How to Own Your Mistakes and Recover From Them

One of the things that tends to happen, we make decisions and we might make a bad decision, right? Or something that we feel is a bad decision, something that's cost us. What can we do to recover? Is there anything that you know about that can help us to recover from making mistakes?

Absolutely. And so when we're talking about mistakes, I think a lot of people don't make progress in their life because of the fear of judgment, the fear of looking bad. A lot of people won't go to that exercise at the gym because they're brand new. And I think that's something that's very important to get over. And I'll talk about first, you know, a lot of people won't make mistakes to begin with, but mistakes are just a sign that we're trying something, right? It's similar to a child who's learning how to walk. You wouldn't see your child stumble a few times and just be like, okay, Don't try this anymore. You're looking really bad. Don't walk. Walking's not for you. But as we grow older, sometimes we're so concerned about other people's opinions and expectations. So I would— I know a lot of your listeners take notes. I would write this down and just put it by your computer or something. It's just, you can go broke buying into the opinions and expectations of other people. And when I was working, I help a lot of actors, speakers, Speed read scripts, have focus on set, memorize their lines faster. And I remember when I was working with Jim Carrey and we were making guacamole, of all things, in his kitchen, which is a great brain food, by the way. What you eat matters, especially for your gray matter. So we're making this, and I'm asking him the same question I ask a lot of people, like, why do you do what you do? I'm very interested in human motivation because that's a thinking process. And, uh, and I find out that the reason why he acts so insane, if you will, or extreme on set is because he wants to give everybody who's watching permission to be themselves. And I feel like— and he calls it freeing people from the concern of others. You know, that's quote unquote his religion, freeing other people from the concern of other people.

Yeah.

And I feel like constantly we're mitigating ourselves, our way we can express ourselves, because we're scared of how we're going to look. We're scared of that, you know. of judgment and what critics are gonna say. But the critics, I mean, that's the easiest job in the world because all they do is they don't have to do anything. They can just criticize other people who are trying to do things.

Right.

So my first comment on when it comes to mistakes is, you've all heard this before, but in order to learn, you have to make mistakes. That's how we learn because there's no such thing as failure. People think failure is the opposite of success. But I, I feel like, you know, in you and I, the people that we get to spend time with and we get to interview for our shows and such, and our personal experience, failure is not the opposite of success. It's, it's part of success. Yeah, right. And I feel like there's no such thing as failure. There's only failure to learn. Because if you're getting feedback, then you know what to do different. And I just did a podcast episode with Beth Comstock, who's the former vice chair of General Electric, which is all about imagination. And she has a new book called, um, Imagine it forward and the power of imagination. And we're talking about Edison, who started General Electric, and he was a great marketer. But obviously, you've all heard that he tried. He was like, oh, I didn't fail thousands of times to make the light bulb. I succeeded in learning what not to do. And so it's a mindset. So I would say first start with making more mistakes and fail forward and give yourself permission. The big thing is, how do you recover from a mistake? And I would give everyone—I like acronyms. You know this because we've talked about this in other shows on how to remember names and speed read. I use acronyms. What I would say is, put the mistake behind you and make it old. And so the acronym is O L D. I want everyone to think about a mistake that they are holding on to because I think a lot of us have regret and they live in the past. But I always tell people, if you live, if you're living in the past, then you're dying in the present.

Mm.

You know, because you're always looking in that rearview mirror and then you can't be here, right? And so you can learn from the past, and but you got to live for today, and then you could, you know, lead your legacy tomorrow. And, and so remember OLD. And so the O in someone— as everyone right now will make this interactive because this is— we don't make this theoretical, you make it relevant to you. Think about a mistake you're holding on to. You want to make it OLD. The O is you need to own it. You need to own that. And here's a few things that will allow you to own it. The A is you need to be accountable for it. Okay, so I'm gonna give you a few A's. And here's the first A, be accountable for it because you need to take responsibility for it. You and I have talked about the time I've spent with Stan Lee, the co-creator of all these amazing Spider-Man, X-Men, Avengers. And, you know, he told me in the car one day, you know, he was like, who's your favorite superhero? I was like, Spider-Man. He's like, with great power comes great responsibility. And in my mind, you know, because I have my learning difficulties, I reverse things. I was like, Stan, you know, you're right, but the opposite is also true. With great responsibility comes great power. When we take responsibility for something, even our mistakes, we have great power to make things better. And so first thing is you make— you become accountable for it. Another A is just acknowledge that you're human. You know, acknowledge that it is a mistake and that you made it, because some people deny And, you know, they deny that they made that mistake. And that's a challenge also as well. So you need to be able to acknowledge it in order to be able to— because some people, what you resist persists, and they fight with it and they try to defend it. And but if you fight for your limitations, you get to keep them. And so just acknowledge it. Another A is apologize. You know, apologize if you've hurt somebody. If this mistake costs somebody else outside of you, apologize to that person. You know, you can keep it brief, but be clear.

Yeah.

And apologize in a way that is sincere. Obviously mean it. Exactly. Because people— I mean, we all have this radar. We know if something's sincere or not. But, but apologize for it, because that's a way of owning it. You apologize for it, you know, explain if you need to why it happened, and explain how it's never gonna, you know, happen again.

If you— and if you really mean it, you're not expecting the other person to necessarily do anything differently. It's you're apologizing for yourself.

Absolutely.

And the potential Absolutely.

I agree with that completely. So you're accountable for it, right? And you, you're, you acknowledge it, you apologize for it, and maybe you need to apologize to yourself also because forgiveness goes a long way. You know, I've spent a lot of time on, uh, especially with my brain injury, you know, through going through SPECT scans and having my brain analyzed, you know, neurofeedback. And one of the best ways to get into those deep healing states is to forgive yourself. The number one way that I found from personal experience is forgiveness, and studies done in self-compassion say that when you don't beat yourself up because a lot of people they are really hard on themselves. You know they ate that cupcake, right? Or they didn't work out that day, or they were a little short with their their their child or whatever it is, and they beat themselves up. And we find in the studies that actually kindness. Goes farther when you're kind to yourself, meaning that you know you say you know I'm only I'm human. I had a long day and I did make a mistake, but you're kind with yourself as opposed to beating yourself up. You're more likely to follow through in the future. So the O in old is you make the mistake old is you own it. You're accountable. You acknowledge it. You apologize for it. The L in old stands for of course learn from it. Right? And like, the whole idea behind making mistakes is that what— where was— where's the gift in this? You know? And I ask that myself all the time when there's a mistake that's made either by myself or somebody around me, is like, where's— where's the gift? And usually the gift comes from a new distinction that you have or a new learning. And so when I'm doing this and I'm making a mistake and I've made a mistake, what I'll do is I'll even journal about it a little bit. Because I was like, what was my intention here? You know, what was the environment that allowed this mistake to happen? Was I multitasking? Was I taking too much, you know, taking on too much? Was I exhausted and I didn't sleep the night before? Like, what created this environment for this mistake to happen? Did I not have enough information, right? And so I think that reflection is very important because otherwise what happens is you don't handle the D, Which, so, so the O again is you own it. The L is you learn from it. And a big part of it for me is I journal about it because I like to write about it and reflect on it. Otherwise there's no learning from it. And then the D stands for don't repeat it. Don't repeat it. Because if you truly learn from it, then you're not gonna repeat it because the first time you did, you know, it's a mistake, but the second time you do it, it's a choice. Yeah. You know, because a lot of people, they say, and you've heard this phrase in self-improvement forever, insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result. And, you know, I don't know if that's insanity. Maybe it's just a poor memory because you don't remember the lesson that came from it. And I feel like a lot of people repeat mistakes, and the D's again says don't repeat it, because they don't remember the lesson or the pain that came. So they end up dating the same kind of person, right? They say they make the same kind of mistake with their health over and over again, or they hire the same person, or they again, you know, wait and procrastinate on their taxes, or whatever those things are. And in order to not repeat it, I would say a few things. Maybe I'll make them— I like iteration— maybe a few Ps. And I did a whole episode on this that went deep in it about making mistakes. P is like Prepare next time. You know, when you learn it, you know, in your journal about it, you prepare for the next time. I would say plan. When you know something, the situation could come up in the future, plan ahead. And that would prevent you from making that kind of mistake because these thought experiments, using your imagination to project into the future, and really imagination is really rehearsal. You know, when you're, when somebody is fearful, that they're going to make a mistake, whether it's public speaking. And you know this, like a lot of people, one of the big fears is people, when you and I go to events, even people don't know, like backstage, you know, a lot of our peers are really scared to go on stage and do their work, but they're such, so mission-driven. They have a moral obligation to do it. So that's the motivation. But preparation is just a signal to your mind. You know, fear is just meaning you need to prepare more. And so I would say the D is don't repeat it because if you really did own it, if you really do own it, And you really didn't learn from it, then don't repeat that because then it's a choice.

Jim, this is so powerful because people, even you asking me about what have I done to get to the place that I'm at personally.

Exactly.

And, it's literally like this formula that you just mentioned. I'm very, very big on learning from my mistakes. I'm very, very passionate about it. But, it starts with owning it and saying, this is my responsibility, this is my bad, even if it's not directly like you did thing. If you were involved and you put something in position, or you made the choice to be involved in something, taking responsibility for whatever you can, because it gives you the part, the opportunity to actually learn from it then. And so learning from it, and then don't repeat it. Because man, like, I want, I want that lesson. Because you better believe, like, I've got this one. I'm not going to do that again.

Exactly.

You know, so just like, I cut the cord. You know, and so if people can start to embrace this and this— I love this, so powerful, this acronym of OLD. And man, it's like, it is old, you know? We gotta let this stuff go.

Yeah, put it in the past.

Yeah.

And that's the other thing when it comes to mistakes is when I was talking about forgiveness, it's just, you are not your mistakes. You know, your mistakes don't define you, but how you deal with those mistakes can define you. And I'm saying that using this model of OLD. And again, going back to thinking, 'cause this conversation has been all about thinking, I wish they taught this back in school. Because this is our ability to to make mistakes and to grow through mistakes. I feel like when we do these things also, it increases our integrity with other people because they see we own it, that we learn from it, and we don't repeat it. Right. And yeah, I love what you said about how it falls on your shoulder that even if somebody on your team did something, ultimately you had a part in it because maybe you hired that person or it was a manage and you take responsibility. You gave them the job and we could appreciate and we always appreciate leaders who do that. Because we we are forgiving when we see somebody is is growing from their mistakes, and they're not putting it on somebody else and making somebody else blaming and all that other stuff. And we stay in our power. And yes, there could be some short-term pain, like there is doing a lot of any kind of growth. But I think that even you know if you do the easy thing, which is procrastinate and put it off and not take responsibility, then life gets really hard. Absolutely. But if you do the hard thing. And you own it and you apologize for it and you do everything you can to make it better and learn from it, then life gets a lot easier.

Definitely. I want to ask you about one more thing.

Yes.

So many things I could talk to you about.

Dude, that's— I'm honored to be here.

I'm just thinking about some of the biggest issues that we tend to have as, as, as humans, but also as people, especially the Model Health Show community, people who are involved in this mission. in this movement are really growth-driven. Like, we want to be the best us possible, you know. We want to have the health that we truly want. We want to have the relationships. We want to have the careers that we want. But, a big barrier for that is it's oftentimes not the environment, it's ourselves.

Hmm.

We are our biggest trapdoor, right? This self-sabotage. We set ourselves up for failure. So, can you talk a little bit about The, the idea of self-sabotage and any kind of insights you can offer to people to kind of move past that.

Completely. I mean, this comes down to, again, how we think about things and how we think about ourselves and how we think about our behaviors. And I'll give somebody who's listening to this— I think everyone could relate to taking one step forward towards a goal and then taking two steps back, right? Why do we do things that could harm ourselves in the long term? Or we procrastinate. We, we know we need to do something, But we put it off and we don't have the discipline. And I'll give everyone a framework for this. Everybody's always trying to wonder why they're not doing a behavior. Why am I not working out today? Why am I not eating right today? Why I'm not reading 30 minutes a day? Why am I not journaling or meditating? Right? But they could use willpower and motivation, but it only gets you so far because there are other levels that they're not being addressed. Above the level of behavior is this level. of capability, and this is your skill. You know, I'm really big— I know you are— in skill development, because we don't necessarily rise to the level of our goals. We fall to the level of our skills, right? Of our training, if you will. And so, are you trained in reading faster or remembering names or working out? Because you need that training in order to do that behavior, right? But even if you have the training, the capability, and the skill, Look at the level above that, and that's the level of belief and values. Belief and values, meaning that let's say the behavior is you want somebody to read 30 minutes a day, and they even have the ability because they were taught, but they have a belief like, you know, they're not that smart, or they don't value reading. Or let's say in my case, remembering names—that's a behavior. I want to teach everyone to remember the names of everyone they meet, and maybe they even learn because they listen to a couple podcasts on how to remember names capability, but they have a belief it's not important. Or they have a value that remembering names is not very important to them or believe they have a bad memory, then it's not going to work, right?

Right.

And you wonder why they don't do the behavior. And then finally, the level above belief and values is this level called identity. And this is something you and I talked about. 2 most powerful words are I am. So let's say the behavior is you want somebody to stop smoking, but their identity is I am a smoker. That's going to be a hard shift. Right? Because people are going to try to fight on behavior every single time, 20 times, 100 times a day, but their identity hasn't shifted, right? And so let's say the behavior is, you know, they want to stop procrastinating, but their identity is, I am a procrastinator. That's a challenge. The last level—

Paper's due tomorrow. I just got started, baby.

Exactly, exactly. And you wonder why people put it off. And then the level below behavior, as everyone's thinking about behavior that they've been putting off, is this level called environment. Environment. And what I would say at a high level, let's say they want to— their behavior is they want to read more, but the environment is they have no books. Or maybe the environment is too dark. Or maybe they want to— behavior is they want to meet more people, but the environment, they're not getting— putting themselves in an environment to meet new people. It's going to keep them there. Or maybe they want to stop smoking, it's the behavior, but their environment is around smokers. Right? Or they're putting their environment— they want to eat good food, but their environment is— they have all those, those crazy snacks.

Exactly. Like, exactly.

And the reason why this works ultimately is because when we're talking about thinking, thinking is the process of asking questions and answering them. So, you know, and even if people are listening, they're like, oh, is that true? Notice, is that true is a question. So the main questions back in school— watch this— Are the five W's, right? The five W's and the H. So questions really are the answer, you know, because that's what questions are. That that's what thinking is. Asking questions. The reason why an Elon Musk could come up with Tesla or something like that is he was outside the industry looking in, ask was thinking, ask himself new question: Why aren't we doing it this way with today's technology? Right? That that's what your power is to be able to ask new questions. But going through the five W's and the H. The identity level answers the question of who. The level of beliefs and value answer the question why. The level of capability answers the question of how. The level of behavior answers the question of what. And the level of environment answers the question when and where.

Hmm.

So it's tight. And what I'm all about is having congruency. The reason why it's not just about when people see me memorizing 100 people's names in an audience or 100 words or numbers, or they know I read a book a day, is that there's a structure to this because it's about— we use such a small percentage of our mental potential, right? But when it's completely aligned and your whole self, it's like whole self-learning or whole self-thinking. And then it becomes almost what appears to be effortless, you know, to, to yourself compared to like what people are struggling with. And part of it again is going back to this knowledge gap, is there are some people who know, some people don't know. But I'm hoping during this conversation, the distinctions people learn, whether it's 6 thinking hats, or the old method about making mistakes and how to own it and learn from it and don't repeat it, or it comes down to like this framework, these 5 levels of transformation. It gives you these distinctions, so allows you a new way of thinking about it. And because you're thinking about different, you'll get different results. And isn't that what we all want?