Words by: Dawn Baxter
You did something wrong (unintentionally I may add), but now you feel terrible. The feeling eats away at you and even worse, it makes you feel like a terrible person.
Making mistakes is part of human nature, but although it is more common than we may realise (or certainly hear about from others), it never feels any easier. Nobody likes to fail and although some may say we need to embrace failure and look at it as an opportunity to grow. It can be hard to look on the bright side when you’re really feeling down in the dumps about a pretty big faux par, but punishing yourself isn’t going to fix anything!
So, if you’ve made a mistake at work, how can we get over it, learn and then just move on?
How does making a mistake affect our emotional state?
When we make a mistake we experience lots of emotions. Embarrassment, fear and shame can all be amplified if the mistake is public or ‘out there’ for everyone to see. And despite mistakes being common and something every single human being has done from time to time, yes even Mother Teresa, we don’t handle them well in a collective sense.
Our culture has us believing that high-performing, high-achieving types do not ever, not even once, not even a little bit make mistakes. Which is a massive mistake in itself!
We hold ourselves up to an unattainable marker of achievement, completely abandon all that makes us human, and only accept utter perfection.
This in turn is utter rubbish and let’s be honest, only sets you up for failure. The feelings we get when we feel ‘caught out’ come predominantly from our childhood, was there any room for mistakes for you growing up?
Past traumas can have a profound effect on the mistakes of today making us feel like a failure and triggering our ‘not good enough’ responses when in fact mistakes are quite frankly as common as breathing.
Recognising that mistakes are not always a bad thing
Mistakes are only a bad thing if you choose not to do anything with them right? Let’s take an example, something many people do in day-to-day office jobs is replying to client emails.
Typos will happen, so as a precaution you may choose to proofread more often or to only type consciously when you are undistracted going forward for instance.
Small mistakes and ‘human errors’ are often unavoidable. We live busy lives, often multitasking and juggling this thing called life! And occasionally something has got to give. Hindsight is great for figuring out how things could be better but the truth is we often do not know we are making a mistake until after we have made it!
So the theory that all mistakes can be avoided is flawed! The learning that comes from mistakes is something that cannot be substituted by anything else and it is valuable. Experiences shape our world, how many times do you buy stilettoes even though you know they can break an ankle or two?
Although we would all like to gain experience and learnings the way Neo did in the matrix with a fancy microchip direct to the brain, unfortunately, we cannot. We have to live a little and fall down a little but then we have to triumph and make mistakes in equal measure. Some of the most valuable lessons life ever taught me have come from mistakes.
What to avoid when you’ve made a mistake
Hopefully, by now you’ve realised that mistakes are totally normal, but there are a few golden rules to abide by if you have accidentally slipped up.
Firstly, do not try to cover a mistake up. You will panic and do a messy job at best probably making the mistake even worse! Secondly, do not shift the blame and try to pin the mistake on someone else, it’s unethical and the universe is passing notes to Karma! Well maybe not, but it’s still very uncool.
The wrong way to handle a mistake is to pretend it didn’t happen, ignore the circumstances, deny it or pin it on someone else to take the blame. You have to own it.
Be honest, own up, learn from it, evaluate it, and then share the findings so you can help others swerve from making the same mistakes you have. It is a beautiful thing to be able to truly evaluate your situation in a way that helps to guide you and those around you forward.
