Treasure Our Mistakes

Hi Everyone,

I was watching my latest Netflix show last night and there was a scene between a Mother and her Daughter about how everyone makes mistakes. The mother dramatically said, “I’ve made soooo many mistakes in my life.” That spawned another internal dialogue for me about the mistakes that I’ve made in my life and especially as the leader of Tahzoo.

Have you ever said something embarrassing and then replayed the scene in your mind over and over again? That’s what mistakes are like for me, I just can’t quite keep them out of my head. It can be a simple miscue in a meeting, a blunder in chess or strategic decision at work. This cycle internal dialogue has plagued me most of my life. An old mentor of mine helped to channel this energy in a positive direction which I’ve been using ever since.

The advice that I was given was rather than replay this situation over and over again, think through what I could have or should have done differently. Consider what I expect to happen vs what actually happened and lastly, what I would do differently next time. His point was that learning comes from mistakes not from successes. There is a great Bill Gates quote, “Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose.” This awareness has allowed me to channel all that mental energy and at times anxiety into a process for improving my self-esteem.

We need to treasure our mistakes as opportunities for learning. The key to success as my mentor said was not making the same mistake twice. I’ll leave you with a quote he frequently shared with me … “Success does not consist in never making mistakes, but in never making the same one a second time.” George Bernard Shaw



Let’s go be great!

Brad