496. The Benefit of Making a Mistake

We all know that mistakes happen. None of us are perfect. We shouldn’t be so hard on ourselves when we make mistakes. We probably shouldn’t be so hard on one another when other people make mistakes. But have you ever paused to consider the advantages that present themselves after you make an honest mistake that wouldn’t be there had you done it perfectly. Today, we’re diving into that topic and I am fresh off the heels of a mistake that we made in our business today. I’m gonna tell you all about it. Let’s go.

Welcome to Better Than Happy, the podcast where we transform our lives by transforming ourselves. My name is Jody Moore. In the decade-plus I’ve been working with clients as a Master Certified Coach, I’ve helped tens of thousands of people to become empowered. And from empowered, the things that seemed hard become trivial, and the things that seemed impossible become available, and suddenly, a whole new world of desire and possibility open up to you. And what do you do with that?

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Well, hello there and thank you for joining me on the podcast today. I had a totally different episode that I had written an outline for that I was going to be recording right now. And then I did a call in the lab coach access and we had a mistake made. And as I was processing through that and trying to compensate for it, it just brought up all these ideas that I felt like I wanted to share with you here on the podcast about the benefits of making a mistake.

So I will tell you about what happened, But first, let’s just define what we mean by a mistake. Okay, so when I say there are benefits, I’m not just talking about, what I’m not gonna focus on today anyway, are the obvious benefits of like, oh, we learned that something was “wrong.” We learned that we don’t know how to do that thing or we don’t have the right process in place or that we have – if it’s just a personal mistake, we have some kind of weakness or deficiency and then we learn and we become stronger because failure is how we learn. That is a given. I’m sure I’ve talked about that on other episodes before.

What I wanna focus on today is the opportunity that is then available to us after we realize we’ve made a mistake, okay? So by mistake, I don’t mean, sometimes you might execute a project or something, an assignment, a task, and you don’t give it your all, and you do that intentionally, because it’s not something that requires perfection. It’s not worth putting an extensive amount of time or money or resources into. It’s okay to do it just kind of good enough. It’s sort of that B minus usually is good enough for most of the things we’re trying to achieve, right? I’m not talking about that because that’s intentional.

I’m talking about when you genuinely set out to do something and you either overlook something, forget something, or just downright mess something up. And that is subjective. It’s up to your own judgment, right? I’ve made mistakes personally in my life that I would call mistakes because they go against my values or my morals or how I want to live as a person or what I think is the right way for me to live my life. And other people might look at some of those mistakes, “mistakes” and say, those aren’t mistakes. What are you talking about? That’s totally fine. There’s nothing wrong with what you did there. 

So it’s a personal thing, but anyway, what I want to emphasize for the purposes of this podcast is that it’s genuinely something that you either didn’t intend, so maybe it was like an accidental overlooking of something, or maybe you consciously made a wrong choice, but it’s a choice that even as you were making it, you knew it wasn’t you living how you really wanna live your life, okay?

So here’s what I mean. After we do something like this, we have a couple of options. The first option is to feel terrible about it, to spin on it, to beat yourself up about it, to tell yourself that you’re a terrible person and to take on this identity of being bad or wrong or weak in some way. And that is a very tempting path to go down, especially because depending on what your mistake was, you may have other people really mad at you. 

And I’m not saying that we wouldn’t want to feel bad to a certain degree after we make a mistake. I think there can be an upside to that. I’m not sure I know exactly what it is, but I think recognizing this is out of alignment for me, this isn’t me at my best, this isn’t what I want to continue to deliver. And I’m going to relate this for those of you who are coaches and have businesses. There’s a lot of you who follow me here who have coaching businesses. This will apply in your business, but also this applies in your personal life and all your relationships, everything as well. 

Because of course we make mistakes in every area of our lives. Okay, so that’s one path, right? You can stay on this dark, spinning place of shame. I’ll just call it shame. Like, wait a second, I feel bad because that wasn’t me at my best. That isn’t what I wanna represent or who I wanna be. But then it very quickly turns into shame, which is more of a personal attack on our character. 

And I will say that staying on that path is, I think for many people, it just feels necessary. It feels like the right thing to do. It feels like what we deserve. We should somehow punish ourselves at length for these mistakes that we’ve made and if you’re that person – I know I’ve coached people who told me that they have been punishing themselves through their negative thinking about mistakes that they made years and years ago, decades ago even. Things that they would call mistakes and they can’t get past it, they can’t let it go.

And I just wanna tell you that it is not useful for you to stay on that path. It doesn’t make what you did right. I know you know that. But it doesn’t even heal the people around you who may have been impacted by it. It doesn’t provide something more useful on the other side of it, and it’s not refining you, it’s not allowing you to then learn and move on, it’s actually gonna keep you struggling and make it even harder to show up like the person that you wanna be.

So after the acknowledgement, the guilt, right, of wait a second, I don’t think that’s who I wanna be. I don’t think that’s my best way of living, or I don’t think that’s how I wanna continue to run my business. It’s not how I wanna take care of my clients or customers. Then instead of going down that path of shame, I wanna recommend that you get on a different path, which is, so now what?

I want you to take on the identity of someone who is good and wise and capable and smart and detail-oriented and lives into her highest values and morals and shows up as the person she wants to be. That person, and if it’s helpful for you, picture someone else who you already believe is like that. 

Picture someone in your life who you think, even though you know realistically there’s no perfect person. Jesus Christ was the only perfect person that lived on earth, right? But picture someone who you hold in pretty high regard, who you think is “better” than how you showed up in that moment. Okay? 

So for example, if it’s a mistake in my business, which I’m gonna tell you about that in just a minute, but if it’s a mistake in my business, I picture a business owner who I think seems to have their act together pretty well, who I think delivers high quality to their customers or clients, who I think is organized and professional and doesn’t very often, if ever, make the mistake that I just made in my business.

If it’s a personal matter, maybe I was talking about someone behind their back and then I got back to them and they, now I feel bad and I’m realizing I shouldn’t have been doing that. Or maybe something more serious than that. Whatever it is, picture somebody who you’re pretty sure would never do that. Or maybe they never have, or you don’t think they ever will. Right?

What would that person do though, if they suddenly were in your position? If they did do that, if they did make that same mistake, how do you think they would handle it next? What would they do next? How would they make it right? How would they go on healing what’s now broken?

This is a really important question to ask yourself because the truth is you are good. You are capable. You are professional. You are smart. You are able to create processes and things that are detail-oriented and are effective. You just made a mistake.

So the best people in the world are imperfect, right? And so there’s no such thing as people who don’t make mistakes. There’s just people who make mistakes and handle it one way and people who make mistakes and handle it another.

When you make a mistake, you have an opportunity now to show yourself what kind of person you really are. When you do it perfectly, you don’t get that opportunity. You miss that opportunity to show yourself who you really are.

You’re not ever going to be a person who doesn’t make mistakes. But what do you do after you make a mistake? How do you treat yourself and talk to yourself and think about yourself after a mistake?

Do you really love yourself? Because it’s easy to love yourself when you do everything right. But do you love yourself after you make a mistake. If you’re like, wait a second, I made a mistake and I’m not loving myself, oh my gosh, maybe I’m not that person. Okay, then become that person.

You can become that person, maybe it’ll take some time, maybe you’ll need some coaching, maybe you need some therapy, maybe you need to work on it, but you can become that person. For many of you, you can just choose to be that person. You can look yourself in the mirror and say, I’m so sorry. I’ve been so mean to you. You are lovable and you’re just as lovable after making that mistake as you were before.

Did you know this? You’re just as good, you’re just as valuable, you’re just as whole. You wouldn’t be any better of a person had you never made a mistake than you are after making it. You just made a different choice, but I love you. And the version of you that we are going to be is the person who says, well, now what? What do I do now?

So there’s how you’re going to respond to yourself. Then there’s how you’re going to handle it with anybody else who may have been impacted. So let me go ahead and tell you about the mistake that happened in our business.

Now we’ve made so many mistakes in our business over the years. I mean, we just do, we try not to, but we do at times because we’re human beings. We try to automate as much as we can because we notice that the computer is better at not making mistakes than us, but even technology is not 100% reliable, right? And some of it has to be manually done.

And so today we had a call for my coaches. I was teaching a class. I teach them a workshop every month. I always remind them that it’s coming up and remind them that if they can come there live, they’re gonna get so much more out of it. And then I logged into the class and there were like three people there. And then a few more started showing up, but we didn’t get nearly the number that we normally do.

And that’s because the Zoom link gets updated every month and there are multiple places where we put that Zoom link. And I think in obviously at least somewhere it got updated because some people found their way to it, but it didn’t get updated in all the places it was supposed to. Now, after this happens, I have an opportunity.

First of all, it’s tempting to either judge myself because this is ultimately, I like to keep the ownership over everything in my business in terms of whose fault is it, “fault,” because even though I’m not the one that updates the Zoom link, I should have better processes and systems in place to ensure that this doesn’t happen and or I should have double checked it. I should have logged in the call a little bit earlier and checked everything. Like there’s so many things I could have done to prevent it even though that’s technically not one of my duties, right?

Another temptation is to blame my team, whoever it is on my team that’s supposed to do that, right? And start looking to other people. None of those things are useful. So I really don’t do that. What I do is take note of, oh, we’ve got a system or process that we might need to take a second look at and revisit and make sure we update it. But blaming, not gonna be necessary, right?

But again, my favorite part, I might have best opportunity. Well, first of all, I should just mention that it gives me the opportunity to practice that, right? To not go into shame, not go into blame. That shame-blame trap is so tempting. Whose fault is this? Is this my fault? Well, that doesn’t feel good, so I’ll make it your fault. Well, I feel bad making it your fault and I turn into a mean person. I don’t wanna be that, so then I go back to my fault. 

And that shame-blame trap, I see people do this all the time. We do it in our relationships, we do it in our businesses, we do it with all kinds of things. And it will keep you stuck and spinning. The way out of the shame-blame trap, that’s why I call it a trap, is to look to the future. Okay, so what are we gonna do now? We’re a bunch of imperfect humans. We’re doing our best, Our best is usually great, sometimes not as good. 

We’re going to make mistakes. There are going to be more mistakes down the road. So what now? What do we want to do next? Okay. So that’s number one opportunity. I get to practice not getting stuck in the shame blame trap. But the second opportunity is now I get to go to all my clients and customers and show them how I’m going to take really good care of them and show them who I am after I make a mistake.

Actually, I remember when I used to train customer support people in corporate and there was a study that showed that businesses that make a mistake and then do everything they can to make it right, try to take really good care of us after a mistake, and even just if that means owning it and apologizing, we trust them more than a business that has never made a mistake with us, right? 

Obviously everyone’s made mistakes, but if we’ve never had the experience of a business of some sort messing up, we trust them less than a business that messed up and then handled it really well. And it makes sense if you think about it because we know deep down that nobody is capable of never making a mistake, right? And that even businesses that are trying really hard to make mistakes all the time.

So when we see, okay, if they do make a mistake, they own it and they address it and they try to make it right, then we feel just a lot more comfortable, a lot safer with that business. So when we make mistakes in our business, I always ask myself, okay, well, what can we do that would really take care of people? How do we even delight them if possible? Right?

So again, not like a major mistake, but still not professional, not the way we want to represent and take care of our clients. So first of all, we make sure and process the replay and get it posted right away. Even though normally we have, we give ourselves 24 hours to get that done. I’m like, let’s get that replay up. Let’s get it posted right away.

Let’s send an email with it that acknowledges, hey, we’re super sorry. We know this happened today. Here’s what went wrong. We’ve already taken precautions, which we did do by the way. We apologize, that was our mistake. And we’re taking measures to ensure that doesn’t happen down the road. 

In the meanwhile, the replay is ready to go for you. So we hope you’ll watch it right away. And then we’re gonna do an additional call. I’m actually just gonna lengthen a call, a coaching call that we have, so that I make sure to be really available to answer your questions and take you through this content in real time, which is what they would have got had they been able to get on the call, right? So I like to ask myself, what are we going to do to try to make it right?

It’s interesting because I was thinking about this, like in LDS Church anyway, we have this process of repentance, which is like turning away from the sin and turning to God. And part of it is apologizing and doing what you can to make it right. And I don’t think that has to be done with an attitude of shame. I’m so sorry, I’m a terrible person. Let me make it up to you.

I like to do it with like, listen, I am so sorry that was not me at my best. Notice the confidence, even just in my voice. And I’m talking about this as an internal thing, right? I get to confidence and I remind myself, you’re not perfect, you do make mistakes, as you will. And then we love you, and I’ll tell you, we are committed to doing better, and I wanna take care of you. So here’s what I’m gonna do to try to make it up to you.

And that doesn’t mean that everyone will get over it. Some people might be mad with whatever it is that you did, right? I don’t know that people are super angry about the mistake we made today, but maybe. Someone might be mad. We might lose a customer or a client over it. We might have people talking bad about us.

I’m not talking about trying to put out all those fires. I’m talking about what feels like me, we would call that mistake sort of like disorganized, careless, and unprofessional. So how do we show up extra professional, extra careful, extra generous, because we just made a mistake. 

So we wanna show people we care about you and we are owning that mistake and we wanna take really good care of you now on the other side of it. That’s the opportunity that presents itself when you’ve made a mistake. Now, let’s talk about this with regards to your personal life, to the other kinds of mistakes that we make.

Like maybe you yell at your kids, maybe you’ve been unfaithful in your marriage. These can be little mistakes to like much bigger things. And the same opportunity is available on the other side of that mistake, whether it’s a little thing or a big thing. It’s an opportunity to decide what your relationship with yourself is going to be. And I’m not talking about a pretend, like, just tell yourself everything’s fine. You didn’t do anything wrong. I’m talking about an acknowledging of like, hey, that’s not the kind of mom I want to be, the mom who yells at her kids. That’s not who I am, even.

And listen to me, I don’t care if you’re like, well, I’ve been yelling at my kids for 20 years. It still doesn’t have to be the mom that you are. That’s the mom that you’ve been being the last 20 years, but that’s not who you actually are. It’s not who you really are. It’s not who you have to continue to be. You can just decide right now that you’re gonna be a new version of you starting today.

I love to experiment with changing up my identity, even just in small ways, like changing my favorite color on purpose, changing my style a little bit, like maybe kind of makeup I wear. Do I wear a bright lipstick usually or no lipstick? Do I dress up or do I dress more casual? I like to change it up every now and then only because I’m trying to remind myself that I am capable of being whoever I choose to be. I’m not just noticing who I am, I’m choosing to be who I wanna be.

I went through recently a transformation of like, I think I’m gonna be a minimalist now. And I love to do little things like that and change up who I’m being, not for anyone other than myself, because it keeps me in the driver’s seat of who I’m being. And you can do this too in any area where you feel you’ve made a mistake.

Now, let’s say you have been unfaithful to your spouse. Do you know what the opportunity is that you have now? First of all, you have that personal work to do, that opportunity, but second of all, you have an opportunity to have a deeper, more authentic, better connection with your spouse than you could have had, had this didn’t happen. You know why? What it’s going to require for that to happen is going to evolve your marriage. If you choose to be humble, to overcome your ego, your pride. 

Humility and beating yourself up are not the same thing. Humility and shame are not the same thing. I believe humility and confidence are the same thing. Humility is, wow, I really messed up. I’m so sorry. That’s not me. That’s not who I’m gonna continue to be. I’m always gonna be flawed, but I’m not gonna make that mistake again. And I’m still lovable though. I’m just as valuable as had I never done that. This is what you got to know inside, right? And then apologies on the outside. I’m so sorry. That’s not who I want to be. 

So for you to do that work, and then for your spouse to do the work that’s going to be necessary if they choose to, and that’s their choice, right? Both of you are gonna have to be more honest, more authentic, more real with one another. You’re gonna have to communicate more with one another. And so the kind of connection that’s available to you through doing that work is deeper and better than had this never happened. That’s what’s available to you. This is the opportunity available on the other side of making mistakes. 

And again, back to yelling at your kids. You have the opportunity to show your kids how to handle it when you might make a mistake, how to apologize, how to be humble without being shameful, how to work on yourself and try to do better, and how to not even be perfect at that and have it take more than one try. These are all such valuable opportunities and they only exist on the other side of making a mistake. 

Of course, we don’t set out to make mistakes, but when they happen as they inevitably will, look at it as the opportunity that it is. If you want some help, come to a free coaching call and I can help you find the opportunity and decide who you want to be next. All right. Thanks for joining me today, everyone. Have a beautiful rest of your week and I’ll see you next time. Bye-bye.

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