A short video blog by Kathy Caprino introducing her social-media research project “My 52 Mistakes.” She outlines the project’s purpose—to create an open forum for women to share and learn from major life and career mistakes—gives examples from her own life (business strategy errors, toxic relationships, financial expectations, late self-realization), and frames mistakes as reversible learning opportunities to be shared without shame. She invites viewers to contribute via her blog and email and to follow weekly video posts expanding on each mistake.
Chapters
Hi, I'm Kathy Caprino. I'm the author of the book Breakdown Breakthrough and founder and president of Elia Communications, a woman's career coaching and marketing consulting firm dedicated to helping women achieve breakthrough in their lives and work relationships, businesses and in themselves to create life and work as they truly want it. I'm here today talking about my new social media research project called My 52 Mistakes. I am so excited and passionate about this project because the intention of it is to provide a large open forum for women to explore the biggest mistakes of their life. Not from a negative perspective, but from a positive perspective. To look at what are these mistakes, why did I make them, what did I learn from them, and to share the collective wisdom we've learned with others. So I launched this on my blog at www.eliacommunications.com blog my 52 mist with a rundown of my top mistakes that I've made in my life as a woman, as an entrepreneur, as an author and speaker, as a coach and therapist. These are mistakes, misguided actions, directions, paths that really have wreaked havoc on my life, really have rocked my world in a challenging way. And I have to say I love my 52 mistakes. I have learned so much from the experience of these mistakes and from sharing it. So I embrace these mistakes. Yet they had powerful impacts on my life that I'd love to share. So what are some of these? Well one of them is in my business having a build it and they will come mentality in the beginning almost as the sole business strategy I had. That was a mistake also in my business, investing mightily in it before I learned how to earn as an entrepreneur, as a professional, staying in toxic miserable situations because I thought I had to. As a woman. Looking at my financial situation I realized even though I'm very self reliant, I had in the back of my mind the idea that a prince would come completely rescued me from my financial mistakes. And then I made the mistake of being very angry at my husband because he wasn't going to be the rescuing prince. And finally, as a woman, one of the biggest mistakes I made is waiting until my 40s to understand that I could make the difference that I wanted to in life. So that's just a sampling of my top 52. I would love to hear from you. What are your mistakes? What are your top ones? What categories do they fall in? How did you make them? How did you overcome them? And what did you learn? So if you would please share on that blog elliottcommunications.com blog my 52 mistakes or send me an email@kathyliacommunications.com let me know and read through my list. Which ones resonate, which ones don't? Which ones do you want to hear more about? I've launched it as 52 also because I'd love to do a weekly video post, each one on a different mistake, what I've learned and what I'd love to share. So please spread the word. Let's get this going. Let's get honest and real and let's heal from the mistakes we've made. And before I leave you today, I would love to share a little bit about my views about what is a mistake, because I've gotten some fascinating feedback from women saying, I don't really believe in mistakes. It's all good. I don't think I make mistakes. So I'd love to share this. What is a mistake? From my view, a mistake is a direction, a path, a conversation, an initiative that you launch into the world and at some point, an hour, a week, a year later, you realize, whoa, that is not what I wanted to create. That's not who I am. That's a mistake. Now, we did the best we could with the information we had at that moment, so we can't beat ourselves up. And to regret them is completely missing the point. You did the best you could, but that doesn't mean you don't look and say, oh, my goodness, I don't want this. This is not who I am or who I want to be. So. So that's a mistake. It takes you away from who you are. And what do we need to do? We need to look at it, understand it, really get to the heart of it so that you can reverse it and not repeat it. And thirdly, we have to share it. Not keep quiet, not hide, not feel like an imposter, not feel shameful, but share what you learned and what you did. Because they're universal. My 52 mistakes, people have told me, are universal. There's nodding of heads, there's agreement on almost all of them. So they're universal and we need to share. That's my view. I'd love to hear your views. Do you believe we make mistakes or do you believe it's all good and there are no mistakes? I'd love to hear from you. Thank you for sharing this. Let's get it going. Let's spread the word. Let's learn. And I'd love to leave you with this message. We do make mistakes. We are imperfect, but it's in the courageous, fearless, eyes wide open exploration of these mistakes and the sharing of them that create, with as much love, compassion and acceptance as we can, a life experience that is as close to perfect as we can get. Thank you so much for being here and wishing you many happy breakthroughs.
