Mistakes can help you to grow both in personal and professional life but only if you choose to
learn from them.
As they say – to err is human. Mistakes are a part of our life. They can be as straightforward as
spilling milk on the floor or as grave as losing a very important official document. Nonetheless, how
do we react to them and what do we do after is what decides the trajectory of our life.
In this article, I shall help you to learn the most effective process to ensure that a mistake is never
repeated twice and transform them as the stepping stones to your personal growth and professional
success.
How to never repeat your mistakes
Acknowledge your mistakes
How many times do you really take complete responsibility of your mistake without blaming
it on your mood, bad weather, a situation or something else?
Owning your mistakes is the first and most vital step to start learning from it. It’s alright to
say “It’s my doing” or “I have messed up and I am sorry”. There is no shame in owning up a
mistake. On the contrary, it takes a lot of courage and integrity. As you accept that it was
your fault, you work towards not making the same mistake twice, learn your lessons, and
prepare yourself for a fresh beginning. Plus, your family and colleagues see you as an honest
person and develop greater trust in you.
Take it as a learning opportunity
How you perceive your mistake makes a lot of difference in what you learn from it. If you
view it in a negative light, sulking and feeling embarrassed about it, it offers no gain.
However, you can choose to see what led you to commit the mistake. As you view your
mistake from an investigative lens, you will be able to put your finger on what went wrong.
It could be anything, varying from a faulty step in a particular process, a technical fault, your
working mechanism, or anything else. Once you have analysed the cause, this mistake
becomes an opportunity to pull the problem from its root and ensure that it never occurs
again.
Make yourself accountable
Now that you have identified the cause behind the mistake, it is important that you draft a
solid plan that ensures that it is never repeated again. Apart from this, you also need to own
some accountability so that you stick to the plan and are not tempted to deviate again.
Temptation to walk on the old, more familiar path is one of the key reasons why mistakes
are often repeated. To avoid this, you can start maintaining a journal, mark your task against
a calendar or ask your partner to evaluate you at the end of every working day.
Track your progress
It is important that we review our progress time and again and evaluate if we are walking
the chosen path that allows us to learn from our mistakes and not repeat them. You can do
this by maintaining a journal of your mistakes, what did you learn from them, how are you
implementing your learnings, were the same mistakes repeated or not and so on.
While most of us pledge to never repeat the same mistake, the resolve is often short-lived.This
article will help you change this and transform your mistakes into an opportunity for learning and
growth.
