I am such a klutz. Why am I always saying sorry? Every day just feels like another mistake I have made, an event I am late to, a client who is unhappy or something else I have dropped. What’s wrong with me?
To those who feel like they don’t measure up and are often making mistakes, i see you. i hear you. And i hope this caddying episode will help you find your confidence. This is going to take a few blogs. The big key is rebuilding your confidence and changing your paradigm.
Where do we start? Let’s change our perspective on mistakes and failure.
It isn’t just what happens to me that matters, but how i think about it.
Living Wisdom rule #7
Of one thing we can be sure. You will make more mistakes, there will be errors. However, if you can see this time as an opportunity to grow rather than self-oppressing, you’ve made a significant shift. If you can look deeply into your failure and mistakes and sift out the great lessons, you can turn your blunders into your very own university degree. If you can be courageous, you’ll learn more from your mistakes than going to uni.
I can get used to the place I am in and still grow.
Living Wisdom Rule #2
So, let’s squeeze the juice out of these mistakes you make and look for the learning opportunities. First, let’s have an ‘outer-body experience’ and catch these blunders you make. Maintain a list for a week to provide opportunity for analysis. i get that this exercise will be brutal and may make you feel depressed, but the difference is now you are making the mistakes work for you. You are turning the tables on your mistakes.
At the end of the week, take a time-out and look at those mistakes. Are there any themes running through the list? Are you always late? Are multiple clients disappointed with your service? Were the kids ratty in your classroom . . . again? If we can catch the big lessons of the week, we can start to address them. And we can develop a plan to do that one at a time . . . intentionally, deliberately. When your finished squeezing the juice, the place is going to look like this:
And i have it on good authority, those peels are still good for the compost. We have to squeeze the juice out of our mistakes (the good stuff), but then let it go. Continuing to hold onto your mistakes won’t help you and you need to create space for a growth mindset. So, give yourself permission to release yourself from those mistakes and errors and let’s look forward. Get rid of that list now that we’ve identified the areas we need to work on from last week. Your list of mistakes should now look like a development list (eg. be on time, maintain multiple clients, extend behaviour management strategies). We’ll apply ourselves to this list in the coming blogs.
What’s growth mindset i hear you say? That’s our key pillar to growth. i’m going to leave this blog with a link to a five minute video which explains Carol Dweck’s significant work on growth mindset. i get some time needs to pass for you to gather your errors and turn them into a training list, so plod through the week, analyse and reflect, while in the meantime take a look at this short video and try reframing those mistakes and errors as opportunities to grow. Next week we’ll get into more specifics about how to turn this situation around, but for now . . . it’s time to do your homework
Capture the mistakes
Change the language – make a development list
Watch the growth mindset video
Your life caddy
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