“Learn from the mistakes of others – you can’t live long enough to make them all yourself.”
Martin Vanbee
Tag: mistakes
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Quote to Consider: Learning from Mistakes
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Shooting Oneself in the Foot… Again?
Most of us can relate to the idiom about “shooting oneself in the foot.”We are painfully aware of those times when our efforts work against us instead of for us. Or we watch others in disbelief as they sabotage their own best plans and intentions.
Ideally we would serve as our own best friend. We naturally feel regret, embarrassment, and confusion when we find ourselves to be our own worst enemy.
Imagine being betrayed by the one who should be our most trusted advocate. How do we build trust with ourselves again? Or do we slowly spiral downward in a cycle of mistakes, eroding self-confidence and further mistakes?
Instead of focusing on eliminating mistakes (an unrealistic and futile goal), what if we worked on becoming better advocates for ourselves?
What if, instead of interpreting errors as failure events, we viewed them as learning processes?
1. What if you viewed your mistakes as the beginning of something constructive instead of the end of something disastrous? What might you learn from the situation? What might you do differently going forward? What needs to improve in your own thinking, your team’s communication, or your organization’s processes? What benefit going forward can you construct from this unfortunate situation?
Mistakes can become new beginnings.
2. What if you viewed errors as learning in motion instead of static grades on a report card. It’s the difference between a motion picture and a photograph. If you take an uncomplimentary driver’s license photo, that’s the image (more…)
