I recently made a $1 million dollar mistake at the office. It was a calculation error. No money was lost, thankfully. But my mistake threw off the budget and could’ve been a bigger issue. I am thankful that it wasn’t.
We all make mistakes. We all fail from time to time. It’s important, especially in a work environment, to be allowed to make mistakes and fail. We cannot work effectively if we’re constantly working in fear.
But it is important that we learn from our mistakes. Moreso, it’s important that we use our failures as fuel, to straighten out, and to refocus on what we’re doing. Otherwise, those mistakes are bound to happen once again, and repeated mistakes are not always acceptable.
A Lesson Learned
I learned how to deal with failure when training for a marathon.
My marathon training, for the two I’ve run, has consisted of 2-3 shorter runs during the week followed by a long run on the weekend. The miles for each run increase throughout the training, usually trending upward but falling for a ‘de-load’ every 2-3 weeks. I then tapered off towards the end after the longest run of 20 miles. I’ve never run the full marathon distance in training.
The entire point of training is to push yourself past your supposed limits. The shorter runs are there to maintain your momentum, while the long runs are there to force our bodies to endure the extra effort. It’s difficult to stay perfect throughout the entire training. Inevitably for me, I allow myself to reduce short runs, stop long runs short, or miss sessions altogether. In those moments, I would deem myself, or at least that day, a failure.
During those moments immediately after a failure, I would be quite hard on myself. Self-doubt would creep in, making me feel like the goal I strove for was impossible. I often felt like I was never going to be more than I was in that moment, that I should give up or try something else. We can be our own worst enemies sometimes.
But eventually, after a few hours or maybe a day of feeling sorry for myself, I’d pick myself back up and go again. I’d refocus on my goal, telling myself what I’d do differently from here on out. During marathon training, this might’ve been better recovery tactics like stretching or sleep, improving my dieting or gathering new motivation. It felt like Day 1, Week 1 all over again, like I was starting from scratch, though I’d continue with the training schedule all the same. I’d come to that next run with renewed vigor and, almost always, I would perform far better than I imagined.
This process wouldn’t just happen once during my 4-5 months of training. I’d have a few mental breakdowns throughout, some worse than others. But we’d kept preserving, refocusing, and eventually, reached the finish line on race day.
Glorifying Others
I’ve often struggled in glorifying my heroes. I’ve listened to countless interviews with people like Kobe Bryant, Cristiano Ronaldo, David Goggins, Stephen King, and Brandon Sanderson. These are people whose processes or skills I’ve aspired to adopt. When they’ve told stories about their journey, they note where they started and where they finished, often glossing over the years that went into what they achieved.
To me, it can seem like these people were so laser-focused and so self-disciplined that they never made a mistake. That they never experienced small failures, missteps, or setbacks.
But that is not true. These are humans, same as you and me (except you, reading robots). No one is immune to mistakes and failure. No one is so perfect that they don’t have bad days.
What matters in the end is how we respond.
For all my mistakes and failures – working towards my goals, at my day job or in all other aspects of life – I must remember that it is natural and part of the process.
What’s important is what I’ll do about them. That answer, in a few words, is to keep going and never quit.