Mistakes - It's a Love and Hate Thing.

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Hello and welcome to Shedding the Bitch Radio, where you can discuss, debate, and get advice on how to discover and shed the bitches of fear, insecurity, self-doubt, and negative mindsets so you can realize your dreams and life purpose and create and accelerate the riches you want in life. Join us here live every Tuesday at noon Eastern and dialogue with us at 818-572- 2910. You can also chat with us at blogtalkradio.com/sheddingthebitch or share your stories on our website at sheddingthebitch.com. Whatever the bitch is that's holding you back from living your life to the fullest, it's not worth giving up the riches in life that you deserve. So call in now and let Bernadette Boas know what's holding you back. 818-572-2910.

Good day, good day, good day everyone! Welcome to Shedding the Bits Radio. How are you on this wonderful Tuesday? Um, I'm feeling good. It was funny, 2 seconds before the program kicked off, uh, we, uh, Deborah and I both jumped on and she's like, in the last 2 seconds, she's like, so how are you? And actually it kind of like really, uh, was like a generator, it kind of gave me a lot of energy, and I was like, I'm great! And I am, I'm doing great, and I hope you guys all are too. We have an interesting and fun conversation today. It's going to be all about mistakes. We love them, we hate them, some of us hang on to them for too long, some of us let them go too fast, and there's benefits and detriments to both of those approaches. However, overall, the key message for today is you need to learn to love mistakes because they are a great source of evolution and transformation and change and success for you. So we'll talk all about that. Now, there really isn't any— well, there is a piece of rich news, and I'm looking at it that way because because Friday is solstice. And for those of you who may not be one to pay attention to it, I don't necessarily myself, but I heard about it this morning. It's the longest day of the year, so Friday. Now that means yippee, we have a lot of sunlight wherever you might be and a lot of opportunities to be out in the world. For others, like myself actually, I also look at it as boo because it means that the days get shorter and therefore the light goes away and eventually— I don't wish for it and I don't dwell on it, but eventually then the days get really short and the darkness comes. And then, you know, you start to hibernate. But if you weren't aware that Friday is the longest day of the year, go out and celebrate, have a picnic, do a barbecue, whatever the case might be. 'Cause after that, it starts ticking backwards, so to speak. But that's all the rich news I have for today. Our other areas of interest from all of you is previous episodes or podcasts that are out there on Apple Podcasts, they're on iTunes, they're on sheddingthebitch.com, and of course on BlogTalkRadio and you can just look for Shedding the Bitch Radio and you'll find all of our episodes. And over the last several weeks, we've had some powerful discussions. Last week, it was an extension from our Ask Me Anything episode the first Tuesday of June, which Ask Me Anything is the first Tuesday of every month, but it was an extension because we had a limited time to discuss it. Because we had the opportunity to talk to one of our listeners about a situation that she was experiencing, and we definitely wanted to leverage and give her that time and that platform to get some tips and advice. But it was all around words matter. And so last week we made the whole episode as a continuation of that discussion about words matter. And we provided a challenge and a prize to go along with that challenge. We'll talk about that in just a few minutes, but if you didn't take part in listening to that program, you can download it certainly on any of those platforms and really understand the topic and the tips and advice that were provided, but also take advantage of the challenge. Forget about the prize. The prize is it could be very transformative for you. It could create a huge shift in your life. If you're feeling stuck, if you're feeling blue, if you're feeling just like you just aren't sure of what to do or how to do it. And I've heard from— I've heard that from a few friends, actually, over the last several weeks. And it's been something that I've spent a lot of time— forget about the fact that I do it professionally as a coach, but I've made conscious time to ensure that I provide some support and some input to these friends of mine as they've casually brought it up into conversations playing pickleball or out for a drink. And yet I didn't want to, I didn't want to simplify it. I didn't want to take it casually. So when the opportunity was right, I kind of pulled them aside and asked permission to provide some advice and some guidance to them. So Words matter is extremely important, so go back and listen to that program. We also, in our Ask Me Anything episode at the beginning of the month, we talked about taking risks if you're one to avoid that. And then, like I said, Katie called in and she wanted to really, um, get some tips in regards to how to move on from difficult people. And we've talked about that as a full episode previously in past, um, podcast, so certainly go back and take a look at all of our topics of discussion. We've talked about unsupported bosses, which suck, but what you can do about it. That's been a recent discussion, as well as the fact that aging sucks, but it provides a great, great deal of freedom. So go back and look for all of those episodes, download them, share them with friends. And also come to Facebook or Twitter as well, SheddingTheBitch.com, and share your comments, good, bad, or indifferent. We don't care. We just want to hear them. We want to know exactly what it is that you're dealing with and how you're dealing with them. And then at the same time, it also indicates to us what are important topics for discussion here on Shedding the Bitch, but at the same time throughout our entire community. All right, so today we're discussing mistakes and like I said, how they're both lessons and learnings for your life. You don't want them to stress you out. Instead, you want to focus on them and find those nuggets of learnings and lessons and blessings that you can take from them because they will give you an aha moment. They'll turn the light bulb on and and provide you, no matter how small the mistake or how huge of a mistake, there's reasons, there's purpose in those mistakes that you're making. And each and every one of us, each and every one of us, not only will make them, we have to make them. That's the only way that we grow. All right. So as our rich question for today based on this topic, and for those of you listening for the first time, our rich question is a question around the topic that helps you kind of get your head in the game, help you get your head focused on what it is we're going to be talking about, and then help you also evaluate how this topic, in this case mistakes, kind of impact you and what relevance it has to you and gives you an opportunity to say, okay, I want to learn something from, from this topic, and especially if it can benefit an impact, maybe something that is holding me back or accelerating me forward. So your rich question around the topic of mistakes is, are you a learner or a stressor about mistakes? Are you a learner, meaning you, you take lessons from it, you look for, you know, things that you can learn from it and apply, or do you stress about it? Are you a stressor? Do you stress about it? Do you Wallow in it? Do you beat yourself up about it? Do you hold on to it for way too long and not find a way to let it go? Again, whether you take mistakes casually or you linger in them, there's highs and lows, benefits and detriments to both of those approaches. But are you a learner or a stressor? Now if you are on Facebook and Twitter, and we would love you to be, Deborah of Parker House Virtual Services is out there manning the board, so to speak, our radio board, and as well she is out on Twitter and Facebook, not only right now but throughout the week, and we definitely want to hear from you. So you can use rich tags, as we call them, #MistakesMatter and #ShedTheBitch. All right? Mistakes matter and shed the bitch. All right, we're going to take a brief break. When we get back, we're going to dive into this conversation in regards to mistakes and help you really embrace them as opposed to push them away. We'll be right back.

You are listening to Shedding the Bitch Radio with Bernadette Boas. We are inspiring individuals around the globe to discover, confront, and shed their bitches of fear, insecurity, and negativity so they can create the riches in their career, business, and life they deserve. Be sure to check out Bernadette's books Shedding the Corporate Bitch: Shifting from Bitch to Rich in Life and Business, available on Amazon and sheddingthebitch.com. We also want to thank our sponsors, North Georgia Tax Solutions, who offers a broad range of tax services for small to corporate size clients. Go to ngtaxsolutions.com to learn more. And Parker House Virtual Services, who provides virtual assistance and and social media support for small to medium-sized businesses. Email Deborah Parker at deborahparker.va@gmail.com for more information. To become a sponsor or advertiser on our program, email us at mediarelations@sheddingthebitch.com. Shedding the Bitch Radio airs every Tuesday at noon Eastern time. Be sure to go to blogtalkradio.com .com/shuttingthebitchradio and follow the program for all of the updates and announcements of our guests and show topics. Now let's return to Bernadette and Shedding the Bitch Radio.

Welcome back everyone. Today we will be talking about mistakes and how mistakes actually matter in in your world, in your life, in your success and/or in your struggle to get where you want to go. But before we do, I want to kind of just recap our Words Matter Challenge that we did last week. We'll do it briefly and then we'll move on because you have an opportunity to go back to that episode last week and even the first Ask Me Anything episode of June, which we also got into this conversation. In order to really get the most out of the whole discussion and then the tips and advice and strategies that were provided for you around your communication. Basically, words matter and the communication within yourself as well as outwardly to other people. But I want to briefly go over the challenge and recap kind of even my tracking my experience with the challenge and then also just let you know that you can continue with this challenge or even start it as of the time that you listen to this podcast. Alright, so again, the challenge was around words matter. We were looking for you to figure out how you're talking to yourself, let alone to other people, and the impact that those words have on you and then the kind of the projection to the world that you make as a result of that conversation you're having between your two ears. Alright, so we asked you to for one week track and write down the words you use to describe yourself. Now again, you're not necessarily walking around consciously saying things, but you know, unconsciously and maybe subconsciously to a degree. You may find yourself saying things like I did around the fact that, you know, I can't get this shot off, like when I was playing pickleball, or I feel ugly, or I'm not able to do that, I'm not good enough for that, I can't do something. You know, then there's all those filler words, like you'll say something and then you'll say but And that "but" negates what you just said. So we were looking for you to really kind of become conscious of the words you're using to yourself and then also to other people outside yourself. We asked you to track them in a journal, get them out of your head. Not like someone say to me, which often people do, "Oh, well, yes, I know, you know, I know what I say to myself. Here it is." they'll start spewing what it is that they're trying to remember. It doesn't have the same impact than when you put it in writing. So we ask you to put it in writing. What we ask you to also do is put a line down the middle of a page, the left side being positive, the right side being negative. Now we talk to ourselves both positively and negatively. Sadly, a lot of times the negative outweighs the positive, but we do say things about ourselves that we look great in a dress or We felt great after that workout, or I'm thrilled with myself that I got to the gym, or I did really well in this meeting or with this presentation. I knocked it out of the park. So we want you to definitely be paying attention to both the positives and the negatives. But if you do have anything on the negatives, what I want you to do is then immediately, you know, translate that word into a positive word. If you said I can't, Instead, say "I will." If you say "I try," and trying's great, but it's not what you really want, you say "I will." You know, if you say "but," instead say "and." So, you know, you might be saying a positive with a negative with that "but" sitting in the middle. We don't want that. We want you to say "and" and say something positive along with that statement. So track the words that you're using, put them in a column of positive or negative. Make note of the impact that it had on you. You know, like how did it make you feel when you were just saying, I will try, or I can't do this, or I'm not good enough, or I blew that opportunity, whatever the case might be. How did it make you feel? Then what I wanted you to do was change the negatives to the positives. Negatives to the positives. And then I want you to also make note of the actual event or occurrence or experience or the person or the situation that you were in that created that thought process or created those words to come out of your mouth to another person. Were you in a, you know, business meeting that was stressful? Were you, you you know, trying to get yourself to put on your gym clothes and your sneakers and get out the door? Were you, like me, playing pickleball or doing something and all of a sudden all this junk got into your head or all this pride swarmed your head? So noting all of those things for yourself for 7 days and then just shoot me a note at BernadetteBoas@SheddingTheBitch.com And you don't have to share with me what it is that you wrote. You can if you, if you, um, so want to, and/or if you even want to say, hey, Bernadette, could you give me some additional tips or advice? Take a, you know, a photo on your phone of your page and send it to me. Again, it's between you and me and nobody else, but this is really about you doing work on yourself and challenging yourself to stay more conscious and more aware of how you're talking to yourself and then outwardly to other people. If you were to send me a note via Bernadette Boas at sheddingthebitch.com, I would then send you an autographed copy of my book, Shedding the Corporate Bitch: Shifting from Bitch to Rich in Life and Business. And again, like I said, you can continue if you started last week, you continue on. The more you do this and the more kind of discipline and practice you make of it, the more you'll learn about yourself and the more you'll have those aha moments, whether that's, oh really, you know, crap, I'm talking to myself like that, or it's, I love the fact that I'm building myself up and motivating myself, because that is how you are then going to project yourself out into the world. All right, but if you haven't been part of it, you can start right now. You can start right now, but I do want you to get a journal and a pen, and I— and you could use your phone as well in your notes section. Just something to get it out of your head and into something that you can look at, you can read, you can think about, and then you can also make notes of how you're going to do things differently as a result of it. So a quick summary of my week, which I kind of pointed out a few of them. Is I did say things like, I hate my blank, blank, blank, blank. In that case, it was I hate my backhand when I was playing pickleball. I can't do this. When my writing coach with my script came back just the other day, actually, with about 5 pages of only about 30 pages of my script that he totally, you know, kind of deleted and said, we need to re— you need, you need to rework this. I just was like, oh my God, I just can't do this. And so I made note of that on my right side of my piece of paper. And then I even said to myself, why can't I get a handle on, you know, something. I don't even remember what that was, but it was in my notes. And then I simply at that time also made notes of the negatives, making them positives. And then the positives, because there were some, I made sure that I even amped them up even more so. So each one of these things, they even— using my examples, they even confirmed to me self-beliefs that I have. And I don't want to feel as if I can't or I hate or why can't I, I question why I can't do something. I don't want those self-beliefs, so I needed even to find ways and make notes of actions that I can take to do things differently to change those self-thoughts, those self-talks that I was making to myself. And I then, once I did and I said, yes, you could do this, you know, you just need to change up the story. That's all. You know, you need to think about what his comments are and think about ways to enrich it and enhance it. And so I did, and I sent it to him. I said, it's only those areas that you commented on, can you provide me feedback if I'm on the right track? And he said, awesome job, yes. And that again, that moved me, shifted me from this, oh, I can't, to yay, I did, I did it. And that's exactly what we want. We want to move our mindsets to a more positive, uplifting, energized, confident, determined state of mind. All right, so that was the challenge, and I will continue to challenge each one of you to, uh, work on that ongoing. You know, journaling should be, should be a part of every day, whether it's for a minute or an hour. Just simply, it feels so good to just purge whatever is clouding your mind. And as I've said in the past, because someone actually asked me about this that listened to the program, I guess a couple of weeks ago. I hadn't mentioned this in a long time, and then she happened to be listening, and she's like, you know, I love when you say truth rises to the surface. I'm not quite sure what you mean, but I love when you say it. It just feels very kind of comforting. And so I basically said, well, I treat my writing and my journals like that, my thought processes, my assessments. I only take 5 or 10 minutes to write every day because I know that the first things I write, and the way I write is like I basically scribble, I never read what I write, I just write, write, write, write, write, and I know that that's my truth, that that is what is on, weighing heavy on my mind, whether it's good stuff or or stressing stuff. So that's my little divergent from our topic of conversation, and that's just to find journaling to be a source of, like my dad would say to me, free therapist, a way to really just purge whatever's going on in your head and heart that might be holding you down or lifting you up. Great way to make note of it, and it could be your history and lead to your legacy. If you were to pass those journals down. All right, so that was our challenge. I challenge you to continue and/or start, and I would love to hear about your experiences with it. And in turn, I will share with you a free autographed copy of my book. All right, I don't want to take a break yet, though probably Deborah's kind of nudging me to do so. I want to get into this conversation for today around mistakes, and then we'll take a break between, you know, we'll take a break when we get to a good point where we can be contemplating what was just discussed. All right, so mistakes. People love them or hate them, and yet I really want you to continue thinking about whether you're a learner and a stressor throughout this conversation, and I want you to think about how you perceive mistakes. I mean, it may be a silly question to ask, what do you think about mistakes? But it's really important to understand something. Some of you are perfectionists. I'll raise my hand to that. And you consider the smallest little hiccup a huge mistake, while others of you so easily brush those hiccups off or those mistakes off, and you look at mistakes and, and/or define mistakes as something more life-threatening and dangerous and huge. And while at the same time somebody even shakes those mistakes off too easily and they don't really understand if it is life-threatening or dangerous or or detrimental to your career, business, or life, they don't necessarily sit in it and pay attention to it enough to where they learn from it. So there's this vast, very large degree of how each of you view mistakes. And if you would take some time to really consider how you do, how you view them, what you take from them, how fast you process them. That will be a huge learning for you, and you'll actually be able to also recognize where you can improve on managing and dealing with mistakes, or where you just need to continue focusing on that's how you handle and will handle mistakes. I've shifted over the years because there's always an opportunity to shift, right? I've shifted over the years from looking at every little thing that, you know, might be seen as a mistake. I kind of went from those hiccups and I started— or I'm sorry, I went from turning those little things into these huge life-threatening, life-altering, you know, detrimental things, and I started viewing them as hiccups, and I started viewing them as something that, you know what, I I'm going to pay attention for about 5 minutes as to what I should be learning from this thing, but then I'm letting it go. Because I used to kind of cling on to every little thing that I didn't do right. I kind of clinged on them for so long that I, I mean, my heart would just run rampant from the minute I woke up in the morning to the, to the time I closed my eyes at night. And that just got to a point in my late 40s where it was just suffocating me. So I just had to figure out a way to shift and transform how I viewed and reframe how I viewed about mistakes. So I want you to be thinking about that. How do you look at mistakes? You know, mistakes go from everything from, okay, so you didn't follow up with your boss and he or she kind of pointed it out and didn't like the fact that you did. You know, but it is what it is. It could be that you emailed someone and you didn't pay attention to how you emailed it or how you said what it is that you wanted to say and didn't consider how someone else might interpret it. And this happens a lot in emails and texts, and the other person, you know, took it the wrong way. Maybe you missed a major deadline. And there, you know, maybe you even went one step further and didn't do the kind of the follow-up, the proactive update that you are going to miss that major deadline. Maybe you made a sales presentation and you didn't get the deal. Therefore, you walked out of there and spent the next week, two weeks, months pondering what it is that you did wrong that you didn't get the deal, or what you could have done differently, which is a beautiful thing. But then you just couldn't shake it. It just, you know, you couldn't see that those, the lessons and the learnings that you took from it could actually be a really brilliant teaching for you the next time. So you're just hanging on to it and beating yourself up about it. Maybe you went out and you followed the crowd as opposed to leading the crowd, and maybe you drank too much, or maybe you took some too much, uh, and unfortunately you fell into, um, even dangerous situations. Maybe you fall— fell victim to a, to a money scam. And now I point some of these examples out because some of these examples, or some of these mistakes made, I made them. Some of them, they, you know, I do know from just my clients and, and people that I that I talk with, but if I were to list my mistakes out, it would cover pages. And I'm not talking mistakes from the 57 years I've been on this earth. I'm even talking the mistakes I've made in the past, let's say, 10 to 12 years. They would fill pages. Now, I've always talked about in the past that I'm one who doesn't live with regrets, and I don't. That doesn't mean I don't hang on to mistakes for too long and wallow in them. I just don't regret them once kind of I've experienced them and I've assessed them and I've determined if I'm going to hang on to them or I'm going to let them go. Because, you know, I've done everything from, you know, drinking to impress and finding myself in a car in a ditch or in a stranger's room with a bad cop. And I'm saying a bad cop in the way of more assault than, than a bad cop because I did something wrong and I was in jail and, and he was just a bad cop. You know, I wired $800 to a so-called network marketer, and this is going back to my first month having my own business back in 2008. I pulled money from my 401, and sadly, my mistake, I did not ask the right questions, and it whammed me with the IRS. I mean, whammed me with the IRS. I even hired a contractor for a client that I thought was a great— I'll just say individual because I don't want to say the function. That he, he applied, but he landed up tanking the company. So mistakes come very small and they come really big, and they stay for a minute or they can stay for a lifetime. And what we want to just ensure during this conversation, this discussion, is that we— you learn a way to let them go. Because I'll be honest with you, that mistake with the— of drinking too much and finding myself in a ditch and drinking too much and finding myself in a strange room with a bad cop, those were longer ago. Those weren't in the last 10, 12 years. But I bring them up because I know some of you, young or old, young or seasoned I should say, you know, also deal with that type of mistake. I won't call it a hiccup for sure. It was one of those dangerous, detrimental things. But at the same time, what we want to do is find a way to forgive ourselves, to look at the situation and say, you know, what blessing or what lesson can we take from it, and how are we going to do things differently or not do it at all without, without even regret. I can't change the fact that I put myself in those situations. I can just learn from them and move on. And so that's what I want to give to you is finding those, those situations where you can learn from them and move on. All right, we are going to take a break and when we get back we're going to dive into some views of other people when it comes to mistakes because that will help you maybe relate to how other people view making mistakes because some of us, like I said, oh my God, it becomes this major drama and other people find it to be okay, there are steps to my success, there are steps to my overcoming, there are steps to my victory and we want to make sure that you're working your way to looking at mistakes as part of life and part of your success. And not something that would stress you out and hold you down. All right, we will be right back.

You are listening to Shedding the Bitch Radio with Bernadette Boas. We are inspiring individuals around the globe to discover, confront, and shed their bitches of fear, insecurity, and negativity so they can create the riches in their career, business, and life they deserve. Be sure to check out Bernadette Boas' book, Shedding the Corporate Bitch: Shifting from Bitch to Rich in Life and Business, available on Amazon and sheddingthebitch.com. We also want to thank our sponsors, North Georgia Tax Solutions, who offers a broad range of tax services for small to corporate-sized clients. Go to ngtaxsolutions.com to learn more. And Parker House Virtual Services, Services, who provides virtual assistance and social media support for small to medium-sized businesses. Email Deborah Parker at deborahparker.va@gmail.com for more information. To become a sponsor or advertiser on our program, email us at mediarelations@sheddingthebitch.com. Shedding the Bitch Radio airs every Tuesday at noon Eastern time. Be sure to go to blogtalkradio.com/sheddingthebitchradio and follow the program for all of the updates and announcements of our guests and show topics. Now let's return to Bernadette and Shedding the Bitch Radio.

Welcome back everyone. We are talking the mistakes that we love and we hate. But those that will bring you wealth of knowledge that will allow you to grow and evolve. That is, and that only is, if you actually listen to them, you learn from them, you adapt from them, you even assess them. So did it, you know, the adaption that I made, the shift that I made because of the mistake I make Did it move me in the right direction? Was it the right adaption that I made? And then you kind of continue. If it is, then you can continue down that path. But let's look at some other people's views on mistakes just to give you an idea. It doesn't matter how old you are, at what level you are, let's say in business or maybe even in school. How much money you have. Everyone, everyone makes mistakes. But I will tell you that if you were to go and do a Google search on, you know, famous quotes regarding mistakes or success or failure, you're going to find that those people that are the most successful are learners. Remember, we asked you in your rich question if you're a learner or a stressor. And they're just tags that I kind of created in regards to this conversation. You're going to find that they're learners. They're not the stressors. And trust me when I say, if you're going to get to a massive level of success, you haven't just made hiccups. You've made huge mistakes. So the first kind of quote I want you to be thinking about and consider is from Oprah. And she says, "There is no such thing as failure. Mistakes happen in your life to bring into focus more clearly who you really are." Now, if you think about her, which I do on occasion when it comes to this kind of subject of success and failure, which I call missteps, is when she left a 25-year television career where she made billions and she went off to start her own network. And in the first few years, it was a— in her view, it was a failure, which from a book's perspective, numbers perspective, it may have been. That would send anyone, you know, to bed. It would send them to their bed, as they say in the South. You know, took me to bed and stay there for a very, very long time., but that's not Oprah. That's not how she looks at life. That's not how she looks at mistakes. That's not how she looks at failure. Michael Jordan: I failed over and over and over again in my life, and that is why I succeed. And then Nikki Giovanni, I love this: Mistakes are a fact of life. It is the response to It's the errors that count. And then even Eleanor Roosevelt, going back many years but at the same time still relevant today, so the first quote that ever comes up if you were to Google quotes on mistakes, it will be hers. And it's, learn from the mistakes of others. You can't live long enough to make them all yourself. And I love that. I look for, for the successes and the missteps of other people to learn from, and that, that would be a great, great lesson for everyone listening to also adopt. You know, seek out, whether that's in person, you know, online, in a video, in a book, in an autobiography, whatever the case might be, from those people who are where you want to be. And I trust you, in their story will be not all the successes. It'll be about all of their failures, all their mistakes, all the things that— all the— even the regrets that they have that then got them to where they are today. So there's other views too from people who, you know, love to hang on to mistakes, which wreak havoc on their psyche. Wayne Dyer, who is a very famous personal development, professional growth, um, individual expert, author, speaker. Uh, he says there are some people who live 70 years, and there are some people who live one year 70 times, repeating what they're doing over and over in the name of the gold watch or whatever. I had to read that a couple of times because I was like, okay, what is he really saying? And he's really saying that there's some people who live, and they live throughout that 70 years because they are making mistakes, they are having successes, they are, you know, having missteps at every degree, those hiccups or those detrimental ones. Yet there are others that hang on to their mistakes, beat themselves up for their mistakes, and they're always chasing what they're never achieving because they're never letting things go from their past. So what we want to do— oh, I'm sorry, I have one more because Steve Moraboli, I didn't look up, I apologize, I'm not sure of Steve Moraboli, but he has a great quote. The truth is useless— wait, I'm sorry, sorry. The truth is unless you let go, Unless you forgive yourself, unless you forgive the situation, unless you realize that the situation is over, you cannot move forward. Now that space of not knowing to let go, not knowing to forgive yourself, not willing to forgive the situation, not letting the situation go in the past and recognize that it's over. That's where I spend a great deal of my time coaching on, is, you know, there's people who are working their way up the ladder, and yet there are things holding them back. And it's a lot of times the fact that they just can't let go of the missteps, the mistakes or failures that they've had. We don't want that for you because there's too many benefits. There's way too many benefits. For you in making mistakes, and so I want to talk about some of those. Of course, mistakes teach you something, and more importantly, they teach you something new. They may teach you something new about yourself, about another person, about a situation, about a skill that you may or may not have, about a community. Just, you know, it's endless. Of what a mistake can teach you. It helps you because we talk a lot about, about really assessing what you want, what you don't want, what you like, what you don't want— like, and that's exactly what mistakes teach you, is they really make you aware of what you want, what you don't want, what you like, what you don't like, what you're good at, what you're not good at, so forth and so on. Of course, it deepens your knowledge. You know, you can only deepen knowledge from making those mistakes that glean something that you knew or didn't know. Maybe you knew it but you didn't take advantage of it. Maybe you didn't listen to your gut and now you've learned that you need to listen to your gut. That happened actually the other night with a friend of mine and she didn't listen to her gut and got herself into a situation and she was beating herself up about it. Afterwards because she's like, oh, oh, if only I listened to my gut because it was screaming that this was not a good situation. Making mistakes expands your viewpoint if you're willing to actually expand your viewpoint and not be closed-minded. And that would be a lesson in itself, is if you want to live 70 years and really live it, you need to consider different viewpoints, viewpoints that just you're absolutely against, you know, viewpoints that are actually vastly different than your own because they provide so much context to life, to people, to humanity. So it is definitely, definitely mistakes expand your viewpoints. Mistakes also help you with new skills. It helps you find new talents. It helps you find new opportunities. Another mentoree that I work with, you know, he's working on that right now, is getting an assessment back, looking at it, seeing where— maybe you don't call them mistakes, but seeing where, you know, others viewed that he could have done better or different. And really trying to understand what that means to the skill set that he really needs to expand himself on. Mistakes inform us. They tell us tons, not only about ourselves, but about other people, about other relationships, about other means of communicating between each other, about how people manage themselves and manage you or manage a team or whatever the case might be. Mistakes humble us. If I— we'll have to have an episode around humility because I'm asked about it. Not— I won't say a great deal because, you know, people really owning up to being humbled in their life or having humility can be a very challenging thing. Challenging, painful thing for someone. And I'm an open book, and so, you know, that would make a great discussion is how to be humble and the benefits of being humble. Because I'll tell you what, what I put myself through, not only in my life, like those mistakes I made about, you know, drinking too much and putting my car in a ditch, or finding myself in a strange room, or not asking the right questions when it came to my, you know, 401 and taxes and you know, not falling prey to a money scam. You know, all of those things knock you down a few pegs, let alone, you know, getting fired from a corporate job because I'm a bitch and losing, you know, that corporate job, which meant the money, which meant the security. You know, lit— you know, moving from my main house into a 400-square-foot guest house. Learning how to really, you know, budget when I never looked at price tags. You know, if I could define my, you know, my life, it's, you know, one word that I would use is humbled, and that's a beautiful thing. And I'm so thrilled that I went through those experiences, made those mistakes, because I found that humility. So it humbles us. It also, like my friend screams red flags around situations or around your own viewpoints or judgments or, you know, decisions you need to be making. Making mistakes have red flags attached to them if we pay attention to them. Now, one thing I love about mistakes, it really tests your ability to forgive. And forgiveness is such a powerful, transformative— I'll call it an action, emotion, whatever— but forgiveness is critical. And it starts with you. It starts with forgiving yourself, let alone worrying about and being able to forgive somebody else. You know, it starts with you forgiving yourself for those hiccups or for those major detrimental dangerous situations or mistakes that you've put yourself in and everything in between. It starts with saying, okay, you know what, that happened. I can't, you know, I can do something about it and that's listening, learning, adapting, assessing, but it's in the past and I need to leave it there and I need to just take the learnings and the lessons and the blessings forward with me. But forgiveness is so critical, and it also leads to whether or not you regret something or not. As I said, I don't regret anything. And actually, around pickleball— pickleball, I'll tell you, if you don't know about pickleball, just do a couple Google searches. It creates a community, and it's a beautiful community. Like any sport or activity or, or, or hobby and, and I, yet I find pickleball players to be just forthright and very open. So there was a group having a conversation off the court, and I'm on the court, but I'm hearing it, and I can't help between points commenting or, you know, injecting kind of my agreement or whatever the case might be. And it was this one woman commenting to a guy about, you know, something she, that happened to her that she God, she greatly regrets. And he said, oh, you need to let that go. And I said, yes, you do. I don't regret anything. But it, you know, kind of stemmed, you know, provoked that type of thinking. And that's what mistakes, mistakes are good for, is to bring those things to the surface so you can evaluate them and let them go and take the lessons and move forward. We're going to take a quick break. Break. When we get back, we're going to get into how can you reframe your view on mistakes and your attitude and your actions toward mistakes, and in order to then move forward and be much more productive, effective, and successful. So we will be right back.

You are listening to Shedding the Bitch Radio with Bernadette Boas. We are inspiring individuals around the globe to discover, confront, and shed their bitches of fear, insecurity, and negativity. So they can create the riches in their career, business, and life they deserve. Be sure to check out Bernadette's book, Shedding the Corporate Bitch: Shifting from Bitch to Rich in Life and Business, available on Amazon and sheddingthebitch.com. We also want to thank our sponsors, North Georgia Tax Solutions, who offers a broad range of tax services for small to corporate-sized clients. Go to ngtaxsolutions.com tg-taxsolutions.com to learn more. And Parker House Virtual Services, who provides virtual assistance and social media support for small to medium-sized businesses. Email Deborah Parker at deborahparker.va@gmail.com for more information. To become a sponsor or advertiser on our program, email us at media-relations@sheddingthebitch.com. .com. Shedding the Bitch Radio airs every Tuesday at noon Eastern time. Be sure to go to blogtalkradio.com/sheddingthebitchradio and follow the program for all of the updates and announcements of our guests and show topics. Now let's return to Bernadette and Shedding the Bitch Radio.

Welcome back everyone.

Speaking of mistakes and the fact that #MistakesMatter, you might notice if there's a difference in texture or volume to the episode before we went to break and now that we're back. That's because I made the mistake of putting myself on mute during the commercial so I could get a something to drink, and I never took it back off mute when I came back.

That's what I get for not relying on Deborah to handle that, and I handled it myself.

However, how do you handle that mistake? Hey, it is what it is. I, you know, I will apologize for that. At the same time, that's why I jumped immediately on another another production log, and I'm recording it again. So, I spoke for 9 minutes, and hopefully, uh, it will be as powerful as I felt it was in the first, uh, time around. But we were coming back from, from commercial to discuss how you can reframe how you see and handle mistakes, and it really does come down to first Accepting that you will make a mistake. It's a guarantee, a guarantee you will make mistakes. Now it's a matter of how you respond to them. Just like one of those quotes, and this one was from Nikki Giovanni, she said, "Mistakes are a fact of life. It is the response to errors that count." So we need to get you from— if you're defined yourself as a learner, and our rich question at the top of the hour was, are you a learner or a stressor when it comes to mistakes? If you're a learner, awesome. My recommendation is just to continue to see how you can improve upon, um, learning from those mistakes that you make. If you're a stressor, let's shift you. Let's give you some tips and tools for, for moving from being a stressor to being a learner. To do that though, you really need to, excuse me, beyond acknowledging that you're a stressor, think about the last few mistakes that you've had and really consider the impact that they had on you. Consider the end result of that, of that mistake. So for instance, you know, there's many of you that really wallow in the smallest little hiccup as we've discussed disgust and have a hard time shaking it off. There's others that make that mistake, they may wallow in it a bit, but then they eventually shift to really considering kind of what they can take from it and moving on from it. There's some that wallow in it, they don't consider what they could take from it, but they do let it go. And all of those things are things— it's that can be improved upon. Because even if you brush off mistakes, if you're not taking lessons from them, if you're not really learning from them, then they're not serving you, and you will make that mistake again. And what we want to do is give you the tips and the tools to allow you to make mistakes and then learn from them and let them go. So you need to consider the mistakes you've made, what impact they've had on you, and how did you respond to them. Did you respond in any one of those ways? Learn from them, you then— or you wallowed in them, eventually learned from them and moved on, or did you wallow in them, not take any lessons from them, and, and just let them go? After that, a critical part of making mistakes is forgiving yourself, no matter how small or how big that mistake was. You have to forgive yourself. Until you forgive yourself and recognizing that, guess what, you're human, and mistakes confirm you're human because we all make them. It doesn't matter how, how amateur I'll call it, or how successful or seasoned someone is. Actually, the more successful you are, I can guarantee you, the more mistakes have been made, hiccups or the big ones. All right, but you have to forgive yourself and, and be okay with making mistakes. You want to then recognize and pay attention to what you can learn from those mistakes. What teachings does that mistake have for you? Whether it's, you know, I didn't prepare good enough, I have to be a better preparer, I have to be a better listener, I have to be a better communicator. I have to be a better person. I have to, you know, learn something different because I didn't have it, and that's where the mistake came from. Whatever the case might be, you also, also want to pay attention to the benefits that you're gaining from making those mistakes. And then you do have to find a way to let them go. Remember them I always say, remember them because if you do come across them again, if you do make that same mistake again, you want to be able to recall them and determine how you responded to them, what you learned from them, what you did, um, you know, as a result of that mistake. So then you have all of the tools and the learnings that you need, uh, to address that mistake a second time. If it, if that's what happens, um, then it'll help you not make it the third time or the fourth time. But even if you continue to make them, if you're learning on a regular basis, and continue to make them, eventually you won't.

All right?

Now, the last thing I want to share with you in regards to mistakes is make them and make a lot of them. You know, as a part— apart from being a leadership coach, I'm also a business coach and consultant. So I help entrepreneurs, even corporate leaders, work on their business, work on starting it, Managing it and growing it. And what I will tell them is make as many mistakes as fast as you can. Some people, including myself, will sum it up by saying fail fast. Making a lot of mistakes, and especially if they're intentional, opens up a floodgate of creativity. Say you're working on a book, or you're— you have a business that you're working on, or you have a project with a client, and that requires, you know, new ideas. You know, making mistakes says, I'm willing to open up my mind and get as creative, get as free, get as strategic, as visionary as possible. Try them and see if they work or not. And so those mistakes of yours lead to new ideas, new inventions, new opportunities, new learnings, new growth. So make as many mistakes as you can, you know, yourself and/or even with your team and/or with your client. Use it. Use it from— take it from me, and I took it from somebody else, this lesson of failing fast. Of making as many mistakes as you can, because it only means that you're trying different things, and things will work and things won't work, and be okay with that. It's a business strategy, it's a life strategy, because again, mistakes only allow you to grow and evolve, and that's the objective that you have for yourself, is to learn and grow. All right. So that's our conversation around mistakes. And like the mistake I made putting myself on mute and recording 9 minutes to an empty board. Deborah was like texting me and I never saw it. And she's texting me going, hey, I can't hear you, I can't hear you, I can't hear you. What happened? And it turns out I muted myself. Hey, it happened, and here's my solution to it. And so I hope all of you, um, can learn and grow and appreciate the mistakes that you make, and recognizing that it's only making you a better person. And as I noted, there's a lot of great episodes out on Apple Podcasts, on blogtalkradio.com, on sheddingthebitch.com from our last 4 or 5 years of talking to experts as well as just you and I having a conversation of all the topics that impact you in your career, business, and life. And I hope you join us next Tuesday at noon Eastern time for another one of those episodes. I'll look forward to speaking with you then. Have a great, prosperous, rich week. Take care, everybody.

Thank you for listening to Shedding the Bitch Radio with Bernadette Boas. Join Bernadette every Tuesday at noon Eastern Esther as she helps you shift your bitches to riches. And the dialogue is always going on at sheddingthebitch.com. See you next week.