How to Learn From Your Mistakes | Jim Kwik

How do you deal with your mistakes? This is such an important topic. You'll want to take notes on this, and if possible, listen to this more than once. Because do you hate personal blunders and screw-ups? Now, we all make mistakes. It's easy to forget that when we're in the midst of a mess-up, but it's true. It's impossible to avoid miscalculations, mishaps, both big and small. And the busier you are, have you found the more mistakes you're likely going to make? Maybe you've hurt someone's feelings by saying the wrong wrong thing at the wrong time, or left the water running or flooded your home, fumbled a presentation in a meeting. Maybe you lost a client. No matter how impeccable you are or how perfect you feel like you could be, the question is not whether you will make mistakes. It's will you own it? Will you stay positive? Will you move forward from life's inevitable ups and downs? So how do you bounce back From a mistake. In this episode, I'm going to share with you 3 quick things you could do to literally put mistakes behind you. And the 3 things aren't panic, make excuses, and blame others. Not at all. So let's talk about mistakes. There's an old saying that goes, to err is human. How do you work towards accepting mistakes, learning from them rather than avoiding them and denying them? And there are real benefits to mistakes, right? One of the definitions of to err is to wander or to stray. Often people make mistakes because they're trying new things. We stray from accepted paths. Post-it notes, Teflon, penicillin are all examples of discoveries made by mistake. Albert Einstein once said, anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new. Really, mistakes are proof that you're trying. It's true. Mistakes have the power to turn you into something better than you were before. So failure is not actually the opposite of success. It's actually part of it. So what if we looked at mistakes more as an opportunity? There are actually mechanisms in the brain that help us detect when we do something wrong. The brain signals us when we make an error. This can be extremely helpful during the learning process. Making mistakes can help us focus more closely on what we're doing and try to do our absolute best. The challenge is, When we dwell on mistakes, it doesn't help us to move forward. Also, remember this: you are not your mistake. When you make a mistake, keep in mind it doesn't mean anything about you, who you are, the kind of person you are. Many people make the mistake, literally, and jump to conclusions about their self-worth. No one's perfect, and that's okay. You make mistakes. Mistakes don't make you. Your past mistakes are meant to guide you, not define you. So, place them under your feet, use them as a stepping stone to rise to the next level. Now, nothing can make the effects of your mistake go away entirely, but taking these steps can put you in a better position and help you make the most of a bad situation. So, as I go through these 3 steps, when you make a mistake, remember this: the most important thing is to remain calm. When you make a mistake, especially a really big one, your first response might be fight or flight. be panic. It might be starting to try to fix things in a frenzy. Rarely would you come from that because all behavior is state-driven. We talk about feelings a lot. And when you feel angry, they say, don't send that text. Don't leave that voice message. Don't send that email because you want your mind and your heart to be in harmony. So don't waste time and energy grieving over past mistakes. Here's how you put them behind you. They keep it in the past. I want you to make it an OLD mistake. Literally OLD mistake. O-L-D. The O stands for own it. You want to own it. What does that mean? I want you to think about these 4 A's. First A is accountable. When you want to own it, it means you're going to take responsibility for it. Remember this, with great responsibility comes great power. When you take responsibility for something, it gives you great power to make things better. So, you start with accountability. The second A is you have to accept it. Part of accepting it is forgiveness. Forgiveness of others, forgiveness of yourself. In the episode I did on procrastination, on how to smash procrastination, one of the strategies was forgiveness. The research in the area of self-compassion showed Those who forgave themselves follow through more often. So treat yourself with love and you're going to be more successful, not less. When you beat yourself up and you're hard on yourself, you're less likely to follow through. So acknowledge that you're human, that you make mistakes, and you can own it and accept it. Third A is apologize. If you need to apologize to others because of your goof, Do it. Do it swiftly. Do it briefly. Apologize and tell them that you're working on the situation. Saying sorry, remember this, it takes courage, but it's far better to come clean than to hide your error or worse, to blame others for it. In the long run, people will remember your integrity long after they've forgotten about the original mistake. And then finally, the 4th A is admit. You want to admit it. Come clean. Admitting your mistakes is not a sign of weakness, but it's a sign of maturity. By embracing humility, trust can be built or rebuilt both on a personal and organizational levels. Admitting your errors also invites other people around you to admit theirs and do the same. So, it contributes to creation of a healthy environment, both home and also at work. And when you help foster this authenticity, even when the mistake is not your own, when people feel safe enough to admit their fault, to forgive others for things that they've done or that others have done, then they don't rush to judgment. And what's important is that you separate the person from the mistake. Give them a chance to explain, to make things better. An admission of a mistake, even if it's done privately to yourself, makes learning possible. It sets a really good environment to help you to transform by moving the focus away from blame towards A focus of understanding. Wise people admit their mistakes. They know progress accelerates when they do. You can't learn anything from a mistake unless you own it, unless you admit it. So, take a deep breath, admit to your mistakes, and then take ownership of it and inform those who need to know. Now, the L in OLD stands for learn. You want to learn from it. Remember this, Often our best teacher is our last mistake. In life, situations tend to repeat themselves. Have you found this? Over and over and over again until the lesson is learned. So, how do you learn from your mistakes? People talk about this so often. What I do is I start by getting clarity and identifying the mistake. You must first understand what you did wrong in order to change it. This takes a certain level of self-awareness. You need to be Honest and objective with yourself. So, start by defining the mistake. So, ask yourself these clarifying questions. What was I trying to do? What went wrong? When did it go wrong? Did you say something wrong? Did you accidentally make a mistake on a project? Did you forget to do something that you promised to somebody else? Start by defining the mistake. Next, I would understand how and why you made the mistake in the first place. Why did it go wrong? Did you do it on purpose, and then maybe later on you regretted it? Were you simply not paying attention at all? Were you trying to multitask? Were you exhausted because you had a bad night's sleep? Go to the why. And while you're doing this, if you're not exactly sure what you did wrong, ask somebody to help you discover and find it out. So, for example, if somebody is mad at you, they're angry at you, you could ask them, I sense you're really upset with me. What did I do wrong? Or, can you explain, tell me more about that? So, these are the kind of clarifying questions. What went wrong? What could I do better the next time? What did I learn from this? And I would really recommend you write these responses down. You'll see the situation a lot more clearly. Seeing your answers on paper can help you think more logically about a rational or maybe an emotional experience. So, don't waste a good mistake. Learn from it. So, the O in OLD is own it. The L stands for learn from it. The D stands for don't repeat it. We've all heard the phrase, insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results. That's not insanity. It's the result of a poor memory. When we teach memory improvement in our online programs, yes, it's great to quickly remember facts and formulas and figures and foreign languages. And even more so for me, it's about remembering the 3 L's: your loves, your life, and your lessons. If your life is worth living, it's worth remembering, right? And your loved ones, those magical moments. But it's also the lessons you live. Because this is what happens. If you don't remember what you learned, you make and repeat the same mistakes. Those who don't learn from their mistakes are doomed to repeat them. Many repeat the same mistakes in their business. They hire the same people, And make mistakes there. They make the same mistakes in their marketing. They make the same mistakes in their investments. They maybe eat the same junk food, but they don't remember how badly they felt afterwards. So they eat it again. They date maybe the same kind of or type of person that hurts them, or maybe they get in the same arguments over and over again with their spouse, et cetera, right? They say that you can never make the same mistake twice because the second time you make it, it's not a mistake. It's a choice. A mistake that's repeated more than once is a decision. So, what can you do to stop yourself from repeating these mistakes? Here are 6 Ps. The first P is you want to prepare. What does that mean? Preparation is key. You want to identify the skills, the knowledge, the resources, maybe the tools that will keep you from repeating the error. The second P is progress. Here's the thing, you can't manage something unless you can measure it. What I would recommend is you take notes and you chart your progress that you're making on this path. And you could also celebrate your progress as well. The 3rd P are patterns. When people ask me what genius is, one of my common answers is it's pattern recognition. Remember your past mistakes. Think of past solutions. One of the best ways to solve a problem or a mistake is to identify how you have solved similar problems or mistakes in the past. So, you can look at your own patterns because genius leaves clues. And you're a genius at doing the things that you do. So, look at the patterns of your behavior. Look at the patterns of your thought. Look at the patterns of how you've had similar issues in the past. Are there other times when you forgot to do something? Write those patterns or those themes down and notice what keeps on coming up for you. This may help you identify a larger goal that you need to work on. Maybe certain skills, maybe it's your focus, maybe it's your learning, maybe it's your commitment. Maybe it's your fears. For example, perhaps you tend to, when we're talking about memory, forget things, and you're forgetting things that you don't want to do. Maybe it's cleaning, or maybe it's sales calls. Maybe it's something that has to do with work. This can indicate that you're avoiding this task or that you need to become more organized in order to remember to complete certain responsibilities that you have. Look for those patterns. The 4th P is prevention. You want to prevent future mistakes. So, how do you do that? If you could successfully find a solution to your mistake, then you are beginning the process of success in the future and avoidance of mistakes. So, you could write down what you think you did wrong. You could write down a goal or what you want to do in the future. So, for example, let's say that you made a mistake and you didn't complete an assignment. It on time. Then make sure you prevent future mistakes by using memory aids that we teach you in previous episodes. Maybe if you haven't gone through those episodes, you're going to use something like a Post-it note and you're going to put it on your computer to remind you you have this important task that you need to be able to handle. The next P, number 5, is purpose. When you create a list of reasons why you don't want to make a mistake again, you're less likely to repeat them. Remember that book that I always recommend, Start with Why by Simon Sinek? Sometimes it only takes one weak moment to indulge in something that you shouldn't do. Create a list of all the reasons, because reasons reap results. Reasons reap rewards. Why you should be disciplined, why you should stay on track, why you should Do that even in the most difficult of times. And then finally, the last P is plan. Plan. Beating yourself up for mistakes won't help you as you go through this process. It's important you spend the majority of your time thinking about how to be better tomorrow, how to be better in the future. So, what helps you to do that? Making a plan. Making a plan will help you to avoid making similar mistakes. Be as detailed as you can, but remain flexible because you know your plans may change. Whether you find an accountability partner or you track your progress on a journal or on your calendar, find a way to keep yourself accountable. Keep in mind that what works for somebody else might not work for you. So also for part of your plan, you might want to also come up with a plan B. So you have a backup plan. No matter how foolproof your plan is, there's always the possibility it won't work. So, what gives you confidence moving forward and certainty is redundancy. So, you have backup plans. Now, that's how you leverage your OLD mistakes. O-L-D. Own them, learn from them, don't repeat them. And remember this, everyone makes mistakes. It's not how we make mistakes, but how we deal with them that defines us. You don't have to be proud of your mistakes. You don't have to cheer for your mistakes. But you could be proud that you grew from them and they made you a better person today. So, the next time you find yourself as the cause of a personal or workplace blunder, do not shy away from it. Put your ego aside, admit your mistake, apologize, learn deeply, follow through with actions to fix it. And instead of running away, embrace the situation as an opportunity to show yourself how great you really are because you have genius inside of you, mistakes and all.