I totally stole this from a meme, but it’s so perfectly accurate so I had to steal it for the title.
This is my life mantra. When something doesn’t go your way, when you try and fail, just say “yikes” and move on.
In life, there are a lot of things happening around us all of the time that can set us off or into a tizzy. They can be big things like important projects at work or little things like keeping your house clean. The problem is we get really hung up on what the results or outcomes are of these big and little events.
We attach our worth to the result of an event, or what the outcome will be. If we succeed, then we will be enough. We care too much about what other people will say or think, or we judge ourselves too cruelly to even give ourselves a chance to try.
Because of this, many of us are too afraid to take a risk, to ask someone out, to put ourselves out on the line, and allow ourselves to be truly vulnerable because we are afraid of what will happen if we do.
We care too much.
That mentality and way of thinking are holding us back from living up to our full potential. It’s holding us back from truly stepping into our authenticity and not giving a s*** what anyone has to say about it. That confidence and security in knowing who you are and your worth, allows you to look at a mistake and think “yikes…” and then move on.
For example, for one minute, let’s think of this scenario together. Think about what it would feel like to try something new that you were nervous about and then you f*** it up completely, you just totally fell flat on your face and failed. But you have no attachment to it. It doesn’t define who you are as a person, it’s something you tried and did and it simply didn’t work out. So instead of getting upset about it, sulking for a week and picking apart every detail of the occurrence. You look at it, like it’s a pile of dung next to you, make a face, and just say “yikes”…. And then you completely move on. You walk away from the situation and don’t think or feel another thing about it. You completely move on with your life.
Imagine how freeing that must feel, to be able to separate yourself from an outcome or result. To be able to try and fail, and know if your heart that it doesn’t mean YOU failed as a person, but that this particular event didn’t work out.
It’s the definition of not just “don’t sweat the small stuff”, but don’t sweat anything.
It doesn’t matter if your house is super clean, or your laundry isn’t finished, just do it later. It doesn’t matter if you mess up a sales call, because there will be another one. It doesn’t matter if you asked someone out or allowed someone into your heart and then they broke it because there will be someone out there who won’t.
In order to be able to look at your “failures” and be able to say, “yikes…” and move on, you have to believe in your heart that it doesn’t matter. That a “failure” or mistake doesn’t define who you are as a person. It is just something that happened to you in this life. Though, the only way that can happen, the only way you can separate the two is if you love yourself and are happy with yourself as you are today.
Once you can do that, once you can truly love yourself as yourself, and not attach your successes and failures with who you are, you will feel free. That’s when you can truly live in a world of “yikes” and then moving on.
