About Blessings in Disquise ….

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“If you handle mistakes correctly, they can be gifts.”

Margaret Heffernan

I have lost jobs twice in my life . . . each time through my own mistakes.  In each case, I ultimately did come to a point where I received value from the experience, but only after a great deal of anguish, beating myself up, and sincere doubts about my own abilities and beliefs.

Sigh … great advice, not so easy to take.

Here are three quick suggestions for the next time you make a mistake … and you will make another mistake or two during the rest of your life:)

First, a bonus step to take first:  Fix what you can in the situation.

Always try to rectify the wrongs, stop the bleeding, and acknowledge your responsibility – that’s basic first response to any situation in which you clearly goofed up.

1)  Take a deep breath and slowly exhale

In other words, relax.  Take the time to just exist for a little while.  This helps calm you physically, which allows your emotions to stabilize, and your thought processes to gain strength for what has to come next.

2) Reflect on what just happened

Once you have some time between you and whatever you did, think about the whole process.  What happened, who was involved, and which things were drivers and which were reactors.

Drivers are events, words, or actions that create responses.

Reactors are the responses to events, words, or actions.

Both are part of the process, but Drivers initiate behavior and Reactors prolong behaviors.     Identify your specific responsibilities for using each.

Part of this step is determing what is your responsibility to change and what is outside your area of influence.

3)  Consider not what you might have done differently, but what you can do going forth

Why only going forth?

Because once you have identified what you did (Drivers and Reactors) in the situation, you have new possibilities going forth.  All behavior is a choice, so your task now is to understand what motivated you to act as you did when making past mistakes and name how you can choose to behave differently in the future.

This is especially valuable when you will face the same or a very similar situation – the opportunity to experience positive behavior change is a powerful motivator for continued reflection and change.

Caveat:  This is obviously a simplified view of a very complex change process.

Thinking about how I screwed up then, so I won’t do it again in the Heartland ….
John