Messing Up

Mistakes are essential to personal development

Take any leadership class or read any leadership book and you will hear that mistakes are how you grow and progress.  That’s a hard lesson for a perfectionist like me.  It is also a very important one. Much of my life I have avoided action or decisions because I might be wrong.  The fear of being wrong, or of making a mistake kept me from making decisions and moving forward- kept me from becoming the best person I can be.
It is natural to think that being wrong moves you backward and that not making a decision or taking an action keeps you in the same place but it is a big error.  Action of any sort moves you forward and inaction, rather than holding your position , pushes you backwards.  With action, something happens.  It may be good.  It may be bad.  Many times it is hard to know at first which it is.  Either way you have moved into new territory and you are learning more about yourself and your world. Either way you end up in a different place with more experience and better judgment.

Keep your balance by checking the results

You do want to keep some balance.  If all your decisions were bad ones then your life would quickly become a mess.  And I am sure that you know people like that. Most people are able to tell the difference between a good outcome and a bad outcome and make appropriate changes in how they make decisions.  When they make these changes, they have more experience and knowledge about what happens and more confidence in their decision process.
Not only do they learn better how to deal with decisions in areas they know, they also gain confidence to make decisions in areas where they have little knowledge. And when they move into new areas and make decisions either good or bad, they gain knoweldge there which makes the next decision easier and better.

Be willing to mess up

So, my experience has proved to me that I am better served by making decisions, moving on and in many cases messing up than avoiding decisions so that I will not make a mistake. This, like much else in my life, is a struggle with my ego which remains convinced that it’s all over if anybody sees me make a mistake.