Life and business go hand and hand.  Very often as I experience things with my boys, I can see the patterns that my business owner clients also have as well.  This was really present for me when I took John, my almost 10 year old, to karate for the first time last week.

See, John is the kind of kid that wants to excel and is really hard on himself.  He’s dropped out of two sports when he can’t be the best, and has a tendency to be quite the little perfectionist.  Being the therapist-turned-coach-mom, I believe I know just what to tell him.  OK, maybe I don’t know exactly, but I’m gonna give it a shot.

After just one karate class, John decided that maybe  he wasn’t good enough.  He was anxious, and really had a very bad attitude about going back.  In fact, the old pattern of wanting to quit was emerging again.

But this time, I’m not letting him give up on himself.  Much like working with clients, I have a vision of what’s on the other side of the fear.  It’s my job to show John and my clients what’s possible if they will just persevere.

So the day of karate we were driving to school and John started in.  He went for a few minutes focusing on all the things he couldn’t do, how he’d probably be the worst in the class, blah, blah, blah.  This was a teachable moment….

I stopped him and said, “John, for three months, just give yourself permission to SUCK!”  He didn’t get it again, so I repeated it.  “John, just give yourself permission to be really bad for three months.”  This time, he looked at me like I had two heads, and said, “Hey mom, that’s not being very nice.”  He was taking it personally.

Clearly at nine, he didn’t get my loving support, so I had to explain it this way.

“You are working on learning something you have never done before.  If you give yourself three months and be totally gentle with yourself and only focus on what you do well, you’ll feel so much better about it.  Versus, the alternative of focusing on what you can’t do, getting frustrated, and wanting to quit.”  I went on to acknowledge how athletic he is, how disciplined he is, and how he could totally control what he chose to focus on….learning new skills or the mistakes he would make.  It was a pretty cool drive to school as I love teaching my boys ‘consciousness’ and that they have the power of choice.

Now in your business or life…where do you bump into the need to “allow yourself to suck for 90 days?”  It’s really an amazing little strategy I’ve developed from working with thousands of clients over the years.  Personally, I just started singing lessons, and it’s funny because my words to John came in very handy just three days later when I felt like I’d never master the breathing and complicated exercises the teacher was asking me to do.  But being older and wiser, I now know that the #1 most important thing I can do is to breathe, be gentle with myself, and keep showing up………it always gets better.

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