How do you feel about making mistakes in life or in business? Mistakes that matter and mistakes that hurt are all mistakes, but they all lead to wisdom. So, how do we define the two as it relates to business? Hopefully, our explanation of business mistakes can have some advantages on how you will deal with it personally. We don’t want to imply that we know all the mistakes in the world, as everyone is different, but our hope is that we can keep this broad enough to help.
Mistakes That Matter
Anytime that you make a mistake that you can learn from, it should mean that they matter. You can substitute the word matter for something else like positive if you wish. We are not perfect humans when trying to operate inside of a business. There is the right way to do tasks in your business, and then there are tasks that you learn from. Ones that matter! The other side of the spectrum for the people that supervise you; do they see it the same way? When a supervisor criticizes you for a mistake, does it come across as a learning experience or a disciplinary action? Our hope is that it is a learning experience, because if supervisors’ discipline, they can cause staff to shut down and be more stressed at work. We will cover leadership topics in future blogs!
Mistakes That Hurt
This now leads us to mistakes that hurt. When you make a mistake and someone is overlooking everything you do, criticizing all your moves, then those mistakes hurt. This is when you as an employee need to look at where you work and decide if it’s the right place for you to be at this point in your career. You will hear many times that staff do not leave companies, they leave managers/supervisors/owners. No one can continually stay in one place and keep getting criticized for very long. Eventually, you need to move on when you are ready when you have made a plan. Again, these mistakes lead to wisdom.
Your perception of your reality will change with every mistake that you make. The question is, what are you doing about it to change it. As I write this blog, the world is suffering because of COVID-19. What are you doing to change your perception of reality? You have a certain amount of wisdom flowing through your mind, so how are you changing in today’s economic times to adapt to our new future. We will all undoubtedly be making a lot of mistakes right now, being in self-isolation, keeping social distancing, and so on. Mistakes are bound to happen. However, do they matter or hurt.