How to get it wrong...

So, here I am beating myself up for doing a terrible job at my training event last week.  Really beating myself up, gnashing of teeth, wailing, mea culpa-ing like crazy and then I started typing up the training notes.  As I typed I saw that actually the group came away with lots of ideas, actions, plans and future changes they are going to make.  So far, so good.  Then I had a conversation with the consultancy that hired me.  I was on the verge of handing back this contract, resigning with my tail between my legs and slunking off to a corner to lick my self-esteem shattering wounds until I heard that the client loved me. Huh??? Really loved me, thought I was great and wants me to not only carry on working with the organisation, but also wants me to facilitate a meeting with their executive directors and their board.  What????


How did I get this so wrong?  For sure I could have run a tighter course.  I could have nailed the brief down tighter before I started, but there was no way I could have anticipated the internal wrangling and politics I was faced with.  I could not have known that this particular group of people was fed up with any training at all and didn't want to be in the room.  I could not have known the individual hidden agendas with which I was confronted and all of this added up to me believing that I was unprofessional and more distressingly, useless.


I am not unprofessional and I am not useless, but how easily I let myself be convinced of this.  How easily I let myself fall headlong into this pit of despair makes me sad for me and for my development.  I thought I was further along than this.  I really believed I had transcended my childhood need for approval and could re-affirm myself without the need of the input from others.  Maybe this is another form of arrogance - the belief that the opinions of others should not matter.  For me they do, but how could I have read this so wrongly?  Why was I so ready to believe the worst about myself?  This is what I am busy with right now.


I used to be a smoker.  I was a heavy smoker and sometimes got through three packs of cigarettes a day. I stopped in the 1980's for over eleven years.  Wow - quite an accomplishment! I convinced myself that I was cured.  No longer a nicotine addict.  I could be in a room full of smokers and not feel an inkling of temptation. Nothing, not a smidget!  I was above my past addiction.  And then, one day, I had a cigarette.  What harm could it do? I was no longer even tempted by the lure of cigarettes, one couldn't hurt.  BANG! Before I knew it I was back on two packs a day edging towards three.  How easily I slipped back into old habits.


This is just what I did over the past few days around work. I judged myself so harshly because of my addiction to old habits.  Not feeling good enough is an old habit.  I thought I had eliminated it, but obviously just like the one cigarette of my old downfall, one episode of doubt had me laid low.  Feeling bad about myself is an addiction to the past and just like any addiction I need to look at it again and be more aware of its power to entrap me.  I need to treat this addiction to feeling lousy with respect and when it arises, I need to examine it, acknowledge it and counter it with positivity. What I don't need to do, is to feed it.  The more I feed the addiction to feeling bad, the bigger it grows. I need to nourish the little girl inside who is so unsure, but not be beating her up, but by hugging her and showering her with love.


Thank goodness I have friends.  They have been supportive and loving and busy telling me that I'm fine.  I am beginning to put myself back together again.  I am still feeling bruised by what was a difficult few days and I am still wary of going back to the same organisation.  This time I will go back prepared for what I might find and with the knowledge that I am good at what I do and I am never less than professional and competent.  Sometimes I am even great!


Oh, and by the way, I completely stopped smoking six years ago and can't even remember that old addiction so there is genuine hope for the future.