How to Handle Your Mistakes like a Winner, NOT a Politician
63 million people tuned in for the second presidential debate. WAIT! This is so not a political post so please hang around. Pretty sad I feel I need a disclaimer, right?
During the first third of the debate I turned to my husband, John, and told him my thoughts about who could hands-down, IMHO, win the entire election, with one simple action. I later went on to post my thoughts on my personal Facebook page. It stated:
The winner of this debate would be the one to say,
“Clearly neither of us are perfect, far from it. We’ve made mistakes. You can judge which mistake is worse than the other but they are no less mistakes and we’ve apologized for them. America deserves better from us. I’m willing to move beyond the personal attacks tonight, speak to the real issues and the plans I have to help our great nation and it’s people.”
Dramatic pause and look the other candidate in the eyes and ask,
“Are you?”
I could spend the next five hundred words elaborating on my love for all things communication, debate and dramatic effect but I won’t. I’ll save that for another post. I want to focus in on the first part, the part about making mistakes.
Political ad attacks aside; both candidates have shown that to be human is to make mistakes. What they have not demonstrated is how to handle your mistakes, in life and business, like a winner. Insert yours truly to guide you along the way.
How to handle your mistakes like a winner, not a politician:
- Identify the mistake. Awareness is key to beginning the correction process. Some mistakes are obvious, others are hidden in the small details and can go unnoticed for days, weeks or even years. It takes putting your ego aside and doing some self-evaluation to understand what actions are you currently taking that may be hurting you more than helping you. These are what I classify as “mistakes”. Not to be mistaken for classified which is marked with a “C”. I’m sorry – I just couldn’t resist!
- Understand the “why” behind it. Almost all mistakes are well-intentioned actions thought to be helping you or your business, but in reality, they are actually causing a lot of pain to your profits. Once you identify them, you need to partake in some mistake therapy and dig down to understand why you are making it. Is it because of what someone said? Perhaps you saw someone else doing it, so you thought you should to. Whatever the mistake, if you don’t understand the why behind your action, you’ll not be able to fully recover from it.
- Assess the collateral damage. Mistakes are like bombs, when they detonate they almost always cause collateral damage. It’s easy to see the obvious hurt a mistake causes, but it’s not as easy to see how one mistake can seep into multiple areas and begin rotting you or your business from the inside out. I often see how mistakes can cause emotional toil. Based on what’s gone on, the collateral damage could be relationships with others or feelings of fear, doubt, comparison, or jealousy. When you are able to assess the collateral damage, you are able to put a pulse on particular feelings and know where they are stemming from.
- Correct the mistake. This is where the magic happens! Once you know what you’re doing wrong, you can easily begin to learn from it and make it right. This is where you take ownership of what you’ve done and apologize to anyone who’s been hurt by your actions. NOTE: sometimes we hurt ourselves most when we travel down the wrong path. It’s as important, and sometimes I think more so, to extend yourself some grace and forgiveness when you’ve wronged yourself. Forgive fast and move forward. There’s too much for you to get right in this world to keep focusing on all you’ve done wrong.
Once you go through this process you are not permitted to be a Britney Spears. You do not have permission to dismiss a repeat mistake by simply stating, “Oops, I did it again.” No one finds this cute any more, not even Britney herself!
What you do have permission for is to be the winner I know you are. Winners learn from their mistakes and take corrective actions to make sure they don’t repeat them. Winners bank their mistakes.
In my new book, Bank Your Mistakes: How to convert ten common business practices into bigger profits instantly, I dissect each of the mistakes in the same format as above. If you’d like to get the new release price, join the waitlist here.
About the Author
Hi! I’m Stephanie Melish, the Double-Tall, Non-Fat, No-Whip Sales Barista. I spent years working around the clock to make someone else’s dream a reality—that is, until I decided to take the scary and exciting leap into a dream of my own. Now I’m living the reality I want, and that means I get to spend every day helping my clients to achieve success, however they define it.
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About Stephanie
Hi! I’m Stephanie Melish, the Double-Tall, Non-Fat, No-Whip Sales Barista. I spent years working around the clock to make someone else’s dream a reality—that is, until I decided to take the scary and exciting leap into a dream of my own. Now I’m living the reality I want, and that means I get to spend every day helping my clients to achieve success, however they define it.
