Yesterday I made a massive mistake that was both awkward, stupid and painful.
I had a really important meeting with a large group of people from a client – and somehow that meeting wasn’t in my calendar. The meeting was at 1 o’clock, which I found out when one of them called me at 1:05 to ask where I was.
And this is not only a big client, this was the kick-off meeting for that project, and I forgot to go. I felt awful.
But then I remembered my own advice about celebrating mistakes.
Everyone makes mistakes at work. But rather than hide them and be embarassed, it is much better to celebrate your mistakes with others.
So let me reframe that: WOOHOO – I forgot a meeting.
This is not to say that I take forgetting my commitments lightly or that I plan to miss more meetings.
This is simply to say that mistakes are inevitable – the key thing is to learn from your mistakes, so you don’t have to make the same ones over and over. Instead, you can move on to make bigger and better mistakes.
As Samuel Beckett put it:
Ever tried.
Ever failed.
No matter.
Try again.
Fail again.
Fail better.
I have rescheduled the meetings with the client who took it very nicely and I do plan to be there this time. I may even bring cake to celebrate my mistake :-)
Got a mistake you’d like to celebrate? Share it in the comments.
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