You know when you spend all this time on something for your fashion business and then there’s some sort of unexpected technical glitch that loses all your work? This happened to me. I wrote a long business owner musing and when I hit “Save” something went wrong and the whole damn thing went away. Gone.
So I got upset. Of course.
And then my partner who was working next to me said something along the lines of “Why don’t you get in the habit of making sure things are saved as you are writing?” While I know he meant well and was trying to help, it was NOT what I needed to hear at that moment.
Mainly because I know he’s right.
I know I need to pay more attention to things like that, and I often don’t.
I know that his point was simply about a way that I can improve or tweak my process to make sure that the disappearing blog post doesn’t happen again. (It’s happened before.)
But the fact that I know he’s right doesn’t matter.
I got annoyed because I don’t like people telling me what I do wrong.
So I’ve learned two important things:
First, the obvious lesson of always, always, always double-check to make sure that whatever you’ve been spending time on is backed up, saved, copied, whatever.
Second, and more importantly, don’t let your ego get in the way of your growth.
It’s hard to accept criticism of something when you know what you should have done but didn’t.
It’s difficult to listen to what others have to say about our work, our processes, and our ideas without getting defensive and snippy.
But if the person who is giving the feedback is someone you respect, take note of when your ego is getting in your own way. And stop it.
Lots of love and encouragement,
