I learned my lesson… again 🙄

Reposted from the weekly email essay that I send (almost) every Friday. Sign up here.

You might have noticed that I didn’t send a newsletter last week.

Well, probably you didn’t notice because life is busy and nobody pays as much attention to my own business as I do myself, right?

The thing is, I had actually written a whole newsletter (it was even quite delightful, all about summer and stuff). But I never managed to send it.

Why not?

Total and utter overwhelm. 🤯

You see, in a few weeks, I will be opening the doors to The Lab again to welcome some lovely new members. 👋

And I’ve been thinking of different ways to promote the open doors (a free event, a challenge, a bonus…?) as that’s what one is supposed to do, right? Make a big hoo-ha, plan a big launch… And I wanted to share this in the newsletter.

Well, I’ve never been particularly good at this part of running a business and I totally got in my head, overthinking everything, then went down a spiral of panic and shame for not having my marketing game figured out. 😵‍💫

So instead of sending what I had and figuring the rest out later, I ended up watching hours of Virgin River on Netflix instead. And I don’t even like that show, I basically hate-watched it while hiding from the world. 🤷‍♀️

And the almost-finished newsletter just sat there, never to see the light of day (or light of inbox?). Poor thing. 😢

It took me until Saturday afternoon to stop feeling bad and to remember that I was the one who set the date for opening the doors to The Lab, and if I felt overwhelmed and not ready, well then I could change the deadline.

It’s my own business, after all!? Duh!

And I had also just returned from a month-long trip that had not gone to plan at all AND I was still recovering from Covid (the brain fog is real 🥺), so why was I putting so much pressure on myself?

The most annoying part? I had learned all of these lessons in the past:

• Don’t stress about arbitrary deadlines
• Don’t worry about planning a “perfect launch” — just let people know what you have to offer
• Give yourself plenty of time to settle in after travelling

Yet here I was, making the same mistakes again.

Why did I never learn from my mistakes? 😫

But after talking it through with some of my business besties, I started being a little kinder to myself again.

Some lessons just need to be learned again and again. That doesn’t make me stupid, it makes me human.

The important thing is to catch myself before I go down the full spiral of overwhelm, shame and guilt. And thankfully I did that, by taking a break, watching trash TV and talking it out with some friends and peers.

So this is your reminder: if you need to make the same mistake over and over in order to learn from it, that’s ok. Keep trying, keep learning. And ask for help when you need it. 🤗

Have you had to re-learn a lesson again and again? Let me know, I’d love to hear it!

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This story was originally published in my newsletter on July 29th 2022.