Dealing with Everyday Mistakes
Have you ever experienced clicking the wrong button online, and you can’t take it back. You have suddenly ordered or signed up for something you didn’t want. But it’s not worth the time and effort to try to get your money back. Or what if you purchase something you don’t want because you picked it out by mistake because you weren’t paying attention? Or what if? What If? You can fill in your own everyday mistakes that we all make at times.
The online purchase mistake is what happened to me. Though it resulted in an extra expense of only $17.50, it really bothered me, because I failed to put in a discount code and couldn’t go back to do so, so I paid full price.
After replaying this minor mistake in my mind for a while and blaming myself for not being attentive, I began thinking about the everyday mistakes we all make and what lessons we might learn from them. These are not the big life changing mistakes, like an accident that changes your life forever, but the small everyday ones that make up daily life in the digital age. In many cases, such errors involve pushing a wrong button or responding to a link that turns out to be a scam, a subject I’ve explored in many books and films, such as the books The Big Con, I Was Scammed, and Scams in the Digital Age and the films Conned: A True Story and Con Artists Unveiled.
How do you best deal with these small everyday mistakes, so they don’t upset you or disrupt your life, and you can actually gain from them? Here are some tips I thought about:
· Don’t beat yourself up over making a stupid mistake. Don’t tell yourself things like: “How could you be so dumb?”
· Think about why you made the mistake and how you can change what you do in the future, so you don’t make that mistake again.
· Think about what you can learn from the mistake.
· Consider how you can repair things and do better in the future.
· Think about how you might build on what happened.
· Consider how some mistakes contribute to growth by guiding one to do things differently in the future.
· Remind yourself that many mistakes and failures have led to big successes. For example, they say that successful entrepreneurs typically fail seven times before experiencing success.
· Realize that life is about learning and growing, and mistakes show that you are still growing, when you recognize that mistake and make changes as a result.
· Think about how mistakes can be a teachable moment you can share with others.
· Recognize that the mistake you made is relatively unimportant, so don’t magnify it and let it bother you.
· If the mistake has affected another person, apologize and explain.
· Sometimes mistakes can suggest another direction in your life.
· Recognize that you need to pay more careful attention to the things you do, so you don’t make such mistakes in the future.
· If you find yourself dwelling on the mistake and berating yourself for doing something wrong, remind yourself that “This too shall pass,” and let it go.
· Think of all the positive things in your life. Think about what positive things you can do or things that will happen to you in the future.
· Tell any thoughts of the mistake “Be gone” or “Go away,” and send those thoughts away. Tell yourself that they are out of mind and gone, and they probably will be. Should thoughts of the mistake come back again, flip the switch, change the channel, and turn your attention to something else that you are doing now or think about something positive in your life.
In short, those were some of the positive things that came out of my experience of making a silly, not very important everyday mistake. If you make such a mistake, this list will give you something to think about, so you can turn that mistake into something positive, from paying more attention in the future to thinking about what you can learn from what happened and making positive changes in your life.
That’s been my approach throughout my life – should anything negative happen, no matter how big or small, turn it into something positive. That has led to all sorts of creative projects, and most recently, this turn it around approach has led to a series of books, films, and now games for American Leadership Books and ALB Games. For example, after I realized that someone was trying to scam me through an email which seemed to know all about me and claimed I ordered something that I didn’t order and I ended the communication, I thought about how the growing number of online scams was like a game by the scammers to capture as many victims as they could. The result was creating a series of games for the company, starting with Scamalot, based on my books and films on scams: The Big Con about a book-to-film scam; I Was Scammed, featuring the victims of several dozen scams; and the films Conned: A True Story and Con Artists Unveiled. Then, that game led to still other games, including Life Behind Bars and Love in Prison, inspired by the books Women with Partners in Prison and Women in Prison. And coming soon, games about success and relationships. All of these books, films, and games are available on Amazon, too.
So think about any mistakes or anything negative in your life and how you might turn that into something positive.
For more information on the books, films, and games, and to set up interviews, email or call:
Karen Andrews
Executive Assistant
Changemakers Podcasts
Changemakers Publishing and Writing
San Ramon, CA 94583
(925) 804-6333
Changemakerspub@att.net
www.changemakerspodcasts.net
www.changemakerspublishingandwriting.com
*********
Gini Graham Scott, Ph.D. is the author of over 50 books with major publishers and has published 200 books through her company Changemakers Publishing and Writing (http://www.changemakerspublishingandwriting.com). She writes books, proposals, and film scripts for clients, and has written and produced 18 feature films and documentaries, including Conned: A True Story and Con Artists Unveiled¸ distributed by Gravitas Ventures. (http://www.changemakersproductionsfilms.com). Her latest books include Ghost Story and How to Find and Work with a Good Ghostwriter published by Waterside Productions; and The Big Con and I Was Scammed, published by American Leadership Press.