So I saw my son and I told him, mom, mommy is embarrassing you, you know.
Speaker:So I saw my son feeling embarrassed and at that point I'm also feeling embarrassed.
Speaker:So I felt, one thought that I had was, I'm stupid.
Speaker:After that parent said, it's just a pillowcase, it's, oh my god, the thoughts
Speaker:I had was, yes, I'm feeling embarrassed of like, what the hell, what the fuck
Speaker:is going on, and I was like, um, I had these thoughts like, I'm stupid,
Speaker:I should have read that later twice.
Speaker:To know it's just the bloody covenants, the kid, no, the whole damn pillar.
Speaker:And then I had this thought as well, like, I should have told my husband
Speaker:to confirm so I know, well, but sure, whatever I'm bringing is the right thing.
Speaker:And I started beating up myself with all this thought and you know how thoughts,
Speaker:they, if something happens within a split of a second and you already have
Speaker:100 thoughts floating ready to attack.
Speaker:Um, but my son has to go to class.
Speaker:So I was telling my son, I'm so sorry for embarrassing you.
Speaker:So I'm still struggling with those, these embarrassing thoughts in my head.
Speaker:And then my son, I can still see is embarrassed.
Speaker:So I told him, mommy is so embarrassed about this.
Speaker:And I know it's embarrassing, but mommy is a human and we make
Speaker:mistakes and we learn from it.
Speaker:And I smiled.
Speaker:And the reason I did this was I didn't want my son to feel that
Speaker:when you make a mistake, you're supposed to beat yourself on it.
Speaker:I wanted him to know like, yeah, anybody makes mistake.
Speaker:I wasn't there to give him some positive vibe.
Speaker:I want him to grow knowing how life is as a TANF.
Speaker:Because I might protect him from thinking, Oh, because I'm a parent,
Speaker:I shouldn't make a mistake about.
Speaker:One day he, he might want to become a parent and I want him
Speaker:to know when he makes a mistake.
Speaker:He can remember mommy used to make a mistake, but he
Speaker:said, we'll learn from them.
Speaker:And I want him to learn as well from that.
Speaker:So I wanted to know that my wording is human wording and
Speaker:relevant to this age of the child.
Speaker:So we learn from our mistakes and I actually smiled and, um, he looked
Speaker:calmer when he went I took my son, my, so I took the cushion cover,
Speaker:I call them cushion covers to be honest, but I took the cushion
Speaker:cover, put it in his bag and he went.
Speaker:So I went with my other son to drop him in his class.
Speaker:I took the other cushion cover and put it inside, drop him to his class.
Speaker:And so I'm left with my cushions.
Speaker:In fact, I left them towards the gate and I was dropping my other son
Speaker:because I was like, Oh, not another teacher seeing how I can't even read
Speaker:properly to know it's I don't know man, like, I just It's too embarrassing.
Speaker:Like it's embarrassing and funny at the same time.
Speaker:So I left them there.
Speaker:I picked them up.
Speaker:That's where all the mental drama started.
Speaker:I was still feeling this embarrassment, like what the hell was I thinking?
Speaker:Why couldn't I read it?
Speaker:Why I'm so stupid?
Speaker:Why couldn't I have asked for help?
Speaker:I had negative thoughts coming left to right.
Speaker:And you know, for one second, I was thinking, Oh, all these negative thoughts
Speaker:of us having, there was zero compassion.
Speaker:Zero compassion, self compassion at all.
Speaker:Do you know what happens when you have this negative thinking thoughts?
Speaker:If there's such a word, is when you have negative thinking,
Speaker:then you feel negative emotions.
Speaker:Every time you're thinking negative, the emotion that you're going to feel
Speaker:or the feeling that you're going to feel when you're thinking negatively
Speaker:is a negative emotion, right?
Speaker:So when I say, when I'm thinking I'm stupid, I will feel sad
Speaker:and I'll feel less human.
Speaker:I'll feel like I'm not supposed to make a mistake, right?
Speaker:When I put the negative thinking in my head, like I should have read it twice.
Speaker:I'll start feeling like I'm supposed to know not to make a mess, you
Speaker:know, supposed to be super human.
Speaker:I'll feel terrible.
Speaker:So I want you to notice that and get that.
Speaker:You've made a mistake, right?
Speaker:And immediately the negative thoughts, they're always ready.
Speaker:It's like they're standing there waiting for you to just do one bloody mistake.
Speaker:They'll be there ready to remind you the mistake you've
Speaker:done and why you've done it.
Speaker:What you need to remember is the negative thoughts you're having,
Speaker:they will give you negative feeling.
Speaker:So you gotta decide.
Speaker:The negative thinking is going to make you feel more upset, sad,
Speaker:less human, like a terrible human.
Speaker:So immediately I started noticing how I've started feeling.
Speaker:I shifted immediately and started to think, hold on a minute, I'm just a human.
Speaker:I'm a human before I'm even thinking of being a mom.
Speaker:I'm a human first.
Speaker:I'm not supposed to be perfect.
Speaker:I am a mom who is learning.
Speaker:I'm a human who is learning.
Speaker:So I started now noticing, oh, I could think about this.
Speaker:How da da, da da.
Speaker:But then I now shifted to, hold on a minute, go back to me.
Speaker:Now a human.
Speaker:I'm not supposed to be perfect.
Speaker:I am a mom who is learning to figure all the shit out.
Speaker:I'm a human and of course I'll make mistakes from time to time.
Speaker:I'm a human.
Speaker:Of course I should know that I'll forget even school dates, school
Speaker:activities, I'll be late for school.
Speaker:I'm a human.
Speaker:Yeah?
Speaker:These things.
Speaker:will happen from time to time.
Speaker:This mistake I've made now, it will show up again in a different way.
Speaker:Literally, you think about it, when you, sometimes when we do mistakes,
Speaker:we act like we did it intentionally.
Speaker:You tell me, if actually I knew it's the cushion cover the school
Speaker:needed, would I really, really just go with the cushion itself?
Speaker:No!
Speaker:It is a genuine mistake, and we need to know that, and we never, ever,
Speaker:ever have self compassion for us, but we always have for other people.
Speaker:Because think about it, if it was another friend, if it was my friend
Speaker:who told me this story, right?
Speaker:I would have immediately said, we all make mistakes, and probably I would have
Speaker:said to her about a mistake that I did.
Speaker:This would have made her feel like, you know, the only one who goes
Speaker:through this, other people go through this, see how much self compassion
Speaker:I have towards another human.
Speaker:But why is it we can't have the same self compassion to ourselves?
Speaker:I wouldn't have told my friend, oh my god, you're so stupid, unless I'm joking.
Speaker:I'm very joking to my friend, I would have said, man, you're full of shit, how do you
Speaker:forget, how do you convince such a thing?
Speaker:But it would have been in a more loving way, maybe if I'm joking, but
Speaker:literally speaking, if it's someone else.
Speaker:I would have probably talked to them in a more compassionate way to make them know
Speaker:that the mistake they did, we are humans.
Speaker:I do it too, just in a different version.
Speaker:Notice how much you show compassion to other people when they make mistakes.
Speaker:Notice what you tell them.
Speaker:And then ask yourself, why is it you don't tell the same things to yourself
Speaker:when you make a mess, when you make a mistake, especially in public.
Speaker:So this was me walking down the street and to walk towards the
Speaker:car and I'm holding these pillows.
Speaker:And even after inserting this, um, more neutral thoughts,
Speaker:because these thoughts that I just mentioned, you're like, I'm a human.
Speaker:I'm a human before mom.
Speaker:Like making mistake is part of who we are is part of the
Speaker:experience that we are here for.
Speaker:I was holding the them cushions.
Speaker:I was thinking to myself, oh my God, people think I'm
Speaker:crazy who's holding cushions.
Speaker:Fact.
Speaker:One of them had a stain and, and you see, but then I was saying, well then, so as
Speaker:I think that because of those thoughts that I instilled, I was like, okay.
Speaker:Mom here made a mistake, just like anybody else.
Speaker:People make mistakes in different ways.
Speaker:Some parents forget to even comb their hair in the morning when
Speaker:they're dropping their kids, right?
Speaker:And the more I was showing self compassion to myself, the
Speaker:more I started feeling karma.
Speaker:I started now putting myself like in the real world, not just
Speaker:letting my brain produce thoughts without me managing my brain.
Speaker:Because if we don't learn how to manage our brain, the brain will just
Speaker:keep producing thoughts and thoughts.
Speaker:We have to go in there and we have to we have to manage our thoughts and remove
Speaker:unnecessary, useless thoughts, which don't serve us and insert the reality
Speaker:and show more self compassion to ourself.
Speaker:So I was feeling calm.
Speaker:And I noticed that's exactly how we should all do.
Speaker:When we make a mistake, we should know that our brain, the first thing it will
Speaker:go, it will bring all the armies of negative thinking, negative thoughts.
Speaker:They'll all be attacking you.
Speaker:It'll happen.
Speaker:You can't prevent it.
Speaker:It'll happen, but you need to know you can manage it.
Speaker:You need to know like all that negative thinking you're thinking.
Speaker:It's coming from, it's just you producing thoughts.
Speaker:You know, when you say negative thinking, it looks like a jargon word, but it's
Speaker:simply, it's just you, you're producing those which are not useful to you at all.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:So you need to choose when you hear this thought, you
Speaker:say, what's a useless thought?
Speaker:It's not serving me.
Speaker:It's just making me feel bad.
Speaker:I'm going to bring a more neutral thought.
Speaker:I don't want to tell you to bring a positive thought because
Speaker:I don't want you to shift into the positive thought mindset.
Speaker:If positive thoughts come and they're genuine, then fill them in.
Speaker:But if you don't have the positive thoughts, you can
Speaker:just bring in neutral thoughts.
Speaker:Like I'm human.
Speaker:That's very neutral.
Speaker:Sometimes I get it right.
Speaker:Sometimes I lose it, right?
Speaker:You show yourself self compassion because you made a mistake.
Speaker:You acknowledge the mistake you did.
Speaker:You view it now from an angle of how it happened.
Speaker:You show yourself self compassion and you get curious because when you show
Speaker:yourself self compassion, you approach yourself like you'd approach a friend.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:And you start feeling more calm and curious because
Speaker:you're not attacking yourself.
Speaker:When you're calm, you'll start getting curious.
Speaker:How did this even happen?
Speaker:Was I in a rush?
Speaker:And how can I do better next time?
Speaker:And the process would be easy because.
Speaker:you're not attacking yourself.
Speaker:When you say neutral is, um, neutral thinking is, you know, good thoughts
Speaker:and bad thoughts, they're just in there.
Speaker:They're making you feel different.
Speaker:Because I've said, if you think negative, then you have negative feelings.
Speaker:If you think in a more neutral way, then you will have, you'll be in a place where
Speaker:you're In a balance mode and when you're in a balance mode, you'll be curious
Speaker:You'll be wanting to know what happened.
Speaker:How did you end up here from a place of love not from a place of hate?
Speaker:Because whenever you're giving yourself too much negative thinking
Speaker:in your mind, which we do it on automatic You start feeling bad.
Speaker:You start beating yourself You start thinking about how bad you are and
Speaker:how you make mistakes all the time You start remembering all the bad
Speaker:mistakes you've made So today I want you to know From that story is you'll
Speaker:be making a mess from time to time.
Speaker:You're not a perfect human.
Speaker:You're just a human making a mess.
Speaker:Being a beginner, doing things in public, which are embarrassing is part of an
Speaker:experience of this life that we're in.
Speaker:So you need to know to come and you need to be prepared.
Speaker:How are you going to manage your mind when it comes?
Speaker:Because when it comes.
Speaker:You need to be aware, like, you need to arm yourself.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:My brain will attack me, but I'm going to find neutral thoughts.
Speaker:One of the most common neutral thoughts that I like to use, and I want to share it
Speaker:with you is, I'm a human or I'm learning.
Speaker:I haven't figured it out how to live in this world in a perfect way.
Speaker:I'm doing my best, right?
Speaker:We go, we move.
Speaker:The more we beat ourselves.
Speaker:And when we feel sad and they need to ruin our day.
Speaker:So even when I went to the car and my husband was waiting and because I was
Speaker:already calm and I would already managed my mind from exactly the thoughts
Speaker:I'm producing, I was very finding it funny when I'm giving him the story.
Speaker:I wasn't saying it from a place of I'm full of shit because I made a mistake.
Speaker:Even as I give that story to him, I was, yeah, I fucked up.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:It's not like I'm cool with it.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I'm just here to make so many fuck ups and I didn't even spread the bad energy
Speaker:because if I was really sad then I would have told somebody about it again and
Speaker:they would have contracted the sadness.
Speaker:I'm not saying we are not supposed to be sad, I'm just saying most of the times
Speaker:we can manage our mind we are having more good times even when something is
Speaker:going wrong and if I kept the negative thinking I would have ruined my day
Speaker:thinking about it all day, right?
Speaker:And I was done with it.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Although I did say like,
Speaker:I so forgot to say that because English is my second language.
Speaker:At one point when I was thinking, I was like, yeah, they were wrong because
Speaker:they should have said a pillow cover.
Speaker:They shouldn't use a case.
Speaker:They should have said a cushion cover.
Speaker:No one would have had a problem with this.
Speaker:I just thinking that, you know, your brain will produce to defend
Speaker:yourself to try and make you feel like it should have been done that way.
Speaker:No, how it happened.
Speaker:It was supposed to happen that way.
Speaker:And there was something that I was supposed to learn from it.
Speaker:So I wanted to start applying self compassion.
Speaker:When you make a mistake, and one way to do that is to neutralize that
Speaker:negative thinking that is going on.
Speaker:And when I say negative thinking is all those thoughts that you're thinking
Speaker:about that are making you feel bad.
Speaker:You know, a negative thought is that when you think this way, you feel bad.
Speaker:So if you find yourself, you're feeling sad, it must be something that you're
Speaker:thinking about that's making you feel that because all the emotions that we feel are
Speaker:coming from all the thinking that we have.
Speaker:So any action that we take will be coming because we feel a certain way.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:So we need to be very careful on how we manage, how we think.
Speaker:And most of this stuff, I've learned them from training as a life coach.
Speaker:And that's why I can now snap and just know this is what my brain is thinking.
Speaker:And now it's time to manage your brain.
Speaker:Because I'm the boss.
Speaker:I'm gonna tell you what you're gonna think, right?
Speaker:And even if you come this way.
Speaker:So it's very important to understand these concepts and that's why I
Speaker:thought I'm gonna share with you this, and I would also encourage you.
Speaker:If you want to learn more about this negative thinking, because
Speaker:this is something that we do all the time, I want you to listen
Speaker:to episode 11 and episode 12.
Speaker:One talks about negative thinking and the other one is how to use a past as
Speaker:a source of inspiration for the future.
Speaker:Because like now what I've done today, I'm going to use it again in
Speaker:the future for an inspiration about how I felt and how I can improve.
Speaker:So listen, you're going to make mistakes in this life.
Speaker:You're gonna embarrass yourself, you're gonna fuck up, you're
Speaker:gonna do so many things.
Speaker:But if you have your own back, then you'll be ready.
Speaker:We move, we go.
Speaker:And how do you have your own back?
Speaker:How do you have your own back?
Speaker:Actually, in reality, apart from just saying, have your own back is managing
Speaker:your mind, managing your thinking.
Speaker:And if this is something that you struggle with and you want to learn,
Speaker:I would like you to come and work with me in my private one on one coaching
Speaker:that is going on at the moment.
Speaker:You can apply from the show notes, or you can find me on Instagram.
Speaker:Frida Howard.
Speaker:coaching, or in this show, you can check down below there and you can apply
Speaker:to work with me, book an appointment.
Speaker:I want to teach you all the stuff that you can know about how to manage your mind and
Speaker:how to make your life even become simpler.
Speaker:Until next time, watch the next episode.
Speaker:Thank you for listening to Grow Your Thinking podcast.
Speaker:If you loved this podcast, please subscribe and leave a quick review.
Speaker:If you'd like to learn more about this podcast and my coaching programs,
Speaker:please head over to FridaHoward.
Speaker:com or follow me on Instagram as Frida Howard Coaching.
