This week, Curt over at Occupational Adventure wrote a few posts about learning from mistakes, and I had to admit to feeling a little guilty.  See, although I call myself a career mentor, I am one of those people who finds it difficult to own up to my screw-ups.  Curt’s advice was so refreshing I decided to share it with you.

According to Curt, the three steps to surmounting errors are simply to make a mistake, learn from it, and apply what you’ve learned to new situations.  It sounds easy enough, but Curt says that we get so caught up in banging ourselves over the head with our mistakes that we never get around to step 2 or step 3.  We plant the seeds, but we're so fearful of being “someone who makes mistakes,” that we stay hidden in the barn rather than going out and harvesting the resulting insights.

Curt’s right.  The reality is that everybody who is alive and breathing makes mistakes. People who said that they don’t are either lying or playing really small in the world.  After reading these posts, I tried to analyze why I’m so afraid to make mistakes, and why I feel ashamed when I can’t avoid them.  I realized that 1) As a born-and-bred Type A personality, I have an expectation of self-perfection that I can’t possibly live up to, and 2) I was severely punished for a few honest mistakes I made early in my career, and a part of me has been proceeding with caution ever since. 

But if I really think about it, this attitude has held me back.  I can see where I’ve missed chances to get ahead, where I haven’t pressed on with a strategy that I knew in my heart was right, because I was worried I might offend someone or fail and wouldn’t be forgiven.  For those of us in our twenties and thirties, I think that part of the maturation process has to do with developing confidence in our convictions, taking advantage of opportunities that may be risky but have a big payoff, and realizing that a memorable mistake can be just the catalyst we all need to grow in our careers.