Please don’t do what some of my clients did before they came to me. Often, clients come to work with me after they fail a bunch of times. They are repeating the same patterns, and very frustrated and fed up with trying and failing. I hate that they wait so long because they waste so much time, energy and money beating themselves up, taking ineffective actions and suffering.  I can have them turn this around so quickly.

 

Life and business happen. Things don’t always go like you want them to. You make mistakes. You fail. There are real costs to these occurrences. Money, position and even the loss of a business. If you are like most people, you get upset. Sometimes, you’re being upset results in a decision like not taking a chance again or never…fill in the blank. That might be a smart decision but it also might be a decision that simply serves to punish yourself for having made a mistake and results in long term costs to your career and even your relationships.

 

Here is the thing I always tell my clients— lessons are valuable and always come at a cost. The alternative is you never risk anything, you are bored and stagnant. I, personally, have had some expensive business lessons. My first business failure cost me around $125,000. That one hurt. And honestly, it took quite a bit of coaching for me to get the lessons learned and appreciate that money was well spent. I learned to not step over things. Like a rattlesnake, the things you step over, always bite you in the butt. I learned that when someone has their heels dug in and won’t listen to reason…. It is a two-way street, perhaps I have mine dug in too. I learned that when you get attorneys involved, there is no happy resolution. I learned that when large sums of money are involved, people’s survival gets threatened and they act differently than before. Those lessons have served me well in the ensuing years.

 

I was coaching one of my clients on this very subject last week. The most amazing part of this conversation is the decisions she made about herself, others and where she was stopped from moving forward. She had trusted someone, had paid them a lot of money to teach her something and work with her in her business. The person she hired, did not do what he said he would do. She felt betrayed. She stopped trusting herself. She stopped trusting anyone in the industry he was in. What was most impactful, she stopped working on that part of her business. When she could see that she had made all these decisions she was able to forgive him and forgive herself, digest all the lessons she learned and move on.

 

The question to look at, if you are reading this, is what mistakes have you made? What decisions did you make? What are you not doing or not enjoying because of those mistakes and those decisions? What lesson did you learn? Forgive yourself and anyone else involved, realize you paid a price for that lesson. Now, move on and thrive!

 

 

I still make mistakes, and they still have a cost, but now I realize that there is always a price to pay for lessons. I gladly pay it, learn from it and move on.