Matthew AI shares a live-TV mishap where he blanked on his talking points, then explains his 90/10 rule: life is 10% what happens and 90% how you react. He gives three steps for moving past mistakes: stop the self-pity, don't overreact, and layer new positive actions on top, adopting a "what's next?" mindset.
So I was on the Today Show on Friday, as I am every couple of weeks, for those of you that watch. The only difference was in this particular performance, they asked me a question and I said, oh, well there are three things that I normally say in response to this question, and I went, Number one, blah, blah, blah, really good answer. Number two, and I completely forgot.
How does she do it, Matthew?
This is someone who's got to enjoy their love life again, and I have three ways of doing that, especially on Valentine's. One, Stop idealizing other people's crappy relationships. That's so true. Just 'cause someone's in a relationship, it doesn't make them happier than you are. Yeah. Right.
That's good. I like that one. Check. Yep.
Check. Secondly, make sure that when you, when you, God, what was number two?
You lost it. I don't know. You know what's funny? I knew you lost it when you started there.
There was laughter on number one. You were too much longer. I was soaking up the validation.
No.
All right, here's the second thing. Make sure that when you you go out with your guy, no, I lost it.
Let's move on. Lisa has been married for almost 26 years. This would have been years ago a.
Really horrific, embarrassing moment for me. It was my, literally it would have been my worst nightmare going on TV and live forgetting what I was gonna say. Except it wasn't. It wasn't a bad situation at all. I laughed it off, they laughed it off. It became a kind of a funny part of the segment. There's a quote I really enjoy. and that's that life is 10% what happens and 90% how you react to what happens. I'm a big believer in the idea that so many people make mistakes and it's not the mistake that ruins them, it's the way they react to their mistake that ruins them. They either have an overblown reaction which draws so much attention to it, it's crazy, or they decide never to do that again. I've made a mistake, I'm never doing that again. It was embarrassing, I don't want to embarrass myself again. And that's the thing that that hinders them. It's not the mistake, it's their lack of action after the mistake. So, I want to give you three things to remember when you make your next mistake. One, remember that you're not that special when you make a mistake. Other people are making mistakes too all the time. Am I the only person who's ever forgotten what they were going to say on TV? Of course not. It happens all the time. I'm not special for making that mistake. I shouldn't indulge and get all playing the violin for myself and I'm the victim. I can't believe it. I'm such an idiot. That would be to make myself too special. Everyone makes mistakes all the time. Once we realize that, we can be humbled by that and go, It's okay. I'm just like everyone else. Number two. Don't. Number two. Don't overreact. Many of us make a mistake and then we overreact to the mistake. When we overreact to the mistake, it draws attention to it. When it draws attention to it, other people think there must be some gravitas to the mistake. Number three. Get on to the next thing. A mistake is one little moment in the whole timeline of everything that you do. If you keep going, you'll be measured on your averages and quality always wins. You may have made a mistake right now, but just get on to doing the next thing you do well so that you'll now be remembered for something different. In other words, just stick another layer on top of it. That mistake is just one layer right now. Put another layer on top of it and then another layer on top of that. I don't know how many of you watched West Wing, but I watched West Wing and the president in West Wing played by the for Martin Sheen, he always used to say at the end of a meeting, at the end of a problem solving session, he'd say, what's next? And it always stuck with me, the simplicity of that phrase, what's next? Because anytime something happens, once you've drawn a line under it, you draw a line under it, and that's where you go. You say, what's next? Life is long. People talk about life being short, but in many ways, life is long. There's a lot of potential along the way to be a success, to do things great. There's also a lot of potential along the way to screw up. we're all going to screw up in this life and we're going to screw up a lot, especially if we're out there playing the game. If we're out there doing things, we are bound to screw up a lot. Get okay with that. Make that okay in your mind. And remember, you're going to be hurt more by your reactions to your mistakes than you'll be hurt by the mistakes themselves. If you are not signed up to my newsletter right now, go do that. We're constantly putting out new videos, new articles, especially my brother's articles as well, which are getting a lot of attention out there right now. sign up to the mailing list, go to howtgetttheguy.com/advice, all you need to do is put in your name and email address and you'll get all of that information. Alright guys, I will see you soon.
