easier said that done: learning from your mistakes

Everyone loves to say how you learn from your mistakes.

Let me tell you something….

It is not pretty.

Learning from your mistakes costs money. Sometimes a lot of it.

Learning from your mistakes means hurt feelings and miscommunications. It means hard conversations. It means admitting that you were wrong & having to apologize, sometimes on your knees. It means broken promises and sometimes relationships. It costs energy & sleep.

And the biggest cost of all: time.

For example, while it feels really good to be writing, honestly, it feels about 10 years too late.

Yes, yes, ‘better late than never’ and ‘no time like the present’ and ‘blah blah motivational blah.'

The fact is, I really should have been writing more everyday. Especially about my experience running a restaurant. Particularly as a woman, who started in her twenties, who went to school for English.

At the end of the day- doing things you love is hard.

Running a business is hard. Evolution is hard. Being your best is hard.

Even when you love what you do, even when it’s successful and people are happy and you are told you are doing a great job,

you will still have days that challenge you to your core.

Owning and running a business is believing in yourself at the same time as being certain you are going to royally screw everything up.

This is coming from me, and I think of myself as a moderately confident person.

I truly do believe that as long as I am leading with love, gratitude and compassion, that I’ll be ok. And sure, Carolyn Iannone, in a vacuum, with all her love, compassion and gratitude will be ok, eventually.

But this alone is not enough.

You need some serious grit and that shit takes practice. Cause when you mess up, oh man. It feels real bad.

Of course, I tell myself it’s part of the journey, it’s part of the story, I’m stronger and wiser and all that other crap we tell ourselves (even if it’s true) - it still really freakin stings.

So what are we to do?

We can ignore it. (This never works. I know this, cause I’ve tried it.)

We can quit. And sometimes this can be the right choice. (What? It can!)

We can keep doing what we are doing and hope that we just remember to do better next time. (Risky.)

Or we suck it up and learn from it. (Sometimes you yell first or cry or write a lot of checks very angrily.)

But eventually-

We can see all our missteps and bad calls and know that those were the only ways we’d get here. It’s all part of our story and it’s meant to be messy.

All the mistakes I made (and will make) as a boss or as a leader or a human or as a non writing writer-

Brought me here.

All that practice I had of picking myself up and dusting myself off has left me pretty damn resilient.

And even though it really sucks to learn from your mistakes, in the end, it can really add to your character, if you let it.

In the very least, it will make the story more interesting.