For whenever you’ve thought “I’m Not Good Enough”

Wow. What if they think I’m not good enough?

The more I explore this, the more other people’s words seep through the dense sand of my self-limiting mind. There are all sorts of ways we tell ourselves we’re not good enough. When we slip up or don’t know something off-hand, we tend to take it all on and really give ourselves the treatment our imaginary bullies are so good at.

So here’s something kooky that happened to me this week that sent me into panic mode, but I managed to shake off pretty easily.

We had a first session with a new client this week (yay us!) and as usual, got everything prepared ready for the big moment. We even got the time zones right for the meeting, which is no mean feat when you’re conducting meetings and sessions remotely with people in other parts of the continent.

I had myself set up beautifully. I even shared a picture to demonstrate “mission control” from where I stand, in command, pressing my buttons like a champ to make it all run smoothly.

As I bade farewell to Louise in our regular Teams link (this is how we’ve built our business over the last two years from different locations) I excitedly said “see you there!” as I waved into the camera then joined the client meeting with the other link.

It was 9:28 local time. T minus two minutes as I entered the room and waited for the others to join.

Hmm, I thought. You know what would make this even better? If I was standing up to deliver the presentation this morning! After all, I’ve got this sit-stand desk, and it will probably loosen me up a little bit and bring more energy to the session.

I pressed the ‘up’ button and watch Mission Control rise as I pushed back my chair to take my new standing position. What was that stretching noise? I paused the elevation and looked around my desk to make sure nothing was about to be knocked off the desk then resumed the upward movement, seeing everything was safe.

There is was again except this time, right on the dot of meeting time, everything lost power. Mission Control fainted on the spot. Blacked out.

I don’t know if you’ve seen that scene in 9 To 5 where Lily Tomlin in posing as a doctor as she’s shunting a body around the corridors of the hospital on the gurney, looking for an exit? That’s kind of the energy I was packing now.

I dove under my desk and discovered the stretching noise was the plug of the power board having been stretched to it’s limit was actually now hanging half out of the power point. Phew! Easy fix!

Except the plug was so tightly jammed I couldn’t move it either in or out of its current position. And the desk was electric, so I couldn’t ease the tension because I couldn’t move the desk.

Now the music from Flying High is running through my head as I lose more minutes reaching up to each plug in the power board, that’s neatly tucked inside the cable cage, and had lovingly been set up in the name of tidiness and order. It didn’t help that due to having changed phone providers recently, I was out of phone credit because I hadn’t set up the automatic renewal yet, so I couldn’t even say “hang on a minute! I’m coming!”

As I unplugged the last of the appliances, the board found freedom and I could plug it back in. But then as I started to re-patching Mission Control back into the power grid, I couldn’t quite reach with some of the plugs, and they were all necessary.

Finally I took the board out of the cage and plugged everything back in, powered everything back up and re-entered the meeting room, where I could see two participants waiting in the virtual lobby, independently wondering what was going on.

So there I was. Finally. Did I slink in apologetically, beating myself up for such a bad entrance? Once upon a time I might have, but I shared my story, including my grazed finger, we had a laugh and moved on to what was a fun, confident session delivery.

This morning I saw the email from our client in moment in time with the heading “are we still on for this morning?” A nice reminder to double check my phone account will auto renew.

Note to self: when you tidy up Mission Control’s power leads, plug it all in from the standing position.

Another note to self: sometimes we do something silly because we’re human. We can choose to beat ourselves up with it or have a laugh and move on. I know which one feels better to me.

And for the record, our client didn’t think I wasn’t good enough. She fully engaged with what we had to say and is excited to be moving towards her podcasting goal.

Have you got any monumental fail stories you want to have a laugh about? I’d love to hear them!