She told me exactly what her gap was. Then she asked me a question. I missed the opening entirely.
She told me her gap right away.
“It’s not what’s expected of me. It’s what I actually want.”
Clear. Direct. Vulnerable.
Then she asked: “What do you hope to get from this conversation?”
And I went full-on into what I expected. What I was looking for. What I thought this could become.
I answered her question. Completely. Thoroughly.
I missed the opening entirely.
The Miss
I wasn’t curious. I was performing.
She’d just handed me the question that mattered: What do you want from this?
Not “what do you think I need” or “what should we talk about.” She was asking me to be clear. To show up with my actual intention, not my coaching persona.
And I defaulted. I went into explanation mode. I told her what I was working on, what I was discovering, what I thought could be useful.
I saw her gap. Not what’s expected, but what she wants.
I missed my own. I was doing exactly what’s expected instead of what I actually wanted, which was to ask: What do you want from me right now?
The Failure
Let me be clear: this was a complete failure.
Not a small miss. Not “oh, I could have done that better.” A total miss of the opening she created.
She gave me a hook. I didn’t take it. I kept talking past it, around it, over it.
No curiosity. Just autopilot.
The Gift
But here’s what happened next.
She gave me the biggest gift she could give: she showed me what I’d missed.
Not with frustration. Not with judgment. Just: “I asked what you wanted. You told me what you do.”
And in that moment, I saw it.
The gap between showing up and performing. Between curiosity and autopilot. Between being present and executing my role.
That failure? That was sight.
Not comfortable sight. Not “oh how interesting, I learned something.” But the kind of sight that makes you stop mid-sentence and go: Oh. I just did exactly what I teach people to notice.
The Reframe
Here’s what I’m learning about failure:
You only make mistakes if you do nothing.
If you’re moving, testing, trying, you’re going to miss things. You’re going to default to patterns you can’t see yet. You’re going to perform when you meant to be present.
That’s not the problem. That’s the game.
The problem is what you do with the miss.
Most of us turn failure into a series of self-blame, doubt, and anger. “I should have known better. Why did I do that? I’m supposed to be good at this.”
But what if failure isn’t a verdict? What if it’s data?
“Wow. I haven’t seen this before. Now I can break the pattern.”
Not “I failed because I’m broken.”
But “I failed because I couldn’t see that yet. And now I can.”
The Pattern I Couldn't See
I’ve been helping people see the distance between what they say and what they do. Between who they think they are and how they show up.
And I was running the exact same pattern.
In the moment someone asked me to be clear about what I wanted, I defaulted to what I thought I should say. I performed clarity instead of actually being clear.
I saw their gap. I was standing in my own.
That’s the thing about blind spots. You can understand them intellectually. You can teach about them. You can help other people find theirs.
And you still can’t see your own until someone shows you.
And Maybe I Still Don't See Everything
I probably still missed things in that conversation. Patterns I’m running that I can’t see yet. Gaps I won’t recognize until someone else points them out or I bump into them hard enough to notice.
That’s not a problem. That’s what makes it worth playing.
The road to mastery is never-ending. You don’t arrive at a place where you see everything. You just get better at noticing when you’ve missed something.
And instead of turning that into self-judgment, you turn it into curiosity.
“Oh. There it is. I didn’t see that before. What else am I not seeing?”
The Invitation
My invitation to you: be clear about what your message is and what you want. Don’t perform. Don’t default to what you think I need to hear. Just tell me.
Your invitation to me: help me figure out what you actually need. Not what I think you need. Not what I’m used to offering. What you need.
That’s the game. Two people, both willing to be curious. Both willing to miss and catch and learn.
I’ll still miss openings. I’ll still default to patterns I can’t see yet.
But when you show me? I’ll look.
And that’s the gap that matters. Not whether you see everything. But whether you’re willing to look when someone shows you what you missed.
Because that failure, that complete, humbling miss?
That was the biggest gift.
It gave me sight.
