I totally messed up this week with a prospective client. She poured out her heart to me in email, and I answered her in what I thought was a light-hearted way, but it didn’t work. I goofed, and she was upset, legitimately and understandably.
It’s not losing the potential business that bothers me- it’s that I acted imperfectly, and she ended up having her trust shaken.
Your business and my business is built on trust and confidence. Your customers have trust in you, they feel confident about what you give them. That’s why they buy from you. Same with me.
What happens when you mess up?
When you break someone’s trust? How do you address it? Well, you have a few options.
1. The Stiff Upper Lip. Well, that’s the way the cookie crumbles. Thank God nobody actually died. Just move on. The extreme version of this is a little too impolite to name in a family-safe email.
The trouble with The Lip. It doesn’t really work. If you try to just move on, you are probably kidding yourself.
When someone has strong emotions with you, you have strong emotions, too. You can’t really avoid it. It’s a fact of human connection. Don’t gimme no Lip.
2. The Fix-It-All. Ohmygod, I am soooo soooorrry I did that. Let me make it all better- I’ll do anything, anything to fix it!
The trouble with The Fix-It-All, is that it’s a collapse. You aren’t actually fixing anything. In many ways, trying to fix-it-all is actually ducking responsibility, because you are working hard to make it as if nothing ever happened.
Think about it. Usually the Fix-It-All is trying to get approval from the person who is upset. An ineffective strategy, at best.
3. Repentance. Whoa… did we end up in the Middle Ages? I’m not talking about horse-hair shirts and self-flagellation. That belongs in The Fix-It-All.
Repentance is actually a deep spiritual practice, based on the fact that normal regret for mistaken actions is completely healthy. The difference between regret and shame is that regret has to do with facing actions that were mistaken, and shame has to do with judging yourself as broken because of those actions.
Shame isn’t very healthy. Regret is very healthy, when appropriate.
There are three steps to the true practice of Repentance, and none of them involve self-torture:
- Take full responsibility for the mistake.
- Ask for forgiveness, from the Divine and from the person you
might have hurt. - Allow yourself to be shown what the true mistake really was.
Notice that identifying the true mistake is actually the last thing you do. There is no way that you can identify the mistake until you are both willing to take full responsibility, and you are willing to allow yourself to ask for forgiveness.
This may seem backward, but spiritually it’s how it works. Why? Until you are willing to take full responsibility for the situation, and to abandon any idea of trying to wiggle out of it, or pass the buck, you won’t be able to see the mistake clearly enough to really digest it, and get all of your learning out of it.
Similarly, until you are willing to accept that forgiveness is possible for mistakes, you won’t be able to see the mistake clearly, either- it will be too heavy a burden, and tips the scales away from regret and towards shame.
You need both: full responsibility, and forgiveness.
And then it’s possible to identify the mistake, understand it, and clean it up.
When I took full responsibility for my mistake, and asked for forgiveness in my heart, I ended up feeling clear enough to speak with her directly. I stayed somewhat clear throughout the day, until I had the time to fully follow the steps I list below. Read the steps, and you’ll also see the insight from my mistake.
For more details on how to clean up mistakes see below in:
Keys to Cleaning Up Mistakes, without torturing yourself.
- It’s hard to accept full responsibility, especially when you don’t yet know the whole of what it entails. A spiritual secret from theSufi’s is that “the mistake is a gate to righteousness.” Accepting full responsibility means that you are allowing your self to stand fully on your path, mistakes and all. It takes both humility and courage, but it sure beats the heck out of hiding in the bushes on the side of your path.
- Don’t try to forgive yourself. You can’t. It’s kind of like trying to hoist yourself up by your own bootstraps. You can’t do that either. But, you can ask for, and receive, forgiveness in your heart. Allow yourself to feel your regret, and ask for forgiveness in meditation or prayer, and be patient. Sometimes it takes a little while- 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 30 minutes. But if you allow yourself to sit with the feeling of regret and responsibility and ask in your heart for forgiveness, you will be really surprised by what comes in.
- The lag time isn’t how long it takes for you to access the Forgiveness 😉… it’s how long it takes you to allow yourself to truly be comfortable in receiving forgiveness. Relax, take your time with it. For many of us, we’re much better at taking in the bad stuff, than taking in the good stuff.
- Oh? My dirty laundry? When I sat and took full responsibility, and then asked for forgiveness in my heart, I felt a rush of peace flood in, I got the message that I don’t have to be so perfect all of the time. But I also saw that I was actually feeling a little tender and vulnerable – my book is about to be released, and it’s a big deal to my heart.
My glossing over that vulnerability had me glossing over my prospective client’s vulnerability, to both of our detriment. Ouch! Kindness to myself would have translated to kindness to her, would have translated to a more thriving business. Remember that. (I apologized directly to her, and I was honored that she trusted me enough to allow me to do a free healing on her, which helped both of us.)
- The final lesson– any mistake you make with someone else, is ALWAYS a mirror of a mistake you made in not being merciful with yourself.
