Cheap Advice--Dealing with Mistakes

"Writing has always been my therapy, a mode for me to work through my problems and neuroses by crystallizing them in a way that makes sense for me".  Zeba Blay,  The Huffington Post

This cheap advice I'm offering wasn't cheap for me.  I had to pay for it.  But it's cheap for you. Your only expense is the time to read it and the energy to consider how it might apply to you.  And why am I willing to give away this advice?  One is that I enjoy helping people and, two, as I relate these thoughts to you, I'm working through it again.

I hate making mistakes.  I try to never make mistakes.  But recently I made a mistake. And I felt really bad about it.  It was not illegal. It was not immoral.  It was not unethical.  It was not all that costly, but it was a mistake and I don't make mistakes.  And somebody got really upset with me.  

Even after restitution had been made with the person involved, I still felt bad about it. The feeling of remorse and embarrassment continued to the point that I decided to talk to my counselor.

He told me two things. He said, "David, you function at a very high level.  Much is required of you and you deliver on those expectations over and over again.  But no matter how hard you try to be perfect, you're not.  You are going to eventually drop the ball.  You are eventually going to screw up.  The reason for that is that you are human being. Human beings screw up." And then he told me a personal story.  Personal stories with him are rare. He very seldom relates something from his  own  life and experience. But in this case, for this dialogue, he did.  Without disclosing  anything specific he told me, he too did something dumb. Like my mistake, it wasn't illegal,  it wasn't immoral, it wasn't unethical, yet it was  a potentially costly oversight on his part. It could have been a personal disaster.  It could have cost him dearly. When he told me what happened, I could sense just how upset he was about it at the time. I knew that what he did mattered to him and made him feel like, at least temporarily, a total klutz.  This man, my counselor, has a PhD in Clinical Psychology and years of experience. But he was telling me about one of the worst blunders of his career.

As the clock on my 55 minute session continued to tick, I knew why he told me that story. He was saying, "David, I know you trust me. I know you think highly of me. I know you respect me. But guess what?  Sometimes I screw up too! We all eventually screw up!. No matter how many degrees we've earned. No matter how good our intentions, we  eventually mess up. Welcome to the human situation! Oh, and by the way, things usually work out ok."

We then discussed that there are consequences for mistakes, but that those consequences for good and honest people can usually be contained. Not always, but usually. And this was the case for both of us. No permanent damage in either case. Things got fixed.

So what's my cheap advice? My advice is when you mess up, make whatever apologies and restitution is necessary and forget about it. Stop feeling bad about it.  No amount of feeling bad will change the fact that it happened. And obviously no amount of feeling bad will help you to feel any better.  You will feel bad right up to the moment you don't.

 If you keep feeling bad or embarrassed and don't want to feel that way,  then maybe you should consider paying for professional help like I did. But I can't believe that the advice you have to pay for will be much better than what my counselor and I are offering.  To recap my cheap advice, here is my six step remedy for mistake angst: 1.Recognize the human condition, i.e. humans make mistakes.  2. Recognize that you are a  human being. 3. Therefore, you make mistakes. 4. Do whatever is reasonably within your ability to make it right.  If the offended party can't accept that, then that is now their problem and not yours. You've done all you can do. 6. Forget about it. Think about something else.

I don't know if you feel any  better, but I sure do.