What do you do when you make a mistake?
Are you like many people who beat themselves up when they make an error or a foolish decision?
Does your inner enemy punish you, pointing out other mistakes that you may have committed?
Despite being a positive forward thinking person … this inner enemy punishing me was something that I had an issue with for many years.
About 2010, as I was talking and whining to Lee Milteer, one of my business coaches and mentors, she grabbed me by the arm and said something like, “Bill, you are awesome, very successful. You are a great leader and marketing whiz. You have got to stop this negative self-talk that you occasionally do to yourself. You know better than that …”
The key to good mental health and well-being is to be able to learn from our mistakes and then let it go. As humans, we are error prone and we will continue to make mistakes for as long as we remain aware and alive.
The key to our well-being is to refrain from focusing on what we did or did not do, but focus on what we should accumulate from the mistake and what can be done to correct it.
The following are suggestions for learning and letting go.
- Always take responsibility for being human when you make a mistake. This will help you seek corrective action.
- Make sure to focus on what is to be learned from the situation. Decide to change future practices and be more focused to what you are doing.
- When the treacherous inner mind starts telling you “how dumb that was” or other such counter-productive self-talk, in your mind yell, “STOP IT!” to turn off that tape.
- Gain an understanding that the emotional energy spent on being unkind to you could be better spent finding a solution to any problem that was created by your mistake.
As humans, we have sufficient understanding to recognize that we continue to trap ourselves when we refuse to let go. We have control over the choices that we make. Choose to let go!