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Dealing with Personal Mistakes and Errors

Everyone makes mistakes. Professionals fix them.


I am always amazed when I meet people who don’t want to take responsibility for their mistakes.  It’s not just kids, it’s adults too. I’m amazed because in my experience, acknowledging you made a mistake and working to fix it is always well received. I am positively re-enforced every time I take responsibility for my mistakes and try to fix them.

I have always found that people are pretty considerate, IF you work to fix the problem.

Sometimes my mistakes are an accident, and sometimes they result from poor judgement.

Sometimes, I mess things up with other people by being clueless, hungry or both. I’m far from perfect.

But, people still work with me and help me and support me and seem to like me, for the most part, because I do make an honest attempt to fix my mistakes.

My ego is pretty big, but it’s not big enough to prevent me from doing my best to fix things.

The next time you make a mistake or an error acknowledge it. Apologize for it. And start working to fix it. I have had people come to me livid about stupid stuff I have done and I’ve just flat out apologized and told them I messed up. How can I fix it?  Once people realize I’m not only not going to fight, I’m not going to blame anyone else for my bad behavior AND, I’m going to work to fix it, they almost always accept my help and allow me to make amends.

Don’t be so proud that you continue to make mistakes just to prove to yourself that you weren’t to blame.  That would be pretty stupid.

There are a few courses I would recommend if you find you struggle with this.
1) Conflict Resolution – will teach you some of the science of how to help resolve conflicts and prevent behaviors from escalating
2) Dealing with Cranky Customer Problems
3) Living Made Simpler (will help you think about your values, who you are and more importantly how you want to be)


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