Honesty is the fastest way to prevent a mistake from turning into a failure. James Altucher
Honesty is not just about telling the truth, it’s about being real with yourself. We all make mistakes, it’s a human tendency. Accepting our mistakes allows us to reverse-engineer the steps that led us to that outcome and reroute it to a path of success.
Sometimes we convince ourselves that we don’t deserve a favourable outcome or that we are not able to achieve something that we have our hearts set on. Deceiving ourselves is the worst deception of all. Especially when we are not being honest about our own dreams and desires. These kinds of thoughts usually occur after a perceived failure, we try to justify the outcome with lies instead of honestly addressing any mistakes we might have made.
Even small mistakes can have a domino effect. Here are some actions that you can take to be honest with yourself about mistakes and prevent small missteps from spiralling out of control:
Treat mistakes as finite incidents
You see it happening to professional sports athletes all the time. A little mistake puts them on tilt and affects the rest of their game. Treating mistakes as isolated events allows us to move forward without any baggage.
Get constant feedback
Pursuing feedback proactively quickly lets us determine if we are going off track in our endeavours, it is one of the most important factors in minimizing mistakes.
Learn quickly
The faster we learn from our mistakes the less likely we are to repeat them. It also allows us to treat any underlying issues that may have caused the mistake in the first place.
Be open to change
It is easy to get tunnel-vision when we are pursuing a goal, but even the best-laid plans change. We must be willing to implement creative solutions that may not have originally been on our roadmap.
Follow failure with success (no matter how small)
By creating small, attainable milestones after a failure we are setting ourselves up for success. Before the failures have time to cascade we are already building up the momentum to achieve our goals!
Unfortunately, we can’t always control our failures. But we can control our response to challenges and come back stronger than before. If we are adapting, learning and achieving goals, despite failures along the way, then we are thriving!