Imagine this – you’ve driven 70 miles one way to the nearest passport office to renew your passport and when you get there you realize that you’ve forgotten your old passport which means you can’t get a new one! How would you feel?…….. Well this scenario describes exactly what happened to me.After 2 minutes of mentally beating myself up, I decided to calm down by changing my way of thinking. We all make mistakes from time to time.
Here are some ideas on how you can change the way in which you perceive mistakes:
1. Be good to yourself – There’s no use trying to fight against something you’ve just done when you can’t change the situation. Give yourself time to calm down and regain your composure. Let go and chill out – being upset or angry won’t help!
2. Acknowledge what caused you to do what you did – be honest and don’t blame others. I forgot my passport because although I checked things the night before, I was tired. I had plenty of time to re-check things again in the morning and should have done that.
3. Address the problem – this will help you move on from the problem. Within minutes, I had rearranged my meeting with the passport office.
4. Acceptance – accept that you make mistakes from time to time and take the learnings.
5. Recognize what positives came out of the situation – It was a lovely sunny day, I enjoyed the drive and got to see new City and it inspired this blogpost!
And remember, making mistakes really means learning, and making many mistakes means you are learning fast – there is no failure, only feedback.