One morning, you decide to bake some bread. “I can multitask. I’ll listen to that podcast about procrastination while I measure the ingredients for the bread machine.” While scooping the flour, you hear the speaker mention “three things” and you have just measured out the fourth cup, but your brain switches to “three” so you measure one more cup. Later in the morning, the bread machine is making odd noises. It’s struggling with the thicker dough. When the loaf is done and you pull it out of the machine, it doesn’t look right. Thinking back, you realize what went wrong. Lesson learned: Be careful what tasks you try to combine when multitasking. Trying to do more than one thing at a time doesn’t always work to your advantage.
I hate making mistakes, whether it’s a typo in a document, a wrong answer in a trivia game, or a late payment. I just want to crawl in a hole and stay there. What about you?
Many women grapple with feelings of inadequacy and undervaluing themselves. You’re valuable just by being who you are. You can hope for love, success, and happiness, but that doesn’t mean that life will ever be perfect.
Making Mistakes
I read the pithy phrase seen in the title while doing a lesson in a language learning app. My brain was having a hard time grasping a new concept in the lesson, and I kept making similar mistakes. After the fourth or fifth wrong exercise in a row, the app’s mascot popped up with “Even when you make mistakes, you’re learning.” Thanks, I think.
But I’m not used to making mistakes. Growing up, I was a good student, regularly getting perfect scores without much effort. Yes, I was one of those. I could learn facts and easily memorized statistics. As I grew older and faced subjects requiring reasoning, I struggled. Logic takes time and a lot of brain power.
Life gives us many growing experiences — many opportunities to make mistakes and learn from them. When you are responsible for running a home-based business, those opportunities multiply.
Learning Experiences
Another example: You’re communicating with a potential new client who is an ideal fit for your business, but then their latest message to you gets buried in your inbox because of a sudden influx of other messages that need urgent attention. You finish the urgent, and it’s time to stop work to take care of cooking dinner. When that potential client doesn’t hear back from you that day, they feel less important to you. When you finally reply late the following day, that client has moved on to someone who responded in a timelier manner. A great customer and their business lost. Lesson learned: Don’t let the urgent get in the way of the important.
When personal and business demands collide, something is going to fall through the cracks. This is where people try hardest to find life balance — struggling to juggle business responsibilities with family life. Does the client meeting get postponed so that your child doesn’t get left at school because the carpool fell through? Do you miss family movie night because you need to finish editing the client’s proposal?
Looking for Help?
As a woman who has experienced her fair share of setbacks, I’ve battled with my own self-worth. I’ve doubted my abilities and questioned whether I’m deserving of success and happiness. Imposter syndrome — feeling like a fake in an area of life, whether work related or something else — has crawled out of the closet several times. But you know what? Life goes on, and I’ve grown.
I want to guide and encourage you to uncover your unique strengths and talents so that you can live an on-purpose life. See this page for details about life coaching options.