How To Make Mistakes With Good Grace

In life, we all make mistakes.

When we are young, if we are in a positive environment, we’re told to learn from them and move on. As we get older, our environment decrees whether or not we learn to own up to our mistakes or are forced to find ways of hiding them, to avoid getting found out from less-than-sympathetic managers or colleagues.

Tough To Admit

Although working for ourselves should mean that there is no blame involved when things go wrong, it’s still tough to admit mistakes to ourselves and learn from them, instead of hanging our head in shame or ploughing on with a redundant idea to “˜save face’ and remove the need to admit where we have gone wrong.

Many people who have worked in a tough corporate environment for a number of years have been trained to gloss over mistakes, hoping that they will either go unnoticed, or be put right without any impact on the success of our jobs.

Clumsy Me…

I remember when I was a child at school, a group of friends and I tried to help our teacher by clearing up the paint bottles from the classroom, carrying them down to the bathrooms to wash them up ready for the next class to use.

I have always been on the clumsy side, as my dancing skills now attest, and I carried my bright red paint bottle upside down. Out of the classroom, down the corridor I wandered, pausing to look at things on the wall until finally ending up by the sinks.

After washing up my red bottle, I turned around and saw a long, wobbly trail of paint leading back to the classroom. In those days, the corridor wasn’t carpeted but it was buffed to a high sheen, and my paint trail quickly got walked through, meaning the paint was suddenly everywhere.

I Panicked…

I managed to swap my red bottle for a blue one, which my friend was carrying. He got told off for dribbling the paint everywhere, and I got off without recrimination.

The only problem after that was my friend didn’t talk to me anymore, and I was weighed down with the type of heavy guilt which

only a seven year-old boy can feel. I’ve never forgotten that shame, to this day, and I think it taught me a valuable lesson. Admit when you have made a mistake, because anything else leaves you feeling worse off than your honesty ever could.

Admitting mistakes as a grown-up business owner

As a blogger and small business owner, I cringe when I think about the mistakes that I have made through my business.

When I started up, I was still learning the ins and outs of making a blog and business ownership. I subscribed to unnecessary products, engaged the services of people who were looking to profit from my naivety, and even started businesses that were bound to flounder and fall apart after the initial flurry of interest, because of poor planning.

Have The Strength…

Now I have a successful business, I haven’t forgotten my mistakes. I think that the older we get, the easier it is to face up to what we have done wrong, and learn what we would do differently if we had the chance. One of the most powerful things we can do is own up to the fact that things aren’t going too well, and have the strength to admit it, and move on.

This translates beautifully across all elements of blogging and business ownership. If we have chosen a wrong turn in our quest to be a success, we need to have the courage to stand back objectively and admit it isn’t working. Each time we make a mistake, we do learn from it, as long as we have the courage to face up to it.

Similarly, we need to use this honesty with our customers. If we have too much on and can’t hit a deadline, admit to it and explain. If we have forgotten a project, get in touch with the customer and let them know, instead of making excuses. One of the beauties of being a small business owner is that we are entitled to be human, and one of the best human traits we have is honesty.

Trust me on this.

If your blog is starting to resemble a wiggly line of red paint instead of a clean blue bottle, it could be time to reassess your path down the corridor, and try something different.

And if you spill the paint, don’t put your red hands behind your back, and expect your customers not to notice!