Nothing Changes Until You Do: A Guide to Self-Compassion and Getting Out of Your Own Way (9 page)

CHAPTER 13

Give Yourself Permission to Make Mistakes

A few years ago, I was scheduled to fly to Dublin, Ireland, for a speaking engagement, and when I got to the airport I realized I’d forgotten my passport at home. I felt mortified and embarrassed—and then angry when I found out I wouldn’t be able to get on my flight. After a few hours of stress and drama, I was able to get myself on another flight, which got me to Ireland in time for my event but cost me quite a bit of money and forced Michelle to have to drop what she was doing and rush to the airport with my passport.

As I was waiting for Michelle to arrive, my heart was racing and my mind was flooded with self-criticism. The conversation that my gremlin was having with me in my head went something like this:
You idiot! How could you be so stupid? Your passport was sitting right on your desk where it always is, and you just forgot it, for no reason. You’re a flake! You get upset with Michelle when she forgets to itemize a receipt from Costco and here you make this ridiculous mistake which has now cost you $1,300 and caused unnecessary stress for her, the girls, and for you! You should be ashamed of yourself!

No matter what I tried, I couldn’t stop listening to my gremlin saying these horrible things to me. By the time Michelle arrived at the airport, I was so upset with myself, when I came out to grab the passport from her at the curb, I cried in her arms. She was so kind, loving, and understanding in the midst of my anxiety, self-criticism, and embarrassment, I felt loved and supported by her in a beautiful way.

Even with the drama of the situation, I did realize that in the scheme of things, forgetting my passport wasn’t a huge deal. However, it really upset me and caused me to reflect on how I react to mistakes—mine and other people’s. What I realized is that I don’t give myself or those close to me much permission to make mistakes. While mistakes aren’t a huge issue in my life, I actually spend and waste a lot of time worrying about making them, and also find myself being unnecessarily critical of those around me when they make mistakes (both overtly and covertly).

Michelle’s kind response to my mistake and the negative impact it had on her was a great model for how I want to be when someone around me makes a mistake—helpful, loving, and accepting. It also reminded me that having empathy and compassion for myself when I make a mistake is a much healthier and more positive way to deal with it. Sadly, my stress and self-criticism in response to the whole passport debacle took a toll on me—I didn’t sleep much on my flights over to Ireland, and by the time I arrived, I was actually physically sick. It was a painful way to learn a very important lesson.

How do you relate to yourself and others when mistakes are made? While it often depends on the nature of the mistake (some are bigger than others, of course), many of us tend to be hypercritical with ourselves and those around us when it comes to errors. And the stress we associate with mistakes can actually make a difficult situation even worse.

Our fear, resistance, and self-judgment when it comes to making mistakes can also keep us from learning and experiencing new things. Children are great reminders of this. My girls have taught me so much in this regard. Over the past few years, watching my girls learn how to ride their bikes, swim, and ski has been a wonderful and inspiring experience. While these activities are fairly simple, they aren’t all that easy to learn, especially at first, and they involve a lot of mistakes and failure in the process.

I didn’t learn how to ski until I was 13, and although I enjoy it, it’s not something I’ve ever been all that good at, which also means that it hasn’t been a priority in my life. Michelle learned when she was five and used to go up to Lake Tahoe to ski a lot as a kid and as a teen. We went there for our very first ski trip together as a family in April of 2012. Samantha had just turned six and Rosie was three and a half. The plan was for Michelle and me to ski together, amazingly for the first time in our 11-year relationship at that point, and we were going to put the girls in ski school to see if they liked it. Michelle and I ended up having lots of fun, and the girls were troupers in ski school; neither of them absolutely loved it, but both of them were willing to try.

We decided to head back up to Tahoe the following January. This second trip went even better and the girls were starting to enjoy ski school—although the learning curve was still pretty steep and there was lots of falling down, failure, and mistakes involved for both of them. Samantha, now being almost seven, was picking it up a bit faster than her four-year-old sister, but they were both making progress. On the final day of our third ski trip, we took the girls out of ski school at the end of the day, and decided to see if we could ski down the mountain together. I think Michelle and I were more nervous about it than the girls were. We all got on the ski lift, which is one of the scariest parts of the whole thing, especially with young kids. Thankfully, the girls were fine and totally excited—in fact, they were giving us pointers about safe ways to get on and off the lift.

At the top of the hill, we got off the lift, adjusted all of our gear, and took a photo. It was a beautiful day at Squaw Valley in Lake Tahoe. And as soon as we were set, we started to make our way down the mountain as a family. It was amazing and exhilarating, but a little nerve-wracking as well. Incredibly, we made it all the way down, even little Rosie, and although there were some falls and stops along the way, there were no major issues and it was lots of fun!

As simple of an experience as this was, it blew me away. I felt inspired and proud of my girls, not so much for their skill as skiers but for their willingness to learn something new and potentially scary, and most specifically their willingness to make mistakes and fail, and still do it anyway.

What if we had more freedom to make mistakes and gave the people around us permission to mess things up as well? It’s not that we’d start rooting for or expecting things to go wrong; we’d simply have more compassion and understanding when they did (which at some level is inevitable in life, family, relationships, and business).

By giving ourselves and others permission to make mistakes, we actually create an environment within our own being and within our key relationships and groups that is conducive to trust, connection, risk-taking, forgiveness, creativity, and genuine success.

While it can seem a little risky, and even counterintuitive, allowing more freedom for mistakes to be made creates the conditions for fewer errors to occur, and more fun, courage, and productivity to take place.

CHAPTER 14

Ask for What You Want

It was just another rainy Saturday afternoon in October of 2000 when I showed up at the Landmark Education office in San Francisco to visit a friend—but it turned out to be a day that would change my life forever. This was the day I met Michelle.

Landmark Education is an organization that delivers personal development seminars around the world. I’d been taking various courses and volunteering for them for the previous two years. When I walked into the office that day, Michelle happened to be volunteering. Although I came in to visit a friend of mine who worked there, I was much more interested in talking to Michelle once I met her. She was great—full of energy, passion, and enthusiasm, and she was adorable.

We chatted for a bit and I found out she was involved in Landmark’s seven-month-long leadership training program, which I’d participated in the previous year. It sounded like she was enjoying the program but also finding it challenging (which had been my experience as well). It’s pretty intense—both in terms of the time commitment and the personal growth involved. We sometimes referred to it as “transformational boot camp.” Michelle and I shared a few stories about the program and a few laughs. I really wanted to ask her for her phone number or, more specifically, to ask her out. However, I was feeling a bit shy and insecure—I woke up feeling funky that morning and I didn’t actually have a job at the time. I’d been laid off a few months earlier from the start-up where I was working (as were many of us 20-something, dot-commers) and had not yet found another job or gotten my speaking/coaching business started. Because of these things, I wasn’t feeling abundantly confident about myself in that moment.

I spent the afternoon catching up with my friend and talking with Michelle whenever possible. I couldn’t quite tell if she was flirting with me or just being friendly, and I didn’t know what her relationship status was or if she had any interest in hanging out with me. The best (well, safest) idea I could come up with was to offer her some help with her homework from the leadership program.

As I was about to leave, I wrote down my contact information on a piece of paper (I didn’t even have a business card at the time). I walked over to Michelle, handed her the paper, and said, “Here’s my info. Feel free to get in touch with me if you need help with your homework.” I was trying to make it seem like no big deal (although it was a big deal to me) and also trying to come across as confident (even though I didn’t feel that way). She took the piece of paper, and simply said, “Thanks.” Then, she reached into her purse and got out her business card holder. She said, “Here’s my card,” smiled, and handed it to me. I was fired up!

I left and figured I’d wait for a few days to call her, so I wouldn’t seem too needy or pushy. The following Monday morning, I got up and went for a run. When I came back to my apartment, there was a message on my phone. It said, “Hey, Mike, this is Michelle. It was nice to meet you on Saturday. I wanted to see if you really meant what you said about helping me with my homework. I could use some help. Call me back and let me know.”

I was excited that she’d called, and after hearing her message, I thought,
I really like this woman—she’s confident, straightforward, and funny.
However, I also felt a little nervous because, while I was happy to help her with her homework, that wasn’t really why I gave her my contact info. The truth was I wanted to ask her out, but I felt scared.
What should I do?
I thought. I contemplated it for about 20 or 30 minutes, and then said to myself, “You know what? I’m just going to tell the truth.”

I picked up the phone to dial Michelle’s number, with my heart racing and my hands shaking. When she answered, my heart raced even faster. I said in a pretend confident tone, “Michelle, hey there, it’s Mike. Thanks for your message. Glad we met on Saturday. Listen, I’d be happy to help you with your homework, but to be honest, I was really just trying to find a way for us to exchange info so I could ask you out on a date.”

There was a long pause on the other end of the phone. I held my breath. Then Michelle said with a laugh, “Oh good, I’d rather go out on a date anyway!” We went on our very first date the next week. And now, more than 13 years later, I’m glad I had the courage to simply tell the truth and ask for what I wanted—I’m also very happy that she wanted to go out with me! In hindsight, it would have been a lot easier if I had just asked her out when we met. It would have saved me a lot of unnecessary worry.

Unfortunately, we often tend to get in our own way, psych ourselves out, and allow our egos to run the show when it comes to asking for what we want. Whether it’s in business or our personal relationships, we waste a lot of time trying to figure out the right way, the right time, and the right words to use in order to get what we want—instead of just authentically asking for it. Sadly, there are times when we simply don’t ask due to our fear of rejection, disappointment, or embarrassment. While this is very common and we want to have compassion for ourselves in this process, all too often we give away our power to our fears.

My first job after my baseball career ended was in sales. I worked for an Internet company that represented hundreds of websites and sold advertising space on their behalf. The first week of my job, I had a meeting in my manager Steven’s office. He had Scott, one of the executives from the New York office (where our company was headquartered), on the phone. Steven introduced me to Scott and asked Scott if he had any words of wisdom for me as a young guy just starting out in sales.

Scott asked, “Hey, Mike, how do you feel about hearing
no
?”

I wasn’t sure how to answer the question, and could tell it was some kind of test. I said, somewhat timidly, “Ah, well, I don’t really like it very much.”

Scott said, “Well, it would be good to get over that! When someone says
no
to you, Mike, you should thank them.” He continued, “First of all, because the more often you hear
no
the less scared of hearing it you’ll become. And, second of all, every
no
gets you closer to a
yes
.”

I appreciated Scott’s wisdom, which not only helped me in my sales job, but is something I still think about today when I find myself scared to ask for what I want in business, my relationships, and life.

The more freedom and confidence we have to ask for what we want, without being pushy, demanding, or overly attached to the outcome, the more likely we are to get what we want. Can it be scary? Yes. Will we get disappointed sometimes? Of course. Might we feel rejected or embarrassed from time to time? Yep. However, it’s important to remember with both empathy and courage that, as one of my favorite sayings reminds us, “The answer’s always
no
if you don’t ask.”

CHAPTER 15

Make Peace with Your Body and Appearance

I was in the bathroom one morning a number of years ago getting ready for my day. As I was shaving and taking care of my morning routine, my gremlin was actively and negatively commenting about a number of specific things related to my appearance. That nasty and critical voice in my head said,
Look at you, you look awful! Your hair is thinning, you’re gaining weight, you have dark circles under your eyes, and those worry lines on your forehead keep getting deeper. You’re clearly not taking good care of yourself.

I was doing my best to ignore my gremlin, finish up in the bathroom, and get on with my day. As I was in the midst of this process, there was a series of loud bangs on the door—
boom, boom, boom
!