Have you ever avoided setting a goal because you were afraid of how it might feel to fail? You’re not alone. The truth is that no one likes how it feels when they fail. You often go through life trying to avoid failure at all costs. But are you afraid of failing because of what it means, or is it because of the whirlwind of emotions failure can release?
Kristen is back from her own personal coaching intensive and she’s ready to get deep into the feelings of failure and how fearing those emotions that revolve around failure could be what’s holding you back from success. Get ready to feel all the feels and maybe have some tissues handy while you listen to this week’s episode.
Here are a few highlights:
- Why you’ve been conditioned to avoid failure
- Recognizing how our bodies experience fear, and what additional emotions come along with it
- The importance of creating self-awareness
- How perfectionism is a sneaky way to avoid failure and its negative emotions
- The detrimental side effects of the I’m fine mindset
- How success comes from willing to feel the negative emotions
Embracing failure may sound like a crazy idea, but the truth of the matter is that the path to success is littered with it. Instead of convincing yourself that you don’t need to reach your goals just so you can avoid failing, trust the process and get used to disappointment. You’ll get there.
Thanks for listening! Do you have a question about network marketing? Kristen can help! Drop your question here, and she just might answer it live on the podcast: https://kristenboss.com/question
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Transcript for Episode #74: The Feeling of Failure
Kristen Boss (00:00): Welcome to Purposeful Social Selling with Kristen Boss. I’m your host, Kristen Boss. I’m a mindset and business coach with more than 15 years experience in both the product and service based industry. I believe that social selling is the best business model for people wanting to make an impact while they make serious income. This is the podcast for the social seller, who is tired of feeling inauthentic in their business and desires to find a more purposeful and profitable way of growing their business in today’s social media landscape. In this podcast, you will learn what it takes to grow a sustainable business through impactful and social marketing. It’s time to ditch the hustle and lead from the heart. Let me show you a new way.
Kristen Boss (00:48): Hey bosses! Welcome to another episode of the podcast. I just have to say just last week, the podcast charted to number two in marketing in the country, you guys are amazing. Thank you for sharing with your friends. Thank you for sharing on your social media. I’m always reading the reviews and I just want to say a deep heartfelt, thank you. Thank you for making this podcast so enjoyable for me as I get to show up each week and offer you value. So this week it’s going to be a doozy. I’m excited about this topic. It’s a necessary one, and I’ve talked about it here and there, but we’re going to do a real deep dive on failure. I actually just got back from a really intense meeting with my coach and all of my peers. I’m in a group with 14 other women, and several of us in the room are self-made millionaires.
Kristen Boss (01:41): We have multi seven figure businesses, and it is really powerful being in a room with people who think differently and talk differently about money, investment, debt, business. It’s just really, really powerful. So it was quick. I flew out to Louisville, I think, as you guys call it Lou-ah-ville. And I went there for the first time. It was a real quick turnaround trip and I, it was, it was kind of hilarious. I didn’t know like I’m a west coast girl. I grew up in California then moved to Colorado. And somehow like with all the knowledge stuck in my brain, I really just didn’t decide to remember, you know, US geography. So I was convinced in my head that, you know, Kentucky was a lot further south and east than it actually was. And when I got there and looked at it on the map, I’m like this isn’t the south.
Kristen Boss (02:35): This also isn’t the east, is this technically the Midwest? And then some of y’all really confused me and my Instagram account. You’re like, oh no, technically we call it the south. And I’m like looking at the map and I’m like how? How is this the south? Why this, this to me looks just middle earth, middle America. So it was just super fun and it was really cool to see the city. And so it was really intense about a 36-hour turnaround trip. I flew out there, met with my coach. I meet with my coach and my peers quarterly. And you know, I always have coaching as a non-negotiable in my business. It’s just incredibly wise to surround yourself with people who see what you cannot see. We don’t see what’s we don’t always see what’s going on in our own brain or we’re, you know, that saying like too close to the forest to see the trees.
Kristen Boss (03:26): And that is always the truth of our business. Like sometimes we need an outsider’s perspective. Actually, I’m going to say more often than not. We need an outsider’s perspective to just show us the truth of our business and hold space for us and coach us into being the best version of ourselves. So that’s why I constantly am in rooms where I am uncomfortable. I’m in a room where I choose to be seen, choose to be vulnerable, and I just lay it all out. And I let these women speak into me and very powerfully. I mean, these are verypowerful women. So we did a full day, 10 hours, all of us around coaching around a conference table, coaching nonstop for 10 hours. It was intense. You want to talk about discipline in your brain to constantly kind of focus on the task?
Kristen Boss (04:18): Like I didn’t realize actually no, I’m fully aware of how often, because I think this is just common for entrepreneurs. My brain wanted to just drift or flow. And so it was literally 10 hours of me kind of like swatting my brain back into place like Hey, Nope, Nope. Look here, look here, focus here, focus here. And it’s like the mental discipline of that. And also think very strategically for my business and the businesses of my peers and give them valuable and insightful feedback. So it was an incredibly powerful time hopped on a plane, just got back and I’m like, I know exactly what I want to talk about and what I want to talk about. And it’s something I do notice with my students and anybody I’ve ever coached. And even if I haven’t coached you and you’re new to me, we have got to talk about the concept of failure and I’m sure you’ve heard about it a lot.
Kristen Boss (05:08): You’ve heard from, you know if anyone was successful. So you have to go out and fail. You have to fail. Big failure is important. You know, failure is on the path to success and we talk about failure a lot. And, but the thing is, is we don’t really do a deep dive on why we are so averse to failure. And I talk a lot about how your brain is wired on this podcast. I talk a lot about how we are our brains are wired to protect us, preserve us, keep us cause failure, you know, in primitive, caveman days, it meant death. But today, your brain is still wired to be failure averse. And, but we don’t really understand like you can intellectually know, is this going to kill me? If I, if I don’t hit this goal, you intellectually know that you’re not going to die, but your nervous system, your body emotionally, and even subconsciously your body is not believing you.
Kristen Boss (06:11): You’re still avoiding the work. You’re still not setting goals because of this fear of failure. And it’s interesting. I have had some people say to me, you know, Kristen, I don’t have a fear of failure. I actually have fear of success. And when I really sit down with that, I used to really believe that like, oh yeah, okay. Yeah, you could have been fearful of success, but really I think this is just my opinion. And when I really sit and think about it, I think the fear of success has to do with it, it’s only scary because you see all the responsibility and you fear what failure looks like with more responsibility. It’s still the fear of failure. It’s the idea of I’m going to have all of that. I’m going to get there and I’m not going to be able to handle it. It is still the fear of failure.
Kristen Boss (07:06): And I think some people like kind of skirt around that and they say, oh no, I have no fear of failure. I’m just going to go from like, then you’re not human. You aren’t human. If you’re sitting there and saying like, I feel no fear. I’d be like, okay, then you’ve, someone’s hijacked your brain. Like you are not living a human experience because part of the human experiences, you can’t access courage. Unless you feel fear, you can’t access, you know, bravery and vulnerability, unless you feel fear. And so it’s just like, we cannot experience, you know, the full spectrum of human emotion, unless there is a counterbalancing emotion present or that we have experienced, like, how do we know what joy feels like? How do we know what, you know, this euphoric feeling is like, because we also understand what sadness feels like?
Kristen Boss (07:57): It’s that contrast. This is the human experience. And I think what’s so interesting is a lot of my students, I teach them to use a certain tool to navigate their mindset and their business. And it’s quite impactful. But what I noticed is that sometimes people will use mindset or affirmations or even personal development. And they’ll kind of weaponize it against themselves thinking, you know, if I just use this tool enough, I’ll fix myself. And the idea of fixing myself as like all stop having negative thoughts, all stop feeling, fear, all stop feeling bad, but no amount of personal development is going to stop you from being a human, having an ax, a human experience in this world and having a human experience is somebody who feels all, em, all emotions deeply. And some like for me, there was a, I didn’t realize this about myself, but I really had to become somebody who was willing to feel all of the hard, negative emotions that I had conditioned myself to hide from for a very long time.
Kristen Boss (09:13): And I tell people the, the reason I was able to build my business and have this podcast and do the work I’m so thankful that I get to do in the world is because I was willing to experience really awful negative emotions that normally in my life I had run from, we are not conditioned to run toward fear. We are programmed to run away from it because fear has usually been an indicator that there’s something here that’s going to harm you and you have to leave. And we don’t know we’re doing that. It’s just so deeply embedded into who we are. So with this idea specifically with failure, the reason why I’m calling this, this episode, the feeling of failure is because a lot of times, you label failure without really understanding what failure means for you. Failure looks different for you than it does for somebody else.
Kristen Boss (10:17): And I’m going to explain that a little bit, depending on the story you often tell yourself will determine how you experience failure. Not everyone experiences failure the same way. And what I mean by that is, for example, when you experienced, I want you to think of the last time you believed you failed at something that you experienced failure. And I want you to think of the predominant emotion that came up for you when you experienced that. And I’ve noticed that there’s kind of a wide range of emotions that come with the experience of failure. And I feel like depending on the story you carry with you, you will often determine the emotion you tend to default to when you experience failure. So let me give you a few, a few emotions, shame like this deep sense of shame like something is wrong with me like that the story would be something is wrong with me.
Kristen Boss (11:36): And the deep emotion you feel while experiencing failure would be shame or disappointment, feeling really let down feeling like a sense of heartache and heartbreak. It feels, like a big letdown. And the story for you might mean like, I just don’t have what it takes or maybe it wasn’t meant for me or it’s too hard, or I knew I couldn’t do it. And that that’s the story. And the primary emotion would be a disappointment. Some people move to rejection. Like when failure happens on some level, they feel this deep sense of rejection, either rejected by others or even like a rejection of self. Like I’m rejecting me. I’m not good enough. I don’t deserve to set these goals. I don’t deserve to experience this. I knew I was reaching too high. Like those would be the stories and the primary emotion would be rejection, right?
Kristen Boss (12:43): Some people, I think embarrassment is a close one to shame like, oh my gosh, I announced this goal. I told everybody I was going for this. And now I feel deeply embarrassed. And the story behind that is no one takes me seriously. No one believes I have what it takes. It’s a story you have about others with your experience of failure. And maybe, maybe you don’t deviate to the same emotion each time, but you might have one that you continually default to. I find most people have like their, their story that they most default to telling themselves when they are feeling low. Like it’s just, and it could be a story that was handed to them as a child, from a teacher, a parent at caregiver appear like they can take on that. Or it was a story that they interpreted themselves from a situation like maybe nobody’s said something to them, but maybe they experienced a situation and they made the situation mean I’m wrong.
Kristen Boss (13:46): It’s I am a problem. People don’t want me or something. And that story became deeply embedded and they carried it into their adulthood. And then everything that happens negatively is reinforced is viewed through the lens of I’m the problem. And so then when they look at the event that’s happening, they’re like, oh, this is more evidence that I’m the problem. And therefore that story starts to become an identity. Right? So there’s, I think there’s other emotions that come with when you’re experiencing failure. I’ll list a couple more. I think self-loathing would be one despair. Like, and when I think of despair, I’m thinking like heartbroken, like devastated. Those would be, those would be other like synonyms to that sadness. Right. That real heartache, that heaviness. Okay. We don’t, we, we aren’t people that want to sit around and desire to feel these really intense emotions that in our body.
Kristen Boss (14:53): Like, I just want you to think of like, think of one of those emotions that really sticks out to you when you’ve experienced failure. And I just want you to like, pick, pick one and sit with it. Even if you’re like, well, I kind of bounce everywhere, but just pick one and sit with it. And then I want you to really think about what the experience, of that emotion is like in your body. So when I’m feeling, for example, despair, it feels like there’s an elephant sitting on my chest, not like anxiety. Like I it feels very heavy. My shoulders are extremely heavy. I feel this like cold weight in my center. It’s, it’s like almost like a stretching feel, like this. See, we’re not taught this. We’re not taught to like, identify what’s happening in our bodies when we’re experiencing an emotion.
Kristen Boss (15:53): But what happens is like, this is your body having a, like your nervous system, your body’s having a response to an emotion you’re experiencing and based on how you’ve conditioned yourself to handle that emotion. Listen, you’re not when you’re feeling that like horrible feeling in your chest and in your shoulders and in your stomach. And like, you just feel wave after wave of this intense emotion. You’re not sitting there thinking, oh, I’m feeling deep despair. I feel it in my stomach. I feel it in my shoulders and my neck, that’s not what’s happening. It’s actually just your nervous system. And it’s like, your nervous system is just communicating to you. You’re dying. This is terrible. Make it stop. Like you’re, you’re conditioned to make that feeling in your body stop. And unless you’ve learned to become somebody who allows that emotion to be there and you don’t make yourself wrong for experiencing the emotion, then what you’re going to do is you’re going to feel the emotion through another activity.
Kristen Boss (17:04): Like you might not even feel it. You might avoid it, resist it, or you’re going to go distract yourself from the emotion, with an activity. So you might eat food. You might turn to alcohol. You might, you know, react from the emotion. And like your reaction to the, to the despair might be anger. You might snap at your kids, snap at your family, or you might numb out on social media. You might completely check out of your life. You might sleep, but this is how you have conditioned yourself to experience that emotion. So I really went super deep with this to help you understand that the reason why you are so afraid of failure and experiencing failure is not the event itself, but it’s all the negative emotion. And the stories you tell yourself when failure happens. And of course like none of this is happening consciously and intellectually in the front of your mind, this is all happening subconsciously in the back of your mind, it’s happening.
Kristen Boss (18:12): And unless you create self-awareness around what’s happening emotionally, you’re going to constantly be in a reactive buffering, avoiding a state of some kind. And so this is when I see people, this is the only reason, listen, this is the only reason why failure is so scary for you. It’s because it’s an intense, emotional experience when it happens. And we don’t like to experience intense, emotional experiences. And this is when I see people that like want goals, but they’re so afraid to fail that they kind of think if I just engineer things well enough, I’ll protect myself from having to experience that. So all, you know, this is where I see perfectionism come in. Like if I do everything right if I do everything perfect. If I prepare enough, if I plan enough then the likelihood of me failing is going to be less.
Kristen Boss (19:15): And then it’s not going to hurt so bad. And if I do it right, then I’m not going to have to feel the negative emotion that often comes up for you. When you’re feeling, you don’t know you’re doing this again, I’m, I’m bringing awareness for you so that you notice it. And I just want you to notice like, Hey, oh, so every, when I have failed, the last time I failed, I felt this huge primary emotion. And maybe you felt many emotions. Maybe you’re like, oh, Kristen. I felt despair, embarrassment, shame, disappointment, heartbreak. Like I felt all of it. And nobody wants to feel all of that. You know, I said this in my goals episode, it’s like, it’s like dating after you’ve had your heart broken terribly. And you remember how horrible that heartbreak was, and it’s almost like engineering your life so that you’re like, I’m just never going to put myself in a place where I put myself at the risk of potentially experiencing heartache, heartache like that again.
Kristen Boss (20:23): So it might mean like I’m just not going to date, or it might mean I’m going to curate myself in such a way with the person I’m dating so that I become who I think they want me to be. So that the likelihood of them rejecting me and me feeling the experience of the emotion of rejection, I don’t have to feel it. So I’m just to engineering, curate myself. I’m not going to be my true self. I’m not going to let myself be seen. I’m not going to do vulnerability. Because if I let someone see all of me and they don’t like me, then I might not like me. Right. That it is no different. Listen, how we do one thing in life is how we do everything in life. So many people try to compartmentalize their business and they don’t realize, listen, how you handle this aspect of your emotional health and your self-awareness absolutely informs your emotional health and your business every single time.
Kristen Boss (21:23): So if you’ve been somebody who’s been, who’s been taught like, Hey, emotions are a waste of time, or they make you weak, or you need to stop indulging in them, or you’re too emotional, or you’re too sensitive. And you’ve made experiencing emotions a problem for you. Then, of course, you’re not going to allow yourself to fail. You’re not going to go out and take the risk. People who have a lot of success are not people who have learned to engineer their processes and their systems in such a way that it’s easy and it’s perfect. And they figured out how to not fail. Listen, people who are successful are not people who figured out how to not fail. There are people who were like willing to feel heartache and disappointment and despair and sorrow and embarrassment and shame over and over and over and over again.
Kristen Boss (22:24): And they got better at being somebody who felt that like somebody who created an allowance for that, but some of you are too busy, being mad at yourself for being a person with human emotions. Some of you are mad at yourself. Like, why am I getting it together? Why am I being so emotional? Gosh, I’m being so dumb. Like women, why do we apologize when we cry again? It’s kind of this conditioned response. Like, I’m sorry. My emotions are an inconvenience to you. I, once I once was coaching somebody who had gone through something really traumatic, she’s a dear friend of mine. And I just told her she was really uncomfortable, like with her grief, and just said, Hey, listen, you’re going to cry in front of people. You love like you’re going to, this is going to come up. She was processing like she was dealing with some PTSD and some trauma.
Kristen Boss (23:19): And I also want to say, I’m not a licensed professional. I’m not a licensed therapist. Like, please, I am such an advocate for therapy. I think it is the most wonderful thing in the world. And there is a time when like, don’t think coaching is therapy. I am not your therapist. I really just want to encourage you. Like, if you are having a hard time accessing emotion or processing emotion, or allowing yourself to be a human, it’s definitely a wonderful time for you to get connected with a therapist. Like I’m just always, and there is nothing to be ashamed of. There is absolutely nothing. I’ve gone to therapy. I also get coaching. I get business coaching. I get life coaching. And it’s the healthiest form of self-care you can do. So I just feel like it’s really important that I say that disclaimer. So I was telling this friend, it was like, Hey, you’re going to have this wave and something’s going to come up and you’re going to cry.
Kristen Boss (24:15): And I want you to work on when you cry in front of somebody, don’t say, I’m sorry. Instead, try saying, thank you for letting me shed some tears. Like, thank you for holding the space for my emotion. And she’s like, that is so hard. I was like, I know because you’re believing that you’re a mow. Your emotions are an inconvenience to people who love you. So can we practice saying thank you? And I just wonder if you need to practice that for yourself. Like if you need to practice letting yourself hold emotion, and you’re like, I was not expecting this when it came to failure, but listen, you cannot be somebody who goes out there and fails on purpose unless you are willing to feel all the feelings that come with failure when it happens, and failure is going to happen for you a lot more than success is, and it’s going to feel terrible.
Kristen Boss (25:25): I’m not going to sit here and say, you’re going to be fine. And I’m not, I’m not even going to say, you’re going to get tough. You’re going to get calloused. And it’s going to eventually, it’s just not going to bother you anymore. You are going to become more resilient. You are going to be stronger, kind of like building muscle at the gym. Like you, you learn to lift more weight and the muscle gets stronger. But if you want to keep growing the muscle, you have to add more resistance and more weight. And when you add more resistance and more weight, you walk out of the gym. If you did it right, you walk out sore. This is entrepreneurship. This is owning a business. You know, you’re doing it right. If you feel sore, you know, you’re doing it right when you’re, when you feel a little stiff sitting behind the steering wheel and be like, oh, wow, I really worked that muscle.
Kristen Boss (26:11): My brain is usually very tired because I put it to work all the time. And we’re going to talk about that. In another episode, we’re going to talk about the tendency we have for thought laziness. And when you become somebody who’s willing to have a strong work ethic with your brain, you were going to see extraordinary results in your life. So I want to, I want to like continue with this, with this idea of the feeling of failure and embracing failure. Listen, it’s inevitable. It’s going to happen. There’s no amount of perfectionism preparation and research and feedback that will prevent you from experiencing failure. It’s going to happen. Embrace it now. So this is kind of like the fail plan. It’s like deciding ahead of time, what you’re going to think about yourself. And maybe you’ve never done that. Maybe you’ve always experienced failure from a very reactive place.
Kristen Boss (27:19): Like you’re reacting to the failure instead of sitting with it and responding to failure, responding to someones like, this is, this is my plan. This is how I’m going to handle it. Reacting is almost like caught by surprise. Like what, how did I, I failed. This is horrible. This is terrible. And I’m reacting and I’m angry. And maybe I’m going to go buffer with a cookie or ice cream, or I’m going to say, I’m going to quit, or I’m going to blame others or shame myself or blame me. The shaming and blaming usually happens. Right? You need to let yourself experience disappointment. Welcome to being human. You’re going to fail. And then you’re going to realize this is part of the human experience, not just the failure, but the feeling of it. And when you, if you become somebody who denies yourself, the feeling of failure, you’re going to find ways to avoid failing entirely and how a lot of people avoid failing entirely as they just stopped trying, they just, they let go of the goal.
Kristen Boss (28:26): They talk themselves out of it. They downsize their goal. They negotiate with it. Or what’s most heartbreaking for me to see is they stop believing that they wanted the goal. Like they, they decide to not want it anymore. It’s almost like the disappointment became so great that they decided they almost move into convincing themselves. It’s fine. I didn’t want it anyways. Like they numb out differently. I see people do this. So like, you know what? I, I didn’t want it anyways. I didn’t need it. We didn’t need the extra money. I’m fine. We’re fine. Some of you are terrified of failure and you don’t know it because you’re hiding behind. I’m fine. It’s fine. The income we make, it’s fine. We’re doing fine. And you’re sitting there convincing yourself. I’m fine because you’d rather convince yourself that you’re fine. Then allow yourself to experience the desire for more while also holding space to experience disappointment of not having it yet.
Kristen Boss (29:41): Rewind that and listen to it again. Some of you have talked yourself out of wanting anything because you’ve made the desire for something and not having it yet. Like the disappointment of not yet having it, you’ve let it crush you. And please know, I am deeply intimate with that feeling. I know the feeling of looking at a vision board and feeling like it is light years away and not being able to see the path forward, not understanding how it’s going to come together, and feeling like everything is going wrong. I know what it’s like to look at a vision board and not feel inspiration, but to feel complete, utter despair, and disappointment. I know that feeling, but I did not decide to rip up the vision board because I didn’t like the feeling. I decided to keep feeling it and figure it out. I decided I don’t care how many tries it takes.
Kristen Boss (30:55): I’m going to get there. I don’t know when, but I’m going to learn to be okay with trusting the process and trusting that inevitably one day I’ll get there and I’m going to still act with urgency and make it important. And I’m going to still focus. Now, some of you haven’t torn up your vision board, but you’ve removed all urgency from it. You’ve almost just been like, I know someday, I’m going to get to this income goal someday. My business is going to look like this and someday like, and you’re so convinced like I’ve seen people tell me, they look at me in the eye. They’re like, Kristen, I know it. I’m going to be at the top of that stage at the top of the company. And I’m going to be making the multi-six figures. I’m going to retire my husband. And they say it to me so intensely and with such conviction. But then I also see them not taking the daily action to get there. They are diluting themselves. Like, they’re like, oh, I want it. But there’s zero urgency for making it happen. Because then when we decide to focus and work towards it, that means holding space for disappointment. It means handling our brain. When our brain says to us, I thought we’d be further along by now. We’ve worked so hard. Why am I not here? Right.
Kristen Boss (32:29): Listen, failing means feeling, think about that. Failing means feeling, feeling at all. Are you willing to be brave and open yourself up to experiencing heartache, momentary heartache? Look, you’ve survived a hundred percent of your bad days. You can do another bad day. You missing this goal. It’s not going to kill you. I know you think that. I know you’re probably telling yourself really high-pressure stories. Like it’s all on me. I’m the breadwinner I have to make this happen. Or I don’t know what we’re going to do. Listen, decide now, you know what you’re going to do. You’re gonna be like, yeah, I’m going to figure it out. I’ll Uber. My husband will Uber. We’ll do well. We’ll do other work. I’ll sell graphic design. I’ll do whatever I can to stay in this game. Instead of believing like this is going to be the round where it’s a total knockout like I’m going to be knocked out.
Kristen Boss (33:44): I’m going in for the next round of boxing. And this is if I don’t win this round, it’s a total knockout and I’m never going to be able to step foot in the ring. Again. I’m going to be out of the game. What if you just decide, I’m always somebody who figures out how to stay in the game. And I figure out how to come back from failure. I feel it. I allow it. And I look for the lesson in it. You have got to look for the lesson that is available for you in failure. But when you are too busy, judging yourself for failing, because heaven forbid you’re a human that got it wrong, not on the first time and that you’re having a normal human experience and that you are paving your way to your future through lots of failure. But when you’re judging yourself, because you have the story of constantly looking for evidence of why other people have it easier than you, other people are more talented than you.
Kristen Boss (34:44): It seems to be working for them. And not for you. You don’t have the right personality. It’s something you’re doing wrong. You don’t, you’re not cut out for this. You don’t have the right. You know, I don’t Enneagram type, whatever story you tell yourself. When you’re saying those things, it’s from such a place of judgment. Believing that if I were different, I wouldn’t have failed. And that is the worst lie you can tell yourself. It’s almost like, oh gosh, if we’re going to go back to the dating analogy, it’s almost like if I were more of what he wanted, if I were better prettier, skinnier, funnier, better skin, better hair, longer hair, smaller pants size. He wouldn’t have left me. Oh my gosh, welcome to my early twenties. Instead of just thinking I wasn’t for them. And they certainly weren’t right for me, this isn’t a problem, but I made it a problem.
Kristen Boss (35:42): I made a poor fit, a problem. And some of you think you’re making failure a problem, and you’re still busy beating yourself up and judging yourself. And listen, when you are so busy, shaming, blaming, and judging your brain is completely unable to access to necessary emotions that you need with failure. Compassion, letting yourself feel the feeling of disappointment and not going to find the bond bonds in the back of your freezer, but letting yourself have the feeling and say, of course, I feel this way. Yeah, it’s disappointing. Do you do this with your children? If you’re a parent, I hope you do. You probably do. You probably have so much compassion for your child who you see going out there and trying things and failing. But when it comes to your narrative, you’re a jerk to yourself. So when you can’t access compassion and you’re too busy, shaming and blaming, you’re also completely unable to access the lesson because looking for the lesson requires curiosity in a calm mind.
Kristen Boss (36:53): And when you’re, what, what was that? I think of that line in the Italian job where she’s like, I’m fine. He’s like, oh, you know what? Fine is freaked out and secure, neurotic and emotional, right? So when you’re saying I’m fine, I’m freaked out, insecure, neurotic, and emotional. And your brain is not able to go to work for you saying, okay, what’s our lesson here? What do we need to do? Listen, I’m pretty convinced that if this is the only podcast you ever listened to on my entire podcast, your whole life could change. Like if you just listen to this one on repeat over and over and over and over and over again, like, cause this applies for marriages too. The supplies for relationships, the supplies for, you know, your health. I don’t want to call it a diet because I’m like anti-diet culture because diet culture and hustle culture are almost the same things.
Kristen Boss (37:42): That’s another podcast episode. But listen, if you cannot access compassion, you cannot access curiosity. And when you cannot access curiosity, the most important part, the blessing that comes with failure is the gift of a lesson. My business is built on failure. My best successes are built on hard lessons and you can not get to where you want to go. Unless you’re willing to feel the disappointment, feeling that emotion and looking for the lesson, listen on this path that you’ve chosen and this life that you want, you have to get to the use to the feeling of disappointment. And there’s this li another one-liner from a movie. I just love it so much. It’s the cult classic Princess Bride. And he’s like, you must have a name. Surely I must. And it’s Wesley, he says, get used to disappointment. And so that’s my one-liner for you today. Like, listen on your path to success on your path, to creating the life you want and hitting your goals and reaching your goals and like, Hey, don’t even make it about money, but truthfully on the path to you being the best version of yourself to reaching your highest potential, you need to do one thing. You need to get used to disappointment. We’ll catch you next week.
Kristen Boss (39:09): That wraps up today’s episode. Hey, if you loved today’s show, I would love for you to take a minute and give a rating with a review. If you desire to elevate the social selling industry, that means we need more people listening to this message so that they can know it can be done at different way. And if you’re ready to join me, it’s time for you to step into the Social Selling Academy, where I give you all the tools, training, and support to help you realize your goals. In the academy, you get weekly live coaching so that you are never lost or stuck in confusion. Whether you are new in the business or been in the industry for a while, this is the premier coaching program for the modern network marketer. Go to www.thesocialsellingacademy.com to learn more.
