…or feel like you didn’t give your best…
…or let someone down…
…or made someone feel bad…
…or disappointed somebody.
Don’t turn that anger and disappointment on yourself or someone else.
Have compassion for yourself (even if it’s the hardest thing to do at the moment). Take a deep breath and know that “you are human and that you make mistakes and let people down occasionally because we all let people down occasionally.” (These words are from life coach Helen McLaughlin because coaches need coaches too.)
And if everything is unfolding as it should, what is this experience here to show you, to teach you, to give you? What is the gift of this shadow, this discomfort, this pain?
Then turn that compassion outside…to the person you had hurt, disappointed or let down. Take responsibility. Apologize for your part. Find a way to make it better.
Breathe. And then do it again…because it will happen again and again.
The challenge is not to let it make you hard or to fight or escape or quit but to be curious and learn over and over what you need to know from this moment.
As Elizabeth Gilbert says in her book Big Magic, “Don’t let go of your courage the moment things stop being easy or rewarding. Because that moment? That’s the moment when interesting begins.”
