Avoiding failure will not get you where you want to go faster.
Avoiding failure will not get you where you want to go faster.
Learning how to adapt when things don't go as planned will.
We have this really annoying tendency to take ONE experience and turn it into evidence about our entire lives.
You forget to pay a bill.
“I always screw up my money.”
You miss a workout.
“I can never stay consistent.”
You have one crappy sales conversation.
“I'm terrible at sales.”
Something doesn't go the way you expected.
“This always happens to me.”
No.
It happened THIS time.
But our brains love “always” and “never.”
Because once we've decided something always happens, we'll start finding every freaking piece of evidence we can to prove ourselves right.
I was talking to my 19-year-old son about this recently.
He's navigating something he's never done before and had a conversation that didn't go exactly how he expected.
And my advice wasn't:
“Well, I guess you screwed that up.”
It was:
Okay. What did you learn?
Have another conversation.
Then another.
Talk to someone who's already done what you're trying to do.
Ask better questions.
Take what you learned from THIS experience into the next one.
Because how the hell are you supposed to be great at something you've never done before?
This reminded me of when I shattered my kneecap almost ten years ago.
From very early in physical therapy, I had one goal:
I was going to run again.
I didn't know when.
I didn't know exactly how.
I just knew where I was going.
Then one day my physical therapist told me I needed to learn how to jump.
Excuse me?
I don't want to jump.
I want to RUN.
Except you technically have to leave the ground when you run.
So first?
I had to jump.
They put me on an 18-inch wooden block.
EIGHTEEN INCHES.
My nervous system acted like I was standing on top of the freaking Empire State Building preparing to jump to my death.
I was terrified.
But eventually I jumped.
And guess what?
I did it wrong.
I didn't bend my knee enough.
I landed stiff-legged.
It hurt.
My physical therapist was absolutely right.
😂
But I learned.
And that's the part we forget.
Doing it wrong was part of learning how to do it right.
If I had decided that first painful jump meant:
“See? My knee is screwed. I'll never run again.”
I would have turned one attempt into a conclusion about my future.
Instead, the vision remained:
Run again.
And jumping was simply something I had to learn along the way.
THIS is what happens when you're building a business.
Changing your finances.
Creating a relationship.
Training for something.
Building an audience.
Creating an entirely different life.
You will encounter steps you've never taken before.
You will have conversations you've never had.
You'll make decisions without knowing exactly how they'll turn out.
And sometimes?
You're going to get it wrong.
That doesn't mean you're failing.
It means you're gathering information.
Because the goal isn't to become someone who never screws anything up.
The goal is to become someone who can say:
Okay. That didn't work. What did I learn? What do I do differently next time?
That's adaptability.
That's self-efficacy.
And that's how you eventually bridge the gap between where you are and where you want to be.
You don't need to know how to run the entire marathon today.
Run the mile.
You don't need to know how to run the six-figure business today.
Receive the first client.
You don't have to know how to do everything required for the version of you you're becoming.
You need to be willing to learn the next thing.
This is a huge part of the work I do with my private clients.
Sometimes you don't need another strategy.
You need someone outside the situation who can help you see what actually happened, pull the lesson from it, and determine what your next move is.
Because one mistake does not get to decide your future.
**Learn.
Adapt.
Get back in the game.**
If you're sitting in disappointment right now and you've started wondering whether you should quit, message me.
Let's look at what actually happened—and figure out your next step.