It’s not okay for me to make mistakes
This week, Gervase takes on a limiting belief that surfaces in the lives of many modern women: it’s not okay to be wrong. Learn why this belief leads to fear, power struggles and a lack of authenticity in your life. You’ll discover why ruminating and gaslighting are trauma-based activation responses, and how leaning into body wisdom and the practice of resourcing can give you exactly what you need - the permission to be human, which will power a sense of ease, flow and creativity in your life.
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It’s not okay for me to make mistakes
Episode Full Transcript
Welcome back to the Modern Phoenix Podcast. I am your inner transformation coach, Gervase Kolmos, and we are going to talk about another limiting belief today with the intention, on this podcast and in my world, to help you know who you are, what you want, and choose it out there in the very messy, confusing modern world.
Leading from a client story, as I love to do, let's talk about the belief that it's not okay for me to be wrong. This can also look like it's not okay for me to make mistakes, but we’re going to lead with “it's not okay for me to be wrong.” Raise your hand if you have times in your life or relationships where you notice this comes up—where no matter what the scenario is, when you're talking to a certain type of person (or maybe it's the same person), something rises inside you. For me, I noticed this in my marriage several years ago. Something would come up within me in this specific relationship. We know that our romantic partnerships are our most potent relationships for healing, for mirroring our rejections and childhood wounds, and healing those things. Without knowing the whole story, it makes perfect sense to me that in my relationship it didn’t feel safe for me to be wrong.
For you, this may look like: in all professional relationships it’s not okay for me to be wrong. Or in parenting it’s not okay for me to be wrong. Or because I’m the oldest of seven it’s not okay for me to be wrong. Take it and try it on in whatever way makes sense.
For the client conversation I had recently, she was having a professional dilemma with a colleague who was expressing frustration, disappointment, or dissatisfaction with her professional delivery of services. So now we’ve set the stage: we’re talking about how it’s not okay for me to be wrong. You can see how this woman felt it was absolutely not acceptable in this professional relationship to make a mistake. There was money involved, her résumé, her reputation, and an intimate relationship—she knew this person on a different level too. It makes perfect logical sense, from the mind’s top layer, why she would move into this triggering situation with the belief “it’s not okay for me to make mistakes, it’s not okay for me to be wrong.”
Let’s go into how this presented for her, what it felt like in her body. As we started working through this (over a few days, on Voxer and in my Phoenix Revolution group for alumni and private coaching clients), we noticed it felt like pressure in her system—total siloing of her perspective and focus. She couldn’t even really tap into her body because she was so activated. She was in a fight response, which is not surprising. “It’s not okay for me to make mistakes. It’s not okay for me to be wrong. I’m angry. I’m here to fight. I’m here to fight for my title. I am good enough to do this job. I am a good service provider.”
She felt pressure to fix the situation, an activation response like a fight. She also had this overwhelming “I’m right, I’m right, I’m right.” I kept hearing that theme in our conversations. It looked a lot like obsession and rumination—that pattern we’ve talked about before on this podcast. When the ego is driving the ship, the mind is in survival mode, we’re in an activation response. We’re not getting clarity or magical sovereign Phoenix solutions. We’re just trying to prove, defend, and be perfect—not make mistakes.
What ultimately led to her shifting this activation response was stopping and dropping—as I like to say. Stop ruminating, stop obsessing, stop spiraling down into the mind’s vortex of jibber-jabber, and drop into your somatic and soul strategy. Into the body wisdom. Into the heart. “What is the heart feeling?” I finally challenged her: “What if it was okay for you to be wrong? What if it was okay for you to make a mistake? What if it was okay that you asked for a little bit more money than you felt you deserved on this project?”
Pulling in the radical idea that it is perfectly acceptable and reasonable for you to be a human in business. I know all the entrepreneurs listening just dropped dead. Take a breath. Yes—you, even if you run your own business and everything relies on you and your paycheck and your ability to be the breadwinner and provide—it is okay for you to bring your humanity into your business. Unfortunately, whether you work in a corporate office or you’re an entrepreneur, you are a human, not a robot. The only thing that doesn’t make mistakes is a calculator. Are you a calculator? I hope not. If calculators are listening to this episode, it’s the end of the world indeed.
It never really occurs to us to give ourselves permission to mess up because we think it will be cavalier and lead to a slippery slope of catastrophic self-destruction. A lot of that comes from the conditioning of women throughout time, particularly religious conditioning that tells a woman: don’t you dare step out of line; don’t you dare ask for more than you “deserve” (a totally arbitrary concept and number). Who is deciding what you deserve if not you? Don’t you dare show up unless you’re perfect—unless you’re certain you can be the most manicured, professional, of-serviced version of you. Men don’t have this conditioning. This is a lot of pressure for women.
This pressure causes us to deny ourselves our humanity. Because guess what? It is okay for you to be wrong. It’s okay for you to make mistakes. I’d go as far as to say it’s not just okay, it’s inevitable. Whether you’re a service provider, CEO, exec, parent, family member, or friend, you are going to mess it up—because this is part of human dynamics, part of the experience of being in relationship and showing up for life even though you’re never fully ready. You’re never a polished product. There are no guarantees.
When I brought in awareness of her conditioning and trauma response—the rumination, the spiraling, the spinning out of “it’s not okay for me to be wrong”—and added “what if you were wrong, what if you made a mistake, how do we tend to that reality?” we weren’t saying “take full ownership, it’s all your fault.” Nothing between two humans is ever all one person’s fault—rarely. We leave room for discernment and nuance. Notice how often, especially in current culture, we make things either-or. The truth is they’re always both-and. We don’t need to take full responsibility for everything. And also, what happens to our system when we consider our humanity and say, “Okay, what if I did make a little mistake? What could I have done better here, if I’m being honest and wasn’t so afraid of what it would mean about me?”
So then we brought in her inner parent as a resource—tending to that part of her that’s so afraid, like the little nine-year-old self saying, “Hell no, I didn’t cheat on that test!” I’m just giving one silly example, but there are many good reasons we developed these worldviews. In addition to conditioning, there’s lived experience, sometimes childhood trauma, sometimes just the pressure we feel in society to be one way instead of a multidimensional, ever-evolving human learning as we go.
Bringing in that inner parent as a resource was a breakthrough for her. Also, holding just a little space—having that inner parent hold space for the part that’s true that maybe she messed up a little bit. Maybe it wasn’t the most perfect of all perfect performances—without needing to get into her details because they don’t matter; you can apply this your way.
If you have trouble seeing the roles you’ve played, that’s okay. It’s not about gaslighting yourself into taking full blame for everything. Everybody approaches this differently. One person may gaslight themselves, another may be unwilling to see their blind spots. It’s all messy and ever-changing and confusing. If it feels that way as you’re listening, that’s normal. Because guess what? I’m not going to give you some BS three-step template that works every time. It’s not. Sometimes your childhood trauma is triggered. Sometimes your conditioning is triggered. Sometimes you’re just on your period. Sometimes it’s because you’re breastfeeding and haven’t slept in a year. Sometimes it’s something in the relationship itself requiring serious discernment. Sometimes it doesn’t.
That is why coaching is custom responsiveness to your system. But for this episode, these are things that helped shift her mindset and her relationship to the situation—helped her stop and drop out of the ruminating mind into her body, into her soul wisdom, into the intention in her heart, and to just take some of the pressure off. As soon as she took her breath and held space for the inner parent, her humanity, and the both-and perspective—“yeah, I could have done a really great job on this project and maybe there were a couple things I could have done better”—suddenly it felt like all the pressure was released. Suddenly my system feels loosey-goosey. I don’t feel activated anymore because I have permission to be human. Pressure released. I know I’m in the right space because I can check in with my somatic experience and it’s loose and relaxed.
Okay. Now I know that I’m collaborating. I’m not just letting my mind, ego, and fight response run the show. I’m collaborating mind, body, and soul. It all plays a part. Her takeaway became, “Oh, the intention in my heart is I’m trying. I desire to give this client the best possible outcome that I can. And the reality is there are no guarantees it’s going to be perfectly to their standards. There are no guarantees I won’t make a mistake. There are no guarantees they’re going to love it. But I’m doing my best and I’m a human. I get to hold space for the both-and. I’m holding myself to exceptional expectations professionally and also holding space for my humanity and my intention to be good enough. I’m here. I’m showing up. This feels a little messy. We’re not quite seeing eye to eye. I’m still here. We’re going to see this through.”
Instead of focusing on proving “I’m right” and “I didn’t make a mistake” (which leaves the other person feeling that power struggle and pushing back, keeping you in that chaotic, stressful, dissatisfying dynamic lacking human connection), we’re going to try something new. We’re going to drop into the new paradigm—the Phoenix way of conflict resolution, professionalism, and relating—which does not give me permission to not deliver what you paid me for. It does not give me a full pass to do a horrible job or not show up. But it does hold space for the fact that I’m not a calculator. I’m a human.
Just because someone thinks I made a mistake or feels like I’m wrong doesn’t mean I don’t deserve to do the work I do in the world. It doesn’t mean I’m not really good at my job. It doesn’t mean “how dare I start before I was fully ready.” It just means we’re humans in this messy world doing our best. Here we go. The more honest we can get about what it actually looks like to professionally relate—the more I invite professionals out of this sterile, robotic way of problem-solving and collaborating—the more their souls get on board. Creativity flows through them, collaboration, connection—the things women are wired to do so well come online when we have permission, resources, safety, and education about the conditioning that stopped us from doing it before. That gives us the ability to show up as all that we are—multi-dimensional humans with great ideas, gifts, and contributions.
When we feel safe in our bodies and confident to show up for that—even though we may make mistakes, even though sometimes we’ll say something that’s not right—can you imagine how much we could accomplish? Like I mentioned at the beginning, I’ve been navigating this in my marriage for years. I’ve noticed what’s happened as I’ve made it safer and safer for me to be wrong in my marriage: the deeper and deeper intimacy, love, and connection my husband and I have. This is the new paradigm of partnership. This is where it’s at.
So take this and apply it to whatever area of your life feels most relevant. Know that you’re doing a great job and your intention to try, your being here to learn how to integrate your mind, body, and soul onto the same path—that’s everything. I’m so grateful to have you in this community. I’d be so grateful if you share this podcast with other women so we can grow and create a movement of women who know who they are, what they want, and feel safe and resourced to choose that out there in the modern world.
If you want to take this work deeper, your first step is to book a 90-minute Soul Shift Intensive with me. I will see you back here in two weeks. I love you so much.