4 Ways I Try to Make Good Mistakes

I certainly don’t set out to make mistakes. Nobody does. But I’ve made mistakes in great enough quantity and large enough variety to have learned there are Good Mistakes and Bad Mistakes.

To be clear, the actual mistake itself is never a good thing. For example, just the other night I knocked a full glass of wine onto the floor, shattering the glass and permanently staining our rug. Not good. But what happens next — what I choose to do after — is what makes the mistake good or bad.

If you and I are working together, I can’t promise you I won’t make mistakes, as much as I desperately wish I could. What I can promise you is, I’ll do these four things when I make a mistake.

Make it right.

So something went wrong. Most of the time, my immediate knee-jerk reaction is to try and figure out why it went wrong and who made it go wrong. And, most of the time, what’s actually needed is not to do either of those things, and instead get busy fixing it. The time for evaluation comes later. Right now, it’s time to do whatever is necessary or can be done to make it right.

Own it.

That’s on me. That’s my fault. That thing that didn’t get done, or was done wrong — that was my responsibility. I’ve said these words before. At work. To my boss. It’s scary. It’s risky. Someday, it may cost me my job, but I know with certainty that it’s the right thing to do. I also believe wholeheartedly that owning my mistakes is a large part of how to go about making them right.

Learn from it.

Yeah, I know — no new wisdom here. But, I think it’s worth revisiting this ancient business of learning from our mistakes. Do we actually do it? Do we pause long enough to look at the mistake honestly, name what went wrong, and figure out how to do it differently or better the next time around? I know that I can’t actually learn from a mistake if I only take a casual, passing glance back at the situation. And, there’s definitely no way I’ll be able to do it differently or better next time around unless I’m intimately familiar with what went wrong in the first place.

Move on.

It’s really easy for me to dwell on what I did wrong, turning it over and over in my mind, all mixed up with anxiety and self-doubt and fear. And I’ve learned that what everybody else around me needs instead is for me to do the three things above, and then truly move on. Let it go. My mistakes don’t define me. Yours don’t define you. Let’s get back to looking ahead instead of behind.

I don’t always make mistakes. But when I do, I try to make good ones.

This article is a small representation of the way we approach work and life here at Human Design.