Making Mistakes

Photo by Sam Haddad on Unsplash

Like it or not, mistakes are par for the course.

As much as we’d like a perfect innings, there really isn’t any such thing. 

That’s a function of the variability inherent in our environment. Our colleagues will not always act predictably. Competitors don’t always behave the way we’d like them to. And the broader macro environment can have a tendency to ‘misbehave’ when we’d least like it to.

That’s part of life and expecting anything otherwise is foolish.

Of course, mistakes are not simply a function of others. We need to own them, too. Because we will make mistakes. 

We’ll make decisions that, in retrospect, didn’t make sense. We won’t put in the work that we should have in specific areas. We may, quite simply, not know what we’re doing (particularly if we’re trying something new). 

It’s important, then, to manage our thinking. We should strive to be as perfect as possible, knowing that we won’t be at all times.

This sounds obvious but it’s an important point. When we make mistakes, our internal dialogue tends to go a couple of ways. 

We might brush it off and ignore what’s happened, moving on without regard for the learnings, or perhaps rationalizing what happened and why. Or we might take it to heart, and extrapolate - meaning we begin to draw conclusions about our abilities and capabilities. 

Both are dangerous paths to go down, because we’re not truly learning from them. 

The key is to take the learnings - good and bad - and consciously apply them to our actions going forward. 

And, (most) importantly, not using these mistakes as a judgment on ourselves and who we are. That takes a measure of self-confidence and belief in ourselves, which, I appreciate, can be easier said than done. But it’s a conscious practice and one that we need to keep working on.