Episode 297: Making Mistakes

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Today, I'm going to talk about mistakes. 

Something that I'm going to be honest, I am not very excited about. Meaning that like I don't even want to admit to you, let alone myself, I'm not perfect.

Because my name is Peter Pamela Perfection Rose. 

And just like things to be all neat and buttoned up and look good. 

And here's the thing, when I started this podcast, I remember the first few actually the first episode I did, it took me two hours to do it. 

And then I finally said to myself, there is no way I will ever do this, or keep this up if this is how long it's going to take me. 

Because I was trying to get it perfect and I was trying to say, oh, I'm going to do one thing and it's going to be like this, to only find out that maybe that wasn't the best way. 

And so what I decided was, is that in this weekly podcast, come what may, no matter what, I was going to do one every week.

And sometimes I batch them. I do a few in advance. 

But I never really do more than four in advance. 

So always, what you're hearing, I've recorded very recently. 

And the other thing that I decided was that I was just going to be who I was. I wasn't going to edit unless it was absolutely necessary.

Absolutely necessary, including the interviews, because what I wanted you to see was that you could accomplish something, and not be perfect. And come on. If you've been listening to my podcast, you've heard me stumble. You've heard me say things wrong. You've heard me go off, get lost on a tangent and come back.

You have heard me make so many mistakes. 

And I've just recorded a podcast, because I am batching this one but like I said, you will be hearing it very soon. Where I really felt like at the end I went off and then a phone call came in and I just felt off and I was like, Ugh, should I re record?

And I said, No. No, I shouldn't. Because again, what I want to show you is, what I want to emulate in my work is that you don't have to be perfect, that this is a podcast that if you're expecting perfection, you're not going to get it, okay?

Go listen to somebody else. I'm not perfect. I'm not going to do this podcast perfectly, but what I always will be is honest, and I will always be talking from the heart. 

A lot of my older clients call me mama bear and they are my baby bears. 

And I feel what a good mama bear does is she teaches her baby bear how to fish. 

And she teaches through example. 

And that's always how I wanna teach. And when I talk about the core work, I'm always talking about the work that I've Guinea pigged on myself, on my own, anxiety, on my own imperfection, on my own character defects, and then coach you to do it.

Because I figure if I have done it with myself, coaching you is a piece of cake because I have to go up against all of my own messiness and I do it with lots of mistakes. 

So I have a couple of books I'm going to be reading from today and talking about this mistakedom.

The first one is actually a Hazelden meditation book called In God's Care.

It starts with a quote from Ethel Barrymore. How appropriate. “You grow up the day you have your first real laugh at yourself.”

“Do we sometimes think the whole house of cards will come tumbling down if we make one false move? 

There's nothing wrong. with making mistakes. That's the way we've learned in the past and that's how we're learning now.

We laugh affectionately at the foibles of others. Sometimes it's irresistible. But we can laugh at our own with the same good humor.”

And, one of the things I find about life is not taking myself so seriously and not beating up on myself when I have made a mistake. 

There are times when I've made some really big mistakes, and I need to go back and take responsibility for that.

But most of the mistakes. are just little mistakes where I'm tumbling over my words or I'm in a recording session and I misread something. 

I just say, okay, pick up and I go on. 

The fact of the matter is that in life, everything is fixable. 

And when we do something wrong, we make a mistake.

I just saw something on social media and it was Simone Biles as a small girl doing the vault. And it was in a meet and she didn't do that well. 

And then they showed her ten years later, doing a far more complicated vault. And it was perfect. It's through making our mistakes that we grow.

And it's okay not to be perfect. 

But this is the thing, it doesn't really matter that I tell you it's okay that you're not perfect. You need to go through the same process that I go through. 

Which is, I need to know it's okay with Peter Pamela Rose, that Peter Pamela Rose isn't perfect. The reading goes on to say “living a spiritual life doesn't mean we have to be grim.

In fact, increasing joy and merriment is an unavoidable result of turning our will over to that of the universe's. Now we can relax and enjoy life, and that includes enjoying our less than perfect selves.”

And that's the other thing, I think, that in mistake making, that when I make a mistake, I go to the universe.

I start talking with the universe. 

And I talk a lot about in this podcast and in my weekly classes about your relationship, that incredible relationship that is open to you with the universe. 

Everybody has it, whether you want to acknowledge it or not, is up to you. I just think that, acknowledging it and practicing a relationship with it makes life a lot easier.

And the thing is that with that relationship, when I make mistakes, I can go to that energy and say, wow, I really screwed up here. Please guide me, show me what it is I need to do. 

The thing is that I can also give you my experience of being an actor. I've been a professional actor for over 30 years.

And let me tell you, when you're starting out, there is no mistake that is career ending. There is no mistake that is career ending. All it is, is a learning experience.

I'm going to go on a little bit more here now. 

The Language of Letting Go

“Many of us picked on ourselves unmercilessly before getting into the core work. We may also have had a tendency to pickon ourselves after we begin the core work because what has starts to happen is we become aware.”

 and that's the whole thing is a mistake is a wonderful opportunity to become aware.

And the thing is that we cannot become better. We cannot become more skilled unless we have awareness about what we are doing. 

And I always talk about that awareness, acceptance, and action. 

And why do I talk about it so often? I talk about it so often because it is such a key part of the process of becoming better.

Better in our lives, creating a better life for ourselves, and creating a better acting career for ourselves. 

If I was really doing this, I wouldn't be doing that again. 

Ugh, how many times have I said to myself this, Oh, I should be further along. I should be further along in my acting career. What the, who, who said that?

I did. Who said that? 

That is just making things so much harder for you. 

There's a wonderful phrase that Louise Hay says that I love which is, “Stop, stop beating up on yourself. Stop it. Stop it. Be nice to yourself. Be kind to yourself. That's going to go so much further.”

These statements that we say this, if I was really doing this, I wouldn't do that, or I really should be so much at my age, I should be so much further along than I am.

These are statements that if we indulge in them, we are feeling some sort of shame. And when we are feeling shame, we are feeling that we are defective. And you are not. Defective. 

We do not need to treat ourselves this way. There is no benefit. 

And that's the thing. Perfectionism leads to procrastination, leads to paralysis.

And I don't want to be paralyzed by shame because shame blocks us. 

But self love and self acceptance enable us to grow and change. 

Again, we need mistakes in order to grow. 

Now that doesn't mean I'm going to go out and try and make mistakes. 

But it does mean that when we make them, we can be kinder to ourselves.

If we truly have done something we feel guilty about, we can correct it with an apology, an amend, or an attitude of self love and self acceptance. 

Sometimes when I do something to someone else, I need to forgive myself first, and then go ask for forgiveness. 

And this is the thing, even if we slip back into old shaming behaviors or old thinking or feeling or behaving, we don't need to be ashamed.

We are all going to regress from time to time. 

It's two steps forward, one step back. 

Sometimes it's five steps forward and seven steps back. 

But ultimately we are, if we stick to this work, we are moving forward. 

That's how we learn. That's how we grow. We relapse. We recycle. It's an important, necessary part of recovery.

And when I talk about recovery, I'm talking about recovering our true selves. 

Because when we recover our true selves, we can bring that into our acting work. And what does that give us? It gives us truth. 

It's those performances that are so undeniably truthful that we are seeking to do, to seek to achieve.

And the way out of recycling is not shaming ourselves because what that does is that puts us into a shame spiral that just gets us deeper and deeper in. 

So much pain comes from trying to be perfect. Perfectionism, or trying not to make mistakes, is impossible unless we think of it in a new way.

Perfection is being who we are and where we are today. 

It's accepting and loving ourselves, Just the way we are. 

We are each right where we need to be in our lives, in our career. 

Now that doesn't mean you can't do things to change things up. 

But what it does mean is taking off the pressure of yourself and start treating yourself as the beautiful child of the universe.