Tag Archives: mistakes

Own It!

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These days we are all most likely familiar with the ever increasing volume of compensation claims. Now before I go on, I am 100% supportive of people who are genuinely injured receiving compensation for their suffering, especially when their suffering is a result of the negligence of another. What I am not okay with is people who exaggerate their suffering or claim, when it wasn’t even the fault of the person they are claiming from.

It is bad enough that people are getting ridiculous pay-outs for these claims, but the mindset that is behind this is equally disturbing….

These days, we seem to have a culture of blaming others when things go wrong. We spill a hot drink on our arm, and blame the company that sold it to us. We fall off the back of a moving tram, we blame the tram company (don’t even get me started as to why someone is jumping on the back of a moving tram!!). We fall of a swing, we blame the owner of the swing. We fail an exam and blame the teacher or school….I could go on and on with examples, but this is not a witch hunt….and I am sure you get the point by now….

What I find really disturbing about these examples, and the thousand more that are out there, is that there is no sense of personal responsibility. At no point in any of these ‘accidents’ was there any admission from the ‘victim’of doing something that they should not be doing (I use the term ‘victim’ very lightly – in fact I’m more leaning to the sarcastic by using it if I’m really honest!!)….

There is no sense of acknowledging that I should not be on a swing if I am drunk – and if I do get on that swing, and subsequently fall off (because seriously, what else is going to happen???) – why do I blame the swing owner for not supervising me? Am I not an adult? Do I really need instructions on how to use a swing? If that is the case, well you better accompany me to the bathroom, because I may just fall of that too! And those ‘crime scene’ pictures will not be pretty!!

If I buy a hot beverage, then should I not expect it to be hot and therefore exercise caution in handling it? I am not going to hand it to my toddler in the back of the car, unsupervised. And if in some bizarre moment of poor judgement I do hand it to my unsupervised-back-seat-toddler-passenger and they spill it….then is that not my fault? I, a competent adult in charge of a mini-adult, does not seem to know that a toddler should not be left with a hot drink….in a moving car. Should I even be driving????

There is a growing tendency to blame everyone else when things go wrong. And that is a worrying development. Why are we so afraid of owning our mistakes? We all make mistakes, so why run from this truth? When did we change from learning from our mistakes to cashing in on them? And why oh why does the system pay out on these?

At what point will we stop this madness of always blaming someone else when things go wrong? At what point will we accept our own faults and failings?

We all have a personal responsibility to accept when things are our own fault or just an accident with no blame – but at what point will we own it?

The Biggest Mistake

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We fear them, don’t we, these things we call mistakes? Ever wonder why we fear them though? What is actually wrong with making a mistake?

Mistakes are usually built up by society as something terrible, an awful thing to do or happen. If we make a mistake, there’s nearly always somebody on standby to ridicule us for it. Somebody to point out that we are wrong or berate us for not getting something right.

All too often we second guess ourselves, for fear of making a mistake. Or we may avoid trying something new, just in case we make that dreaded mistake.

But if we stopped to think about it, what happens when we make a mistake? What does it actually mean? Well, what if I told you that a mistake is just another step on the road to getting it right. That sometimes mistakes are necessary. And that most of the time they are our best teacher.

Would it change your mindset if you knew that everyone makes mistakes? Would it make you feel better to believe that mistakes are quite common, especially when we start or try something new?

Perhaps we need to be kinder to ourselves, and accept our mistakes for the lessons that they are.

Because not learning from our mistakes is probably the greatest mistake of all.