THE ERROR

Things could be worse. Suppose your errors were counted and published every day, like those of a baseball player. ~Author Unknown

This morning I realized I made a mistake; a big, fat, ugly mistake. The feeling in the pit of my stomach was horrible and I felt a wave of nausea sweep over me. “How could I have done this? How could I have been so forgetful? How could I screw up so badly?” was the dialog going over and over and over in my mind as I beat myself up and felt the regret of my oversight.

I sat down to figure out what I needed to do to fix the error. The solution was straightforward and easy to correct once I broke it down into a few simple steps. Within a few minutes, the correction was made, and all was well in the world. Or was it?

Despite having taken care of the error, my mind kept replaying it again and again. It was like a .gif: a continuous loop that wouldn’t stop. The loop played repeatedly bringing be back to berating myself and feeling like a complete failure.

I paused for a moment. My kids make mistakes all the time; I never call them “stupid” or “failure” but instead offer them support and encouragement. My friends make mistakes; I’ve never called them “dumb” or made them feel bad; instead, I offer support and encouragement. So why was I beating myself up? Why wasn’t I supporting and encouraging myself?

I made a mistake, period, end of discussion. Nobody got hurt, injured or died. The world didn’t end. My picture and name weren’t going up on a big billboard pointing out my mistake. Mistakes happen, they help us learn and grow. Once I thought this through I was able to let go, move on and enjoy my day.

We set high expectations for ourselves and we get upset when we fail to meet those expectations or when we discover we aren’t perfect. Learning from errors or misjudgments is an opportunity to grow stronger and become more resilient. So, the next time I make a mistake I will stop and remind myself that I deserve to give myself the same encouragement and support that I would give to others and remember that in the big scheme of things it’s a small blip on the radar. Best of all: nobody is keeping score!