EP 54: When someone says you screwed up
Welcome fellow confidence crusaders, neuro nerds and success equalizers. This is your podcast, Real Confidence. I'm your host, Alyssa Dver. And I'll be sharing a bit of basic brain science, some surprising social secrets, and a touch of tough love. Why? Because I believe confidence is everyone's fundamental right and choice. So let's get to it.
Alyssa Dver
My team here at ACI often tells me I should record when things are raw, when they're fresh in my brain and I thought this was the perfect moment to do that. I had something happen yesterday that really put my confidence, knowledge and teachings to the test. So by means of giving some context, a particular individual who I had been interacting with, for a while, I would say a few months and I had then met in person last week kept throwing off strange vibes, a little bit of aloofness, lack of information and kind of like not being forthcoming with it, and so on. And invited me to do a workshop for the team that he was managing and in the prep meeting, on Monday, not only asked to move the Tuesday workshop at that point to Thursday, which in and of itself is very how should I put it, weird, right? You invite 26 people to a workshop and they say we're moving it two days later, but then went to all kinds of gory detail to describe each of the individuals, not that I needed to know any of that. But needless to say, I listened and took notes. And show up on Thursday, all prepared ready to do a workshop I've done before many times. And you probably know that I do workshops for a living, so hundreds of them every year, this is not new territory for me. But this workshop, well, four people showed up at that point. And I always say doesn't matter how many are in the room with you can impact and give some gifts, emotionally and otherwise to whoever's there and that's a good day. So I was disappointed that the 26 people weren't there, but again, do your best for the four.
And very soon into the presentation. I was getting thrown barbs, if you will, questions and comments from individuals that were very surprising. Quite honestly, were challenging my knowledge and in a way that they were stating that they were more expert. And while I clearly said that I respected their perspective, I was coming at things from a different perspective, of course, that you know, the work that I do, I talked to hundreds of individuals in this particular field every week, study brain science for the last decade. So particular issues around that I was a little bit maybe more forthright to tell people that their opinions were respected but not necessarily agreed with. Now, it wasn't particularly a brain science focused session. But again, I look back and I say, boy, they were challenging me on things that I am notoriously an expert in and they're not, but yet I felt very attacked and many ways. So get through the event. And at the end, my contact wants to do a debrief and basically says to me, “that sucked that was terrible, and the damage you have done, I can't even explain.” To which my response was, I am so sorry. And for the next five minutes, I continued to apologize for a poor outcome, though I did say back to this individual given what your objectives were and what I asked you on Monday, it seems that it would have been impossible to meet those regardless with the way that the audience came into the room. And of course, he got defensive and told me that I had misunderstood everything that I didn't pick up on those cues while I was presenting online, that I didn't understand or underestimated people.
Now, in all fairness, it was not my best performance, I definitely am tired, I wasn't able to pivot and kind of chill in the middle of my presentation, as I often do when people get things off track, and I sit back and try and figure out the best way to get them back on track. And most of the time, I actually all the time, except for that time, I'm able to do it. But this one, they kept dragging me off the track- now very smart people, absolutely, very passionate people around things that they're passionate about, clearly, but there was a lack of passion around this topic. They made that very clear.
So trying to force feed information into somebody's head that they're really not interested in. Yeah, my biggest mistake yesterday. Perhaps my contact’s downfall, his own Achilles heel. What did I do to get back on track though myself afterwards, I was feeling horrendous, really sad, angry, frustrated, depressed, I could put 1000 labels on it, but I was feeling shitty. And my reaction was, who can I call not to necessarily tell me that I'm the greatest person on the planet, I didn't need that kind of Pollyanna support, I needed to thought processes through to get myself a, quote, confidence coach. And so I called first my colleague, who is who has not only been trained in this, but who knows the way I think really well. And she was brilliant in her questioning and commenting. I called two other friends of mine who brought very different perspectives, who didn't bs asked me didn't say, oh, it's going to be okay. And you did nothing wrong. You know, I didn't need to hear those things. I needed to hear things like, tell me what really happened. What do you see is the truth, because clearly, this other individual has a different set of glasses on. And as I replayed some of the scenarios, it made me realize that I didn't do anything wrong, that I had said and done, what I would do, again, if given the opportunity, that perhaps there was better ways, more elegant, eloquent, more concise ways, maybe less energetic ways, even confrontational ways- but in reality, the whole message that I delivered was still the same that I would do, again, given the opportunity.
So after talking to three very trusted individuals who know me very well, but also know that I don't like things sugar coated, I came away with a very good sense that no, it wasn't my finest moment, I can certainly do things better and learn from the things that I did that I wasn't ideally proud of. But at the same time, I realized that sometimes other people, it's gonna sound silly as the confidence queen, really get off taking your confidence. We've done podcasts about the tall poppy syndrome- that's, that's very blatant example of when people want to cut you down, but in the moment, for whatever reason that they're hurting for whatever reason that they need to feel superior, for whatever reason, they think that you're nicer, prettier smarter than they are. For whatever reason that they may not have been successful in their own effort, in their own career, in their own relationships, and are envious of yours. It is perhaps intentional or not, that they want to grab your confidence.
So what can we do about it? Well, obviously the answer is not let down but that's easier said than done. So I want to tell you the three golden nuggets that my confidence coaches gave me that helped me not only get a good night's sleep last night but wake up with new energy and a new perspective. The first thing they said is do not email, do not call, do not text this individual yesterday while I was still heated in the moment, emotional and man it's the hardest thing when you're an action oriented person that you want to just get things done and make things right. Do not react they said not only is your brain not at its best heated acting and it's a amygdala zone down into the brainstem, all defensive and survival mode. load. But he's always his. And while he's angry and frustrated and directing that at you, Alyssa, he can't think straight either. He's not thinking rationally and perhaps just maybe he will wake up realizing how wrong he was too. Maybe, maybe not. But needless to say, sending a message at that moment would not have served either as well. So, one don't react.
The second thing that was very clear, actually, across all three of my confidence coaches, messaging to me, was that, guess what, even the confidence queen is human. Yeah, we all get up in the morning, we go to the bathroom, we put our pants or dresses on, we get to work. We speak and we say things sometimes that maybe aren't the best in hindsight. Or maybe there's something we don't say that we should. And we realize that only after it's too late, that's human. Maybe we slip up and say something that's not politically correct because given that dialogue, right now, given all the terms and phrases that are verboten, I can't even keep up with them myself when I'm in the market. That yeah, we might say something that would offend somebody accidentally. But being human is not a condition. Being human is a blessing, because guess what everybody else does, too.
So while somebody might say to you, you screwed up, you said something that offended somebody. They've done it too. They've done it, they may not even know they've done it. But needless to say they've done it as a human. And our best human reaction is I appreciate knowing that and I will try and do better going forward. I can't guarantee I’ll be better, but I will try. In fact, a great human reaction would be I really appreciate you letting me know that; I did not realize it at the time and I'll try and be more aware of it in the future for myself and for others. So being human we are we can’t avoid that perfectionist or otherwise we are human. And I think that was very telling to me that not only am I going to make mistakes of course. But so can everyone else including this contact of mine. And his mistake, perhaps was even having this workshop at all.
All right, and number three, the teller of tells was that simple question- Will you stay with me until I take a sponsored break and then I'll tell you what the number three is.. aww you can hate me. I know I love you all though, so stay with me. I'm gonna come back with number three because it's the real one that changed the whole boats direction. We'll get some spots for love and we'll be right back.
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Alyssa Dver:
All right. If you still on it means that you forgive me for dropping that tease, I just felt like it you know I'm trying to regain my energy after yesterday it's a Friday it's raining and dreary here in Boston. So needless to say sorry for the tease. But number three the golden nugget that I got from my confidence coaches yesterday. Number one was don't react; two was just remember you're human. But number three. What's the next plan? What's the worst case that can happen? And let's plan going forward. Dust yourself off pick yourself up girl. Let's go. But it wasn't wrapped in a message of ignore what was going on. It wasn't wrapped in a message of don’t linger in the pain. The message was let's figure out what is the possibly worst case that can happen so you're prepared to deal with it going forward. Now this guy is the contact not just for this workshop and some other things that we're doing through the organization, but actually one of the biggest events that we're running all year. And that was why I had met him last week down in New York. And unfortunately, with that big event, it's very, very huge part of our overall revenue, part of our marketing and sales strategy. So I think when the workshop went off the rails, as much as I was upset about offending, potentially offending the four people that were there, I was much more concerned about the impact on the business overall. And of course, the revenue as it would trickle down into how I would support the team, my team here in my businesses.
So the wise coach that brought this to my attention said, what's the worst case that you can't have that event there? There's plenty of other places you can have it? Yeah, but they're not as good. I said, hey, they may be better, maybe there's better spaces, better partnership. Yeah, but they're not going to be as sexy. And the karma came back saying, well, we'll make it sexy, because the venue isn't the reason people are coming, they're going to come because they want the content, because they want to meet great people. They can go to the venue anytime they want. But they can't meet great people and get great content, unless they come to your thing no matter where it is. So it was that moment of reckoning through realize it. The worst case wasn't so terrible. And the second question, that person in that conference coach asked me then was alright, if you have to plan somewhere else, how are you going to do it? And I said, Well, I can go down our customer list, I can find some areas and organizations that I know that are in particular areas that we want to hold this yada yada I started putting together a plan and immediately was on a brain path that said, I'm in control, I get to make choices of how I want to answer and deal with this. And not only am I not going to let somebody else take my confidence, but dammit, I'm not going to let somebody else hold me hostage. In doing the things that I know serve the world, that bring joy and energy, whether it's to my friends, my family, my customers, my team, I owe it to them, I owe it to myself, not to let one individual or one situation, even if I really did screw up, dictate what we're going to do going forward in the future. So in reality, making the choice not to be angry, frustrated, sad, depressed. But to make the choice that it sucked, don't want to do that, again, there's a couple things that I definitely would do differently. Next time, I'm going to be more careful of some of the things that came out of my mouth. I'm not going to promise that I'm going to fix it 100% Every time but it's certainly going to try. More importantly, I'm not going to let it stop me from doing other amazing things in the world.
Now, I'll admit to you being a confidence crusader is exhausting. It's tiring, some days I get up and I really don't want to. But then I remind myself that if I can help one person in that room, one person on that podcast feel better about the great things that they can do to unleash their potential that's all I need as a reason. So thank you for listening to my rant. Raw, fresh, but also recovered.
Before we totally wrap up, I want to let you know that full transcripts and show notes for this and other real confidence episodes can be found on www.AmericanConfidenceInstitute.com/podcast. I also want to remind you once again that the best way to get confidence is to give it to others and you can do it just by liking and sharing this episode on your preferred podcast and social media channels. You can even give me some confidence by noting topics you'd like me to consider for the future. So for now, this is Alyssa Dver. Thank you for helping to bring more confidence to the world.
Master editing done by Ben Weinstein with original music performed and composed by Jeff Mitchell. Real Confidence is a production of American Confidence Institute. All Rights Reserved.
