A Story About Self-Compassion

The email from Frau Ahrend pops up, and in the same second I know what has happened.

“Dear Frau Kessler, a quick question about the Q2 report: the reach of 1.2 million, is that figure right? The presentation last week said 820,000.”

I open the file that went out to the client yesterday evening. I scroll to the first page. There it is, large and bold, directly beneath our logo. 1.2 million. I copied the template from the previous quarter and forgot to update one table. The report has gone out, seen by four people on the client side, and the headline figure is wrong.

My stomach tightens. I write back immediately, correct the figure, apologise, attach the right version. Frau Ahrend replies warmly, no harm done, thank you for clearing it up so quickly. On the outside the matter is settled in eleven minutes.

On the inside it is only just beginning.

As a project lead in a digital agency I spend the rest of the afternoon in meetings, and the whole time the same film is running inside me. “You should have seen that. You check everything twice otherwise. How could the headline figure of all things slip past you.” I sit in the status meeting with the development team, nodding in the right places, and inwardly I am standing in a court where I am both defendant and judge. The verdict is already in.

Between two meetings I open the report three more times, although the wrong version was replaced long ago. I look for further mistakes, find none, and do not believe myself. A colleague passing by asks whether everything is all right. Yes, all good, I say, and hear how thin it sounds. The afternoon carries on, the meetings, the emails, ordinary business. Inside me a parallel programme is running that nobody can see, and it costs me more energy than all the rest of the day.

At quarter past three I present the concept for a new campaign to another client. I know the slides by heart, the arguments land, the client nods. And while I am talking, the wrong figure from this morning hangs in a corner of my head and whispers that I am unreliable. I smile, I close the meeting properly, and the moment I am out of the room the accusation is close again. That is how it has been for years: one mistake weighs more with me than ten things that go well.

Around half past four I fetch a coffee in the small kitchen next to the open-plan office. Nadja is already there, my colleague from consulting, with the firm for years. She looks at me and puts her cup down. “You look like someone ran over your dog. What’s wrong?”

I tell her. The wrong figure, the report already with the client. I hear myself and notice how hard my own tone is. I am expecting an “oh dear” or a sympathetic wince.

Nadja laughs briefly, without mockery. “Ah, the old template trap. That caught me last year in the annual report, with the wrong revenue figure on page one. In front of the board.” She takes a sip. “You sorted it out in a quarter of an hour, the client is happy. Where exactly is the problem?”

“I should have seen it,” I say.

“Of course you should have. And next time you will, because now you know where the trap is.” She says it as calmly as if she were talking about the weather. “You’re not a worse project lead because you picked up the wrong file once.” She looks at me until I raise my eyes. “Give yourself the same round of leniency you’d give anyone on your team.”

I go back to my desk and the sentence stays with me. Not a worse project lead. Suddenly I notice the difference. If Nadja had come to me with this mistake, I would have said exactly what she said. I would have calmed her down, put the mistake in proportion, shown her the next step. I would have been warm and clear.

With myself I speak differently. With myself I speak as if to a defendant I let nothing past.

I take a piece of paper and write two lines, the way I would write them to a colleague. “A template slipped past you. You corrected it in eleven minutes. Build yourself a check for headline figures, and that’s that.” I read it and breathe calmly for the first time in hours.

That does not make the mistake smaller. The figure was wrong, it went out, that needs naming. It only changes who is speaking to me while I put it right. A merciless judge gets me nowhere. A good colleague does.

In the evening, when I shut the laptop, the extra check is noted down and the inner court is adjourned. I think about how readily I hand out leniency, to everyone on the team, only never to myself. And yet I need it most on the days when I make mistakes.

Self-compassion does not mean glossing over mistakes. It means staying on your own side when you make one. Whoever spends hours taking themselves apart after a mistake loses twice: once the figure, and once the energy to do it better next time. Whoever speaks to themselves the way they would to a good colleague corrects the mistake and stays with themselves.