I have worked so hard in past three weeks to get ready to launch my new websites and the new focus in my business: two websites prepared, e-course designed and newsletter articles written… “Almost there” I said to myself last night. The last thing needed in putting the grand puzzle together is to transfer my newsletter subscriber list from the old system to the new one before I turn the key. To make sure no message goes out to the list before I first send out an announcement and agreement email to the list, I contacted my email marketing hosting site. They reassured me that I needed not to be worried about any message be automatically send out to a list.
As I was preparing the final details of the‘grand opening’, I was horrified to notice that somehow the new email marketing system has already send one of my messages to the list! Worst yet, it is part of a series that is only intended to send to the new subscribers!
It was as if someone just pull the rug from under my feet, I felt my heart sank to my belly, and my body floated in the midair, and I was dumbfounded, devastated and totally embarrassed! Gathered all my strength, I send out an apology email desperately trying to mend the damage, but I knew it was too late.
As I was watching my three weeks work for the ‘grand opening’ became a puff of smoke, I curled up in my bed sobbing over the failure and defeat. Worse, yet, I started to doubt my ability, the values of my work, and then me as a person… The spiral down towards the dark bottom was painful and gloomy, because my mind started to go to a place where I suddenly saw myself with no values to me and to others.
The interesting thing was that, at the very same time, I knew it was my thinking that was making me feel the way I felt, and I knew I would feel differently later on. As the moments went by, I felt more and more emotionally drained just thinking about the debris I must face and clean up.
This morning, I got up with the heavy weight on my chest. I said to myself: “Get on with it!” As I was ‘mending’ the damage dreadfully, I started to talk to myself factually: “Well, you make the mess; you clean up, nothing to it really.” As those words being uttered, I felt the weight of self condemnation is lifted, left me with the power of “It is OK. Clean up and move on!”
In life, when things do not go the way we have planned, as what happened in my messy email drama, we often use the ‘failure’ to condemn ourselves, against all the good work that precedes it, which is very cruel to ourselves to say the least. What happened to self compassion and forgiveness?
Yesterday, I have learned a valuable lessen that no matter how hard and how diligent I am, things can go wrong and it is OK. I have learned that it is empowering to lovingly admit mistakes you make and make taking the consequences as a matter of fact. However, be clear that the consequences are NEVER about who are you as a person and what your values are in this world. Yesterday, I failed, but I have become a better person today!
Yun Li
Coaching, Mediation, Speaking and Training
relationship development, management, transformation 