5 Keys To Overcoming Your Mistakes

If you were paying attention last week, you may have noticed that I made a mistake.

Yes.  I am not perfect.

Last Sunday morning, I was working on my Monday morning post (How to Respond When You Feel Buried).  After working on the post for nearly an hour, I put the final touches on the post by working the a graphic to go with what I had written.  I picked my background using Pixabay.com (a site offering beautiful, free graphics).  I found a house buried in snow.  Perfect.  I downloaded the file, and moved over to Canva.com where I do my final graphic editing.  I cropped the photo.  I added my text elements.  I saved the graphic, and I pasted it into my post.

As I was inspecting my post, I noticed I spelled a key word on the graphic incorrectly.  Instead of writing FEEL on my graphic, I wrote FELL.  I quickly made the changes, and I thought for sure I saved everything correctly as I scheduled the post for the next day.

Monday morning came, and my post went live at 5AM EST.  I was mortified a couple of hours later when I received a Facebook message from one of my friends pointing out the spelling error on my graphic.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I quickly went back into the post.  I made the necessary correction, and I updated the post.  Then I responded to my friend to thank her and to let her know of the fix.

I tried to let the mistake go, but I continued to be haunted by my error as people promoted the post on Twitter.  For some reason, the uncorrected graphic showed up on my Tweets.

Mistakes happen.

How we respond to mistakes is what really matters.

Here are five keys to responding when mistakes happen:

1. Acknowledge your mistake.  We all make mistakes.  Accept it.  Admit your mistakes.  This is the first critical step in overcoming your blunder.
2. Correct your mistake (if possible).  Do everything you possibly can to fix your mistake.  This requires humility and a resolve to make things better.
3. Give yourself some grace.  We are our own worst critics.  We give others grace when they mess up, and we must learn to give ourselves a break from time to time.
4. Learn from your mistake.  What can you learn from your mistake?  This is the question you should be asking yourself.  Mistakes and failures help us learn how not to do things.
5. Move on.  You have a choice.  You can live in the past as you dwell on your errors, or you can move ahead making forward progress towards your goals.  What’s your choice?  I’m sure you can guess the better choice.

When was the last time you made a mistake?  How did you respond to your mistake?  What did you learn from your mistake?

Don’t forget to sign up for the 7 Week Stretch Challenge.  You can sign up right here: