The Unexpected Gift of a Bad Review
I got my first bad review on my course last week.
Almost 100 people have grabbed Rise + Reset: The Cortisol Conscious Morning, and until now I have only gotten positive feedback.
And while I’d love to tell you that I let it wash over me and immediately recognized that you can’t make everyone happy and bad reviews are inevitable... that isn’t exactly what happened.
She wrote in a public post, “I’m really disappointed in this course.”
My immediate response was shame: “Oh no. I failed. I don’t know what I’m doing. How many people who’ve bought it are unhappy and haven’t said anything?! I’m definitely charging too much—even though it’s only $27. Maybe I didn’t give enough value.”
Then I proceeded to look up her profile and got defensive: “She totally looks like a Karen. I bet she’s never happy with anything. Why would she take the time to say that and not even explain why she wasn’t happy?!”
Then I looked her up in my back office and saw that she had only looked at 18% of the course. This time I got angry: “She barely got into the meat of it! How can people treat small businesses this way without thinking about the effects they have?! How many people will see this review and decide not to get the course because of it? Doesn’t she realize I’m trying to help people?!”
I half convinced myself to completely redo the course.
I considered lowering the price.
I considered giving her a refund even though she didn’t ask for it.
I started to write an overly apologetic private message to her then deleted it. Then I started a different message then realized it was super passive aggressive, so I deleted that too.
It bothered me more than I’d like to admit and took me time to process through all the thoughts and emotions.
Eventually I came around to recognizing that you can’t please everyone and I can only expect more bad reviews as I sell more courses. That’s just the numbers game. But it’s still worth it because the overwhelmingly positive response means it’s helping the other 99%, and that’s what matters.
I’m sharing this because we don’t talk about these kinds of moments enough. For the longest time I thought “healed” meant that you never dropped into shame again. That you weren’t bothered or triggered by silly things anymore. I couldn’t wait until I wasn’t fighting these responses and emotions anymore.
I looked at successful people and thought, “someday I want to be just like them. I bet they never sabotage. I bet they’re never full of shame. They’ve obviously moved past all of that to get to where they are now.”
But that’s not what healed looks like. Because healed doesn’t equal perfect. Even the people that seem to have it all together .. they still struggle at times. They still get triggered, still catch themselves in sabotage, still feel shame. In fact, each new successful step forward just brings on new feelings of unworthiness to work through. That’s definitely been my experience.
I’m proud of my course and the value that it brings. I’m proud of the work I put into it. I’m so excited about my offers because I know how much they could and have helped people, because it’s all the things that helped me.
And yet, I still have that shame pop up at times. Because shame is protective. And putting myself out there with my offers is very vulnerable and scary. My nervous system views it as a potential threat. When something like a not so great review comes in, of course it’s going to bring up shame, because my subconscious is trying to prevent more pain by convincing me it’s better to give up.
That idea that it all doesn’t just go away some day might be a little depressing at first. It was for me.
But the longer I sat with this understanding, the more empowering it became. Because it meant I could let go of this unrealistic expectation to be something that wasn’t actually possible.
When I see myself get triggered or experience difficult emotions like shame, instead of it making me spiral even further .. I can appreciate it for what it is: my subconscious trying to protect me.
We’ve all heard that growth only happens outside your comfort zone—but we don’t acknowledge what the reality of actually getting uncomfortable looks like. It’s not easy. It’s not fun if I’m being honest. But it’s absolutely worth it because the growth does come.
If you’ve felt like you’ll never get there, like you can’t be like those successful people, hear me when I say you’re already just like them. They took baby steps too. They feel terrified too. They have bad days too. They struggle too.
They just keep going. Just like you’re still going to.
If/when shame comes up for you, it doesn’t mean you’ve failed.
It means you’re human, you’re growing, and you’re exactly where you’re supposed to be.
September in Rooted + Rising we’re learning all about detoxing. This is something that is too often overlooked in the healing process, especially for mental health.
Our hypothalamus is hard at work looking for potential threats, but we tend to only consider the external threats: losing our job, relationship problems, a car swerving into us. But our nervous system is also looking at internal threats: blood sugar imbalances, nutrient imbalances, toxicity, and inflammation.
We are inundated with harmful chemicals every single day. So doing what we can to support our body’s natural detox pathways can be a huge piece to getting and staying healthy—physically and mentally.
I’ll be running a group functional medicine detox in October so stayed tuned for more info on that, but in the meantime, join us inside Rooted + Rising to learn in detail all the things you can do to support your body’s detox pathways every day.
You’ll get immediate access to all our past Masterclasses and Coaching calls, plus you get access to Rise + Reset! My founding member spots are filling up, so you’ll want to lock in this price while you can!
