“How do I move forward from a mistake that I have made?”
I admit, it can be tough.
Tough, first of all, to admit that you have made the mistake, but second, tough to know what to do about it.
Although I am not a big fan of the word “failure” (failure to me means falling but choosing not to get back up), sometimes the energy that comes after a mistake can bring us to the point where we sure feel like one.
Here are 4 questions I ask myself when I have made a mistake to help me turn the mistake from a stumbling block to a stepping stone.
- “What does this mean?” Life is all about perception. We create the meaning for every event we experience in our lives. What one event may mean to you would be different for someone else. You can choose it to be a catastrophe, or you can choose it to be something totally different. So, what do you choose this mistake will mean? Hint: it very rarely is the “worst-case-scenario that you dream it up to be.
- “What can I learn from this?” And there are two qualifiers with this. 1) It has to be about yourself, and 2) it has to be positive. It can’t be “Well I learned that I am an idiot”. No. Some examples are, “I have learned that I can’t put myself in this type of a situation again”, or “I have learned that I need to be more aware of X, Y, and Z”.
- “How can I implement this learning immediately?” Not tomorrow. Right now. No matter how major a mistake is, if you don’t change behaviour immediately, our psychology will drive us back to the previous behaviour the next time the situation comes up.
- “Who can I teach about this learning?” There are a couple of motivations behind this question for me. First, I want someone to be there as an accountability partner for me. Someone who can remind me if I am going down the wrong path. Second, as a leader, I want people to be okay with being human. If I can be okay with it, others can too. Finally, I want to provide the opportunity for others to not have to make the same mistakes I have.
Mistakes are part of life. But they don’t have to be the thing that defines us. They can be the things that help us grow, if we allow that to happen.
