3 Ways to Recover From A Serious Mistake

The 3 Best Strategies for Eliminating... 5 Ways To Deal With Rude People

3 Ways to Recover From A Serious Mistake

You seriously blew it.

As a result, you missed a crucial deadline, your company lost an important client or you made your boss look bad to senior management. You wish you could turn the clock back and fix your mistake, but you can’t.

What now?

Own it
Take immediate responsibility. When you try to minimize a mess through rationalizations or sleight-of-hand maneuvers, you waste time and energy. Covering up a mistake burdens you with worry that you’ll be found out.

If a major fumble has weakened your employer’s or peers’ confidence in your decision-making or competence, own up to your error and outline how you plan to fix the situation. We admire those who admit, “This was my fault.” Further, once you acknowledge the situation, you and others can work to fix it.

Learn
Squeeze value from your mistakes. If you learn from your mistakes, you’re no longer the person who made them – you’ve moved beyond. Further, once you analyze what happened and why, you head off repeat mistakes. If you refuse to learn, your small errors will grow into fatal flaws.

Although you can’t fix the past, you can reassure your supervisor and peers you’ve absorbed your lesson and can be trusted with future decisions. Your employer paid a price for what you learned and needs to hear there’s a future pay back. Explain how you plan to handle things differently, before others make lasting judgments about your ability to handle future situations.

Put it in the rearview mirror and don’t let it stop you
Don’t turn a mistake take into an on-going tragedy. Beating yourself up adds little value. Dwelling on the past extends its life. Decide on your next steps and take them.

Those who hesitate to take future risks because a mistake burned them sentence themselves to stagnation. Successful people achieve because they reach high and stretch their limits, risking potential mis-steps. Was your mistake large? It becomes an opportunity if it inspires a complete directional shift resulting in a major leap forward.