NOT a  Destination

Getting stuck in apology mode and marinating in guilt over a mistake is not typically a productive way forward.  I know, I’ve gone down this rutted, worn, treacherous dirt road countless times.

I know this.  Yet one morning fairly recently, I found myself tempted to once again take this route.  Everything started peacefully enough.  I was meditating when my phone pinged and alerted me to an incoming text.  To honor my morning practice, I stayed in meditation without checking the phone.  Afterwards, calm and refreshed, I picked up my phone.  The text said something like, “Hey, Jason, just wanted to confirm that we’re still on for you interviewing us at 1pm today?”

I do love when my podcast guests go out of their way to confirm our recording sessions.  The only problem with this particular text was that I didn’t have a recording on my schedule that day.  

I had made a mistake!  

Panic started to replace my calm.

I had made the embarrassingly simple mistake of putting the appointment down on the wrong day.

Fortunately, at this point,  I caught myself beginning to travel down Guilt and Excessive Apology Avenue.  

From experience, I knew that if I responded to my mistake with honesty, kindness, and a degree of promptness, the likelihood was high that a mutual solution would present itself.

I found it helpful to remember that my guest and I had a shared goal in common and that our destination was not any different because of my mistake.  It was only the route we’d have to take to get there that might look a little different.

So, I took some simple, next steps: 

• I returned my guest’s text.
• I took responsibility for my mistake.
• I apologized.
• I offered some potential solutions. 

As a result, within an hour or two, my guest and I had rescheduled a time to record our episode.  

No drama and no hurt feelings.  Easy Peasy.

Imagine how different things probably would have turned out if:

• I had taken a month to return my guest’s text.
• If I had refused to take responsibility for my mistake, and even worse try to blame it on her.
• If I had refused to apologize.
• If I had not offered potential solutions, but instead believed that the situation was hopeless and my mistake irredeemable 

While most of us experience guilt and feeling sorry, it’s good to remember that they often don’t represent the path towards where we want to go.

So my question is, can we notice when we are experiencing guilt and feeling “Why am I so dumb?”  Then instead of getting stuck on the dead end streets of the twin cities of Guilt and Self-Loathing, focus on what steps can be taken to move once again towards the shared goal?  

Once a mistake occurs we can’t erase the fact it happened.  But, we can reorient ourselves once again toward the goal we were in pursuit of prior to the mistake, and do our imperfect best to get everyone involved back on the same page and progress back on track.

While mistakes are part of work and life, and are learning opportunities we most often would rather not have, they needn’t nullify our goals and dreams.

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