Hey, how are you doing? How are you feeling? What’s going on in your world? You gotta come on over to Instagram and tell me what’s going on. I’m at Amy dot Smooth Stone’s Coaching if you wanna chat. I love hearing from you and, and seeing what’s going well and what your wins are and also what your challenges are so that I can help you with them.

But I am cheering for you forever and always. I am Amy Watson. I’m a life after baby loss coach, and I’m so glad you’re here listening to this podcast. It is for you, and I think you’re gonna love this episode because it’s something that has come up so many times in the past little while that I thought I need to talk about this.

And we’re gonna talk about making mistakes. So many of us. Are so afraid of making mistakes, and it holds us back in so many ways. I see it just in choices that we’re making. Maybe you’re even standing in the aisle looking at all the shampoo and you just, it’s paralyzing, right? What if we picked the wrong one?

What if there’s just so many choices? How do we pick one? What if we pick the wrong one? But really in grief, I see a lot of people just being afraid to try, uh, and being afraid to risk. Messing up. We grew up in a very kind of perfectionist. You need to get an A, you need to be productive, you need to avoid failure kind of society.

For most of us, uh, maybe a few of you out there had parents and teachers who really encouraged you to explore and to fail and to fall down. But for most of us, we spend a lot of time being taught. To avoid making mistakes because the consequences were not good. But I wanna share with you as we get started, a couple of mistakes that I have made and.

Why I think it’s awesome to make mistakes. This is gonna be a really powerful episode, but I’m gonna keep it really short, so stick with me and let’s talk about making mistakes. Now, I have to say this first. At the end of my podcast, there’s a thing called an outro. It’s like a little bit of music. And months ago, I redid my website and I created this minicourse, which is called um, I see, I don’t remember what it’s called.

Stop blaming yourself, minicourse, right? Because so many lost parents really blame themselves and that can feel really heavy and hard to let go of. I want you to be able to let go of that blame. I created a course, I put it on the end of my podcast. I put it on my website, which is smooth stones coaching.com, and then.

Just yesterday I was talking to someone on Instagram and they said, Hey, I signed up for your course and I never got the videos. I never got your mini course. And I thought, huh, that’s funny. That’s interesting. Maybe it’s in your spam, maybe it’s in, you know, promotions. . No, she couldn’t find it. So I said, well, I’ll check on my end.

Well, we went and looked and lo and behold, there was a little glitch with one of the forms. It wasn’t, um, hooked up to the thing that actually delivers the mini course. And so most of the people who signed up for the stop blaming yourself mini course, uh, did not receive it. And if you are one of those people, number one, Thank you for taking the step to sign up to receive that course.

I know you are going to love it. I made it super bite sized, but super eye-opening. Uh, and it is gonna show you like why we blame ourselves and get you right to a place where you’re gonna realize like, oh, this isn’t. Like a failing of mine. It’s just the way brains work and why it’s so easy to blame ourselves, and then how to stop doing that.

So if you did that, you are going to get that now no matter when you signed up. Now, here’s the deal. I. I made this mistake because I made a big move. I wanted to have something amazing to offer you. You who are listening, the people who follow me on Instagram, all of the lost parents who blame themselves have an opportunity to learn how to let go of blame, and so I built this whole big thing and I put it on my podcast and.

That is good. That means I’m taking action, I’m doing things. I’m out there putting my heart and my knowledge and my expertise out there for you. And there was a little mistake, right? And that little mistake kind of had some consequences. But you know what? I’m not even ashamed about it. I’m not mad about it.

I. I just, it happened. I learned. I’m gonna take some lessons from it, right? I’m always gonna make sure we’re double, um, testing. I have a beautiful assistant who helps me with a few things like that. We’re gonna make sure we test it. We’re gonna double test it. We’re gonna have some friends go through and give us feedback and let us know what’s happening.

And I want you to know if you ever have something, like if you sign up for something and you don’t see it, feel free to reach out to me. , but that mistake wouldn’t have even happened if I was afraid to make a mistake, right? This is what we do. We fail before we start because we don’t start because we’re afraid.

And yeah, I never like redone my entire website and I never offered like a really cool video course through email, and I’d never done any of that. But I was willing to do it and I was willing to make mistakes, and I’m willing to not have it be perfect because I know how valuable it is for you. And now it’s gonna work.

It’s gonna be better. So if you haven’t signed up for the How to Stop Blaming Yourself mini course, you gotta go to Smooth Stones coaching.com and hop on there. Right? And then I wanna tell you about some mistakes that I remember from my own childhood in like, I feel like it was maybe third or fourth grade, we had spelling tests every week, and I am really, really good at spelling, so if you, if you get my emails, if I ever have a typo, you can just know that that really bothers me.

But I’ve worked really hard to just let it go and let there be typos because again, I’d rather get my message out than have it always be perfect. But I did this spelling test and we are learning cursive. And as you know, M’S. And NS in cursive are a little bit tricky. And so I remember the one word that I got wrong in the entire school year was ambulance because it had all those s and Ns, and even though I spelled it right and I knew how to spell it, In cursive.

My, maybe my n looked like an an m that has bothered me forever. But you know what? Here’s what our brains do. My brain remembers ambulance. It remembers that I got ambulance wrong. It remembers the one red X instead of the like hundreds of green check marks, all the words I got, right? I don’t remember those.

and that’s what our brains do. They’re just like so focused on the negative and they’re so focused on the mistakes, and so we’re so afraid of the mistakes. Or we will remember that we got a 99% right, we got one question wrong and kind of beat ourselves up for it. But you know what? If you are open to making mistakes, that’s how you’re gonna.

and I’m sure that I learned to be much more careful with my cursive, msms and Ns. I also decided I’m never gonna do a spelling test in cursive again. I’m always gonna print, and even to this day, I’m more of a printer than a, a hand writer because my handwriting is not that cute. Uh, but, but the thing is, I was there and I was learning, and I learned from that mistake, and I can, like, it’s a funny story now.

And then I have one more story that I like to hang onto. This is one my brain hangs onto, and I want you to think, what are the mistakes that your brain hangs onto? Ask yourself that question. Where do you worry the most that you’re gonna mess up? Is it, you know, having conversations with people? Is it putting yourself out there?

Is it maybe your mistake has to do with your grief, right? Like, you feel like you, you messed up and you could feel like you cause. Your baby’s death even. There’s a lot of people that feel that. That’s why I have this. Stop blaming yourself mini course. Um, I felt like I made a mistake with my baby river because we sent the baby off for testing and the lab made a mistake and I felt like it was a mistake that I made that choice and I blamed myself for a really long time.

Okay, but think about. What mistakes have you made that you really, really remember vividly? And what mistakes are you most afraid of making now that really are holding you back in places where you want to move forward? So my other mistake that I remember is I took an honors class and I can’t even remember, that’s funny.

I can’t even remember what the actual class was. It might have been English, like an honors English maybe. And. . I was in college. It was about my second year of college and I thought, oh, I’m gonna take this honors class. Cuz I think, I think the reason I did it is cuz you got a cool rope at graduation if you completed some honors classes and thought, so I signed up for this honors class.

Well, it was harder than the regular classes, which I generally was an A student and I got like a B in an honors class and I’ve always thought. number one. I should have like worked a little bit harder in that class, but a lot of times I’ll say the mistake was taking an honors class, but when I really look at it, That wasn’t a mistake, like pushing myself to do something more challenging wasn’t a mistake, even if it dropped my perfect gpa.

And even if I think that a b in an honors class should be weighted just as much as an A in like your basic kind of class, um, the thing is, it’s, there’s a quote and it’s like, I think Brene Brown quotes somebody else, but it really talks about being in the ring, right? I was in the ring. There’s all the people around that aren’t doing it, that are holding themselves back cuz they’re afraid to make mistakes.

But I was in there in an honors class trying and learning and pushing myself and meeting people and being around people who also like to push themselves. Like there’s so many benefits to being in that honors class that just because I didn’t get an a. Doesn’t have to mean anything about me and just cuz um, that GPA wasn’t perfect anymore.

It doesn’t mean like I can redefine what a mistake is. , but the goal is to get yourself out there. Be willing to make mistakes, because sometimes people will just say, well, I’m a perfectionist, like it’s this blanket statement, and I really don’t think that’s helpful. Number one, I don’t think we should label ourselves things, especially things that don’t help us move forward, and I want to encourage you to.

Be specific right here, right now as you’re listening to this, and you can listen to it in the future too if you have another place. But I want you to pick one place where you’re really afraid of making mistakes or you feel like you do make a lot of mistakes, and look at what’s happening. Look at what you’re thinking.

Look at how you’re feeling. Look at what actions you’re taking and look at the results you are getting. And then, What if you were willing to really just make the mistakes? What if you’re willing to love yourself in the learning process? This is how we learn. We make tons of mistakes. The way we don’t learn is to sit back and to hide and to be afraid to do anything.

If you want to learn, if you want to grow, if you want to become. , you have to be willing to make mistakes. And what I see a lot of, which really breaks my heart is people who are, who just feel like there’s something wrong with them, right? That there’s just something wrong with them and they don’t believe that they can do things.

and they, they believe that all the people around them are better than them. But here’s the truth. Everybody is just hiding their garbage and their mess, uh, outside the lens of what they show you. Everyone is making mistakes all the time, and we’re either shaming ourselves for it or we’re embracing it and doing it on purpose, and I want you to embrace it and do it on purpose.

There is nothing wrong with you if you make mistakes. You are not flawed. You are worthy and whole, and you are a human. Part of being a human is making lots of mistakes, and part of taking action towards our goals is making lots of mistakes. So what if we just embrace making mistakes? What if that means that you are in it, that you are doing it?

I even see this with my clients sometimes they’ll be learning the model, the self-coaching model, which is the, uh, one of the main tools that I use in coaching. They’ll say I’m doing it wrong, like, it’s not working. There’s something wrong with me. I don’t, I don’t know how I think I’m messing this up and I just wanna say it’s okay.

It’s okay to mess up because it means you’re trying. It means you’re learning how to manage your mind. It means you’re learning how to create results. It means you’re learning to feel your feelings. It means you’re learning a different way to get to the root of your problem and find solutions and find peace and find what you’re looking for.

So I say make a hundred terrible models. Do thought downloads, make models. If you’ve been trying models, you’ve been listening to the podcast and you’re really struggling, I want you to come and talk to me because I am gonna help you straighten out those models and we’re going to get really clear on what’s happening and really clear on what you want.

There is so much power in learning to make mistakes and learning to use the model and other tools to to become the person that you want to be. If you’re feeling broken right now, if you’re feeling overwhelmed, if you’re feeling sad, if you’re feeling like your relationships are falling apart and you’re just making a mistake after, mistake after mistake, come and get coaching, it’s going to change your life.

You’re gonna be able to look at everything differently. You’re gonna love yourself again. You’re gonna find courage and faith, and hope again. That’s what I want for you. Be willing to make mistakes. Be willing to be awkward. It is worth it to feel the uncomfortable things that move us forward. This is gonna be fun.

I want you to make a whole bunch of mistakes this week because you’re out there and you’re trying. I’ll see you next time. Are you tired of feeling like your baby step was somehow your fault? Go to Smooth Stones coaching.com and get my free mini course. How to Stop Blaming Yourself After Loss.