You know those moments where the situation itself is small… but your reaction to it isn’t?
I was sitting in my study, working through the final quiz for a 7-day intensive training program I’d just participated in. It was one of those multiple-choice formats where you actually need to slow down and read everything properly because multiple answers can be right.
I didn’t. For one of the questions, I read the first option, recognised it was correct, clicked it, and moved on.
Only later, when the results came up, I saw the red cross. I’d missed that it was one of those questions where more than one answer applied.
It was the only question I got wrong. Everything else was right. 99% score.
And still… there it was, that drop in my stomach, that immediate sense of frustration, that thought, almost automatic: It should have been 100%.
Logically, it didn’t need to be this big of a deal. I knew exactly why I’d gotten it wrong. It wasn’t a lack of understanding, it was just that I rushed. If anything, it was a reminder to slow down, nothing more.
But the reaction didn’t match that, and that’s the part that mattered.
Because moments like this aren’t really about the situation itself. They’re about what the situation means to us.
On the surface, what happened was simple: I answered a question too quickly and selected an incomplete answer, that’s it. But underneath that, there was something else running. A standard I didn’t realise was still there, an expectation that anything less than 100% is not “enough”.
And this is where it gets interesting, because this is the part we often miss.
We combine the two things into one: what actually happened… and what we make it mean about ourselves. And once those two are tangled together, the emotional reaction feels completely justified.
But when you separate them, something shifts. The situation stays the same. But the meaning can be reinterpreted.
That frustration I felt wasn’t coming from the fact that I got one question wrong.
It was coming from the meaning I attached to it.
And that meaning had nothing to do with the results of the quiz, it was connected to a much older pattern around standards, performance, and what “enough” looks like to me. That’s what the emotion was pointing to, not the mistake… the belief underneath it.
And this is the part I want you to take into your week. Your emotional reactions, especially the strong ones, are not random. They’re not something to push past so you can get back to being productive.
They’re signals, clues to follow. Because when something feels disproportionate to the situation, when the reaction is bigger than what’s actually happened, there’s usually something underneath it worth paying attention to.
And instead of trying to override that reaction or talk yourself out of it, there’s a different approach available, one that’s far more useful: Curiosity.
Pausing just long enough to ask:
What actually happened here?
And then:
What am I making this mean about me?
Those two questions alone create space to see what’s real, and what’s interpretation.
Space to notice whether the meaning you’re attaching is current… or something you’ve carried forward from a previous version of how you saw yourself.
Because not every thought that pops up is still relevant to you today.
Not every standard you once held still needs to apply.
And when you start to engage with your reactions in this way, they stop feeling like interruptions and they start becoming information to understand yourself more clearly, rather than judge yourself more harshly.
That small moment with the quiz wasn’t a setback. It was feedback about a pattern that was still sitting underneath the surface of my subconscious mind. And without that reaction, I probably wouldn’t have seen it, which means nothing would have changed.
So if you take anything from this, it’s not about trying to eliminate these reactions, and it’s not about holding yourself to a new standard of “I shouldn’t feel this way anymore”.
It’s about recognising that when something does come up, there’s something there to understand.
And that understanding is what creates the shift.
🎧 In this week’s episode, The All-or-Nothing Trap: When 99% Still Feels Like Failure, I go deeper into this:
You can listen to the episode on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.
The more you practise separating what’s happened from what you’re making it mean, the easier it becomes to respond with awareness instead of reacting automatically. And over time, that changes not just how you handle moments like this, but how you relate to yourself more broadly.
– Nat
PS If this pattern is coming up for you, especially that sense that anything less than perfect doesn’t feel like enough, you’re not alone in that. If you want to unpack it, you’re always welcome to reply to this email or set up a call with me here.
PPS Next time you notice a strong reaction, see if you can pause before moving on and ask yourself what it might be pointing to. Not to fix it immediately, just to understand it a little more clearly.
