Celebrate your mistakes

I gave a speech about happiness at work recently to a Danish IT company, where I talked about the importance of celebrating successes and mistakes in the workplace.

After the speech, one of the developer emailed me this clip from the animated movie Meet the Robinsons.

That’s it right there – failure and mistakes are not embarassing. They’re not meant to be hidden or explained away. Getting it wrong is a cause for celebration.

I wrote about it previously – here are The Top 5 Reasons to Celebrate Mistakes at Work.

13 thoughts on “Celebrate your mistakes”

  1. Definitely, one should always be ready to learn from one’s mistakes. Getting failed can prove to be a nice learning experience if you keep our eyes and ears open.

    Thanks for the share!

  2. me and my kids love this film and have adopted the keep moving forward theme in our house, this is where the attitude can really shape lives, with your kids. In their lives if they can handle mistakes by simply finding a way to progress through them they WILL be happy. it’s a simple concept. do not make a big fuss just learn and take the next step.

    They a currently coaching me through my driving test and as my forth attempt is around the corner my children are full of positive encouragment and tell me to keep going, brilliant!

  3. I love the video clip. The one important thing that I find from failure is that too many people try to cover up their failures and rob themselves and their co-workers of great learning opportunities.

    I don’t remember all the details but there is a story of an employee who loses a million dollars for his company and asks his boss “i guess you are going to fire me?” To which his boss replies “fire you? I just spent $1 million training you.”

  4. Such great advice. I live in the UK, where there’s such a strong stigma towards failure, especially in business. “If you fail, that’s it, don’t try again” type of attitude. But if anything, those people are MORE qualified to try again because they’ve learnt a valuable lesson from what’s happened (what not to do, and what they’ll do next time), while those who haven’t even tried won’t have the experience…

  5. Sometimes it’s the mistakes that teach you something about yourself. It’s difficult to find the beauty in something that you perceive as negative. Being able to take a negative (a mistake) and turn it into a positive is a learned skill that is essential in business today.

  6. One of the best stories I have heard about making mistakes was from Peter Drucker. Once, an employee in a large company made a mistake that cost the firm sometihng in the order of ten of millions. CEO was asked by a board member if the person responsible for such a loss is going to be fired. CEO answered “no” – he explained that the firm spend tens of millions for training of this particular person and it wouldn’t be wise to let him/her go.

  7. so funny :) my daughter was just watching this movie yesterday. and now that she’s older and watching it again, she questions this scene. “i don’t get it mommy – why are they celebrating his mistakes.” and i was telling her, “because it’s ok if u make mistakes. u learn from them.” her, “ohhh.” ‘enlightened’ ;D

  8. When you learn from your mistakes, you will never repeat the mistake. Without making a mistake, you will never be able to understand what you will not if it does not work. On the other hand when you make mistake you will try to find thousands of other ways to make it perfect, learning a whole of lot of opportunities that lies beneath.

  9. Awesome content I must confess. We learn more from mistakes than from success. Thanks from sharing

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