We see what we want to see.
Yikes! I've been revamping my website so it better reflects who I am and the numerous benefits I offer new as well as existing coaching clients. I really want to be of service to more people and to help them experience happier and more fulfilling lives. As a result, I have to get the word out about my skills, abilities and experience and my website is one of the methods I've chosen to use.
I'm not a tech kind of person and patience isn't one of my best or most developed characteristics. Because of my wanting results and wanting them yesterday, being my own website designer and editor was very challenging.
Last night I was proud of myself for completing and publishing my updated site (www.bestcoach4u.com). A few minutes ago I checked it out, eager to see how many hits it had gotten and, OOOOPS, I found I made a big error. On my home page, in the opening sentence I had a glaring error. In my head my initial sentence read, "Can you say 'yes' to any of the following questions?" In reality it said, "Can you can 'yes' to any of the following questions?" Last night I saw what I wanted to see: an updated website, another item to cross off my To Do List. Because "say" and "can" are both three letter words with the letter "a" in the middle, my eyes flew over the word without my actually seeing it. I wanted to see it as complete so that's what I did. As a result, I got to spend a few minutes today correcting my mistake.
This experience has actually served a good purpose. It's reminded me of some basics about life. Here are a few of them.
* Everybody makes mistakes. Instead of being mortified as I would have been in the past, I just made the correction and shrugged off the error. One mistake doesn't define who I am. Rehashing my error and chastising myself for making it or labeling myself with a negative moniker has no value. It just takes a big toll on my self-esteem. The error was made. I made it. I forgave myself for making it. Nobody's perfect and it's a waste of time trying to be or to define myself by the number of errors I make.
I'm still as smart, talented, compassionate, and creative as I was before my mistake. If I worry what other people might think of me because of my tiny error, I give them the power to determine how I feel about myself and that's a huge price to pay for a silly mistake caused by my eagerness to share my talents with others. It also keeps me tethered to my error instead of free to discover and develop other skills that I have. If I don't allow myself to make mistakes, I don't allow myself to experience new things and to grow. And, in my opinion, life is about continuous growth, continuous improvement with no end in sight.
* The Law of Attraction applies to mistakes. According to the Law of Attraction, you get more of what you focus on. So, if I focus on my errors and allow them to determine my self-worth, I will find more and more things that I could have done differently. And, if finding errors make me feel bad about myself, I will be in a constant state of disappointment and locked into a downward spiral because, more likely than not, there will be spelling errors, grammatical errors, errors of judgment and a multitude of other mistakes. Why would I want to constantly focus on something that's going to make me unhappy?
As a joyologist, that's the antithesis of the way I want to feel and interact with the world. I want to be uplifting and to do so I have to start with myself. I have to walk my talk. So I made the conscious choice to learn from last night's mistake and to share what I've learned with others. That way I feel positive about myself and I will attract more opportunities to see what I do right as compared to what I do wrong.
* Focus on doing what you enjoy doing and allow experts to do what they enjoy doing. Making decisions based upon my ego doesn't always produce positive results. I don't have to be an expert at everything and there are ways to get assistance that don't involve money. In the situation with my website, I could have bartered with a website designer or a copy editor. I could have done some success coaching in exchange for help advertising my services in the best possible light. That would have been a win/win outcome and everybody involved would have had positive experiences. In addition, having the assistance of a subject matter expert would have imbued my site with not only my positive vibes but also the positive vibes of the expert. Lesson learned!
* Slow down. Life is about the journey, not the destination. There was no reason to hurry. I set an arbitrary deadline based upon an underlying assumption that there's a limited number of potential clients. Because of all the sales and marketing materials I'd read and webinars I've attended, I convinced myself that, the sooner I got the word out about my coaching practice, the sooner I'd get a very large portion of those potential clients and the sooner I'd become more abundant. As a result of this faulty logic, I created unnecessary tension and worry for myself.
In actuality, there are more than enough clients and resources to go around. As a solo partitioner, what's limited is the number of hours in the day that I am willing to dedicate to working with clients, not the number of potential people to serve. To be truly happy, I need a balance between work and play. If my life is in balance, I truly love mentoring others. If it's out of balance, some of my less admirable qualities come to the surface and that's not fair to my clients nor to me.
In addition, I realized that happiness and abundance are as much a function of attitude as the amount of money in a checking account. It's about feeling grateful for everything that I currently have and slowing down enough to enjoy the simple things in life. It's about having the freedom to make choices about how to use my time in a way that allows me to experience the blessings that come from being alive.
In reference to my website, if I'd saved my updates so I could review them later or, even better, so I could have somebody else review them before they were published, I could have enjoyed the creative process more and it probably would have involved less effort. I also would have saved time that I could have used in ways that bring me joy. I could have spent some time out of doors, enjoying the beauty of mother nature. I could have had a leisurely lunch and savored each morsel. I could have called a friend or meditated or done a variety of other things that make me feel good. I could have slowed down and appreciated my life now instead of waiting to experience it in the future, assuming I was mentally and/or physically able to do so and willing to do things at a slower pace.
There will always be something else that needs to get done but the key is to be fully present with the task at hand and to understand how your choices about the project influence how you feel about yourself and your life. See your situation as it is, not as you want it to be, and act accordingly. In my case, that involved seeing the error I made on my website, correcting the error, learning from it and sharing my experience with you to shorten your learning curve. I hope it's helped you to see that there is value in everything — even mistakes.
I'm not a tech kind of person and patience isn't one of my best or most developed characteristics. Because of my wanting results and wanting them yesterday, being my own website designer and editor was very challenging.
Last night I was proud of myself for completing and publishing my updated site (www.bestcoach4u.com). A few minutes ago I checked it out, eager to see how many hits it had gotten and, OOOOPS, I found I made a big error. On my home page, in the opening sentence I had a glaring error. In my head my initial sentence read, "Can you say 'yes' to any of the following questions?" In reality it said, "Can you can 'yes' to any of the following questions?" Last night I saw what I wanted to see: an updated website, another item to cross off my To Do List. Because "say" and "can" are both three letter words with the letter "a" in the middle, my eyes flew over the word without my actually seeing it. I wanted to see it as complete so that's what I did. As a result, I got to spend a few minutes today correcting my mistake.
This experience has actually served a good purpose. It's reminded me of some basics about life. Here are a few of them.
* Everybody makes mistakes. Instead of being mortified as I would have been in the past, I just made the correction and shrugged off the error. One mistake doesn't define who I am. Rehashing my error and chastising myself for making it or labeling myself with a negative moniker has no value. It just takes a big toll on my self-esteem. The error was made. I made it. I forgave myself for making it. Nobody's perfect and it's a waste of time trying to be or to define myself by the number of errors I make.
I'm still as smart, talented, compassionate, and creative as I was before my mistake. If I worry what other people might think of me because of my tiny error, I give them the power to determine how I feel about myself and that's a huge price to pay for a silly mistake caused by my eagerness to share my talents with others. It also keeps me tethered to my error instead of free to discover and develop other skills that I have. If I don't allow myself to make mistakes, I don't allow myself to experience new things and to grow. And, in my opinion, life is about continuous growth, continuous improvement with no end in sight.
* The Law of Attraction applies to mistakes. According to the Law of Attraction, you get more of what you focus on. So, if I focus on my errors and allow them to determine my self-worth, I will find more and more things that I could have done differently. And, if finding errors make me feel bad about myself, I will be in a constant state of disappointment and locked into a downward spiral because, more likely than not, there will be spelling errors, grammatical errors, errors of judgment and a multitude of other mistakes. Why would I want to constantly focus on something that's going to make me unhappy?
As a joyologist, that's the antithesis of the way I want to feel and interact with the world. I want to be uplifting and to do so I have to start with myself. I have to walk my talk. So I made the conscious choice to learn from last night's mistake and to share what I've learned with others. That way I feel positive about myself and I will attract more opportunities to see what I do right as compared to what I do wrong.
* Focus on doing what you enjoy doing and allow experts to do what they enjoy doing. Making decisions based upon my ego doesn't always produce positive results. I don't have to be an expert at everything and there are ways to get assistance that don't involve money. In the situation with my website, I could have bartered with a website designer or a copy editor. I could have done some success coaching in exchange for help advertising my services in the best possible light. That would have been a win/win outcome and everybody involved would have had positive experiences. In addition, having the assistance of a subject matter expert would have imbued my site with not only my positive vibes but also the positive vibes of the expert. Lesson learned!
* Slow down. Life is about the journey, not the destination. There was no reason to hurry. I set an arbitrary deadline based upon an underlying assumption that there's a limited number of potential clients. Because of all the sales and marketing materials I'd read and webinars I've attended, I convinced myself that, the sooner I got the word out about my coaching practice, the sooner I'd get a very large portion of those potential clients and the sooner I'd become more abundant. As a result of this faulty logic, I created unnecessary tension and worry for myself.
In actuality, there are more than enough clients and resources to go around. As a solo partitioner, what's limited is the number of hours in the day that I am willing to dedicate to working with clients, not the number of potential people to serve. To be truly happy, I need a balance between work and play. If my life is in balance, I truly love mentoring others. If it's out of balance, some of my less admirable qualities come to the surface and that's not fair to my clients nor to me.
In addition, I realized that happiness and abundance are as much a function of attitude as the amount of money in a checking account. It's about feeling grateful for everything that I currently have and slowing down enough to enjoy the simple things in life. It's about having the freedom to make choices about how to use my time in a way that allows me to experience the blessings that come from being alive.
In reference to my website, if I'd saved my updates so I could review them later or, even better, so I could have somebody else review them before they were published, I could have enjoyed the creative process more and it probably would have involved less effort. I also would have saved time that I could have used in ways that bring me joy. I could have spent some time out of doors, enjoying the beauty of mother nature. I could have had a leisurely lunch and savored each morsel. I could have called a friend or meditated or done a variety of other things that make me feel good. I could have slowed down and appreciated my life now instead of waiting to experience it in the future, assuming I was mentally and/or physically able to do so and willing to do things at a slower pace.
There will always be something else that needs to get done but the key is to be fully present with the task at hand and to understand how your choices about the project influence how you feel about yourself and your life. See your situation as it is, not as you want it to be, and act accordingly. In my case, that involved seeing the error I made on my website, correcting the error, learning from it and sharing my experience with you to shorten your learning curve. I hope it's helped you to see that there is value in everything — even mistakes.
Posted by Joanne P. Stein at 6/4/2010 5:46 PM 
Categories: benefits of change, relationships, happiness, LAW OF ATTRACTION, Coaching, time management
Tags: intentions abundance Law of Attraction choices work life balance life coaching personal growth gratitude happiness
Categories: benefits of change, relationships, happiness, LAW OF ATTRACTION, Coaching, time management
Tags: intentions abundance Law of Attraction choices work life balance life coaching personal growth gratitude happiness
thankyou i have just starting recieving your emails on topics that are very informative and helpful and grateful for others insight into matters as it helps us think out of our squares we place our selves in. keep them coming !!!
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Thanks so much for the kind words. They keep me inspired to share my experiences and thoughts. Be well and be happy!
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