| | | | Information and Resources for Your Business and Life | | | | Inspiration, Tools & Tips! SEPTEMBER 2021 | | | | You Will Make MistakesDon’t run from them, learn from them.
We live in a culture where mistakes are something to be avoided at all costs. Often, when we make an error, we feel embarrassed, frustrated, and/or fear. There are certainly places where there is no margin for error, like defusing a bomb, performing heart surgery, or writing a check where a single transposed digit can change everything. For the rest of us, a mistake isn’t the end of the world. In fact, if you are willing to acknowledge, correct and learn from it, a mistake can actually help improve your performance and increase your innovation. Stop being stuck in life and being terrified of making mistakes? Stop spending so much time worrying about making the wrong choices that you end up not making a choice nor doing anything at all. If you want to make the most of your life, you have to make a mistake. | | | |  October
| | | | | | | | | | Welcome back. Did you get the chance to give some additional thoughts to the idea of the informal leader? Again, I ask, were you able to identify anyone in your organization/church? If you are the owner, continue to look for the traits within your organization as we talk about them in more detail. If you are the informal leader, take a moment to evaluate what you are bringing to the table. This month, we will explore the idea that you are the informal leader. Remember, you want to be an asset, not
| | | | a liability. I hope to encourage and empower you.
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Mistakes can be the excellent teachers. However, mistakes when made in a healthy environment are the best teachers. Either way, you would be clueless without them. We make mistakes when we are old enough to choose and continue to make them throughout life. How else would you know how to walk if you never fell down and figured out how to pick yourself up again? Yet somewhere along the winding path of life, making mistakes became the kiss of death. Making a mistake made you feel like a loser. Just the thought of making a mistake can choke you until you cannot breathe, give you visions of failure, and cause emotional paralysis. Here’s the thing, maybe you have been disappointed, embarrassed, or ashamed. And? Are you still alive? If so, you can pick yourself up, shake it off, and realize you just learned a valuable lesson that you can use as you live the rest of your life. There are reasons you should stop being afraid of making mistakes.
1. You gain experience. You need to experience what doesn’t work. That’s how science experiments and research are conducted. When you apply this in your life, the results of the experience stick. They enter your subconscious and stay there. If you don’t make a mistake, you cannot learn.
2. You facilitate your climb to the top. Mistakes are building blocks, each one laying the foundation for future success. There is training in every mistake and failure, not only yours, but of those around you. Not only will you will learn what not to do, you will also learn what to do.
3. You prevent stagnation and underachieving. Nothing good can happen unless you stop giving in to the negative attitude of “I can’t, I’m afraid to fail,” and you are willing to make mistakes. Success doesn’t happen overnight (except in viral videos). It takes time, and during that time, lots of things go wrong. Kiss success goodbye if you are afraid to try new things and make mistakes!
4. You won’t have a pessimistic view rule your future. Naysayers are always ready and waiting to squash your dreams. Allowing negative comments to rule your choices interferes with your forward motion. Keep in mind you can be your own naysayer. If you allow negativity to live in your head, those emotions control your destiny.
5. You will take advantage of an opportunity to become strong. You never will know just how strong you are until you recover from a mistake.
6. You will take advantage of an opportunity to become wise. You will never know how smart and clever you are until you work through a mistake, then bounce back, and grow from it.
7. You won’t create a habit of quitting. If you let one mistake control you, you set a pattern of giving in. You can only succeed if you try. You won’t always win, but you can always quit.
8. You will choose to learn from your mistakes. Just because things didn’t work out, doesn’t mean something good didn’t come from it. Wonderful things can happen from mistakes.
There are also reasons not making mistakes will cost you more than the mistake ever could. 1. You lose out on the opportunity to become a positive role model to other people. Getting up after a mistake is a genuine triumph. People are watching you. Maybe your children, if you have any or other people’s children if you don’t, your co-workers, neighbors, and people you don’t even know, are watching you. What kind of role model do you want to be?
2. You deprive yourself of the benefits of repetition. Practice builds skill. The only ones who achieve success are those who will practice the same behavior, skill, or action repeatedly until it is perfected.
3. You won’t discover what is inside you. You will never know if you have the courage, perseverance, strength, and resilience to push through the tough stuff.
4. You succumb to your fears. You become frozen, anticipating failure. You let fear rule your life and determine your future.
5. You don’t get to be brave. “Mistakes are always forgivable, if one has the courage to admit them.” Bruce Lee.
6. You don’t really live. Living without mistakes is living only half of a life. There is nothing greater than looking back on your experiences and seeing how you overcame them, how you learned from them, and how you became a better, happier, smarter, braver, and stronger person because of them.
7. You never realize perfection doesn’t exist. Trying something different or somewhat risky will not ruin your life. You cannot expect everything to be perfect. That’s not how the world works. If you keep waiting or putting something on hold because you want every single thing to work out the way you think it should, you may never get anything done.
8. You condemn yourself to defeat before you start. Even though you hear “everyone makes mistakes,” you still feel weak or incompetent. It does not mean you’re a failure. It means you are brave enough to go after what you want. Most successful people leave a trail of mistakes before finally reaching their goals. The key is to keep going no matter what life throws at you. If you want something bad enough, you don’t give up.
9. You will not get to the life you have always imagined. Stop the negative self-talk and start imagining what your life could be like if you weren’t afraid of making mistakes. Sometimes all it takes is for you to visualize your end-goal. The most important thing is not to let your fear make you numb. If you are already stagnant in life, then you need to wake up and do something. Anything to get you closer to your dreams.
10. You think what happened in the past will happen in the future. Wrong! You can’t achieve success until you’ve had several failures. Life changes. Nothing ever stays the same, even when you want it to.
You don’t need to be an extrovert or over-confident person to make a choice. You just need to believe in yourself and your own capabilities. Acknowledge that there’s nothing you can’t learn in the process. Get inspiration from people who are already doing what you have always wanted to do in life. They probably started from scratch too. Don’t be afraid to make things happen. What you should fear more is having regrets for the rest of your life.
There are resources in the freebies this month you can use to help you with your fear of making mistakes. If you take the assessment, you may find out some things about yourself that you did not know and deal with the issue. | | | | 
Business Application No one can reduce mistakes to zero, but you can learn to harness your drive to prevent them and channel it into better decision making. Don’t be afraid or ashamed to make a mistake, even at work. Though the stakes are high and so much is unfamiliar, you have to override your fear of missteps. No one can reduce mistakes to zero. However, use these tips to become more effective when you make them. | | 
Ministry Application
Mistakes in ministry can seem greater than they are because the people involved have a greater expectation. Time, resources and energy were poured into whatever endeavor failed. Did you miss God? Did you ask God? Why did God let it fail? Are questions you may ask. The answers can cause you to be afraid of making another mistake. You placed hope into something you prayed READ MORE ... | | 
Personal Application
We live in a world where people are obsessed with success. Things we say and do are quickly scrutinized. There is always someone waiting to point out the moment you commit a mistake. People forget that success comes from doing and things often go wrong when you’re doing them for the first time. There’s nothing wrong with making mistakes. Here are a couple of reasons
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FREEBIES
Here are this month’s free business and ministry tools: | | | | FEATURED COMPANY/CLIENT REVIEW | | You can be featured whether you have been my client or not. If I understand your business and I believe you can help my readers, please reach out to me using my contact information at the bottom of this page. I would love to promote your services.
| | | | | | If you have done work with me, please submit a review, it would help me greatly.
Please click here. You will find a list of business review sites. Click the name of the site where you want to leave a review. You can place your review on one or as many as you like. Each review will help me so much, so I am thanking you in advance. If you want to leave a review for a site that is not listed, please contact me and let me know which site. | | | | There are some wonderful things that come from making a mistake. As an example, you can thank angry chef George Crum for our all-time favorite snack, the potato chip. George lost his temper when a customer sent back a plate of fried potatoes because they thought he did not cook them enough. Insulted, he cut the potatoes thin, crisped them until they were almost burnt, and then heavily salted them. He sent them back out to the customer, thinking they would hate them. Instead, he made culinary history. Thank you George! If you have questions or need any assistance, email us. You can also call us @ 904-830-0737. You can also set up a free consultation. | | | | | | "The most valuable thing you can make is a mistake – you can’t learn anything from being perfect ” - Adam Osborne | | | | MORE From Business Development
• Don’t be ashamed of your fear. Our culture glorifies fearlessness. The traditional image of a leader is one who is smart, tough, and unafraid. But fear, like any emotion, has an evolutionary purpose and upside. Just like pain signals to you that something is wrong. Your concern about making mistakes is a reminder. You are in a challenging situation. Being cautious in business has value. This is especially true in times like these. Don’t be ashamed of your fear of making mistakes and don’t interpret it as evidence that you’re a poor leader, not bold or visionary. If you have a natural tendency to be prevention-focused, channel it do your due diligence and then decide.
• Use emotional agility skills. Fear of mistakes can paralyze people. Emotional agility skills are an antidote to this paralysis. 1. Label your thoughts and feelings such as “I feel anxious I’m not going to be able to control my customers enough to keep my staff safe.” Stating your fears, out loud, helps diffuse them. It’s like turning the light on in a dark room. 2. Accept the reality of your concerns. For example, “I understand people will not always behave in ideal ways.” List off every truth you need to accept. 3. Act using your strengths. - Identify five of your strengths related to decision-making in a crisis.
- Ask yourself how each of those strengths applies to the important choices you face. Let’s say one of your greatest strengths is conscientiousness. How might that apply in the situation? For example, it might involve making sure your employees all have masks that fit them well or feel comfortable airing any grievances they have.
- Repeat this process for each of your fears. It will help you tolerate the fact that you sometimes need to act when the best course of action isn’t clear. Avoid the common anxiety trap whereby people try to reduce uncertainty to zero.
• Focus on your processes. Analyzing what needs to be done can help you make better decisions if you do it effectively. Most people don’t, they worry. You analysis should be solutions focused. Concentrate on behaviors that will realistically reduce the chances of failure. We can control systems, not outcomes. What are your systems and processes for avoiding making mistakes? Direct your focus toward answering questions like these:
- Is the data you’re relying on reliable?
- What are the limitations of the data?
- How do your systems help prevent the group from working together?
- What procedures do you have in place to help you see your blind spots?
- How do you ensure you hear valuable perspectives from underrepresented stakeholders?
- What are your processes for being alerted to a problem quickly and rectifying it if a decision has unexpected consequences?
• Broaden your thinking.
When we’re afraid to make a mistake, our thinking can narrow around that scenario. - Imagine you’re out walking at night. You’re worried about tripping, so you keep looking down at your feet. Next thing you know, you’ve walked into a lamppost.
- Imagine a person who is afraid to fly. They drive everywhere, even though driving is objectively more dangerous.
When you allow yourself to see the bigger picture, it can help you see your greatest fears in the broader context of all the other threats out there. This can help you get a better perspective on what you fear the most. It might seem illogical that you could reduce your fear of making a mistake by thinking about other negative outcomes. But this strategy can help kick you into problem-solving mode and lessen the mental grip a particular fear has on you. A leader might be so highly focused on minimizing or optimizing for one particular thing, they don’t realize that other people care most about something else. Find out what other people’s priorities are.
• Recognize the value of leisure.
Fear grabs us. It makes it difficult to direct our attention away. This is how it works, so we don’t ignore threats. Some people react to fear with extreme hypervigilance. They want to be on guard, at their command post, at all times. This might manifest as behavior, like staying up all night to work. That type of adrenalin-fueled behavior can have short-term value, but it can also be myopic. A different approach can be more useful for bigger picture thinking. We need leisure (and sleep!) to step back, integrate the threads of our thinking, see blind spots, and think creatively. Get some silent time. Detach from judgment-clouding noise and information overload. Your mind can become so overwhelmed that you start to feel cloudy or shut down. Recognize if you’re doing this and limit over-monitoring or over checking. Avoid panicked, frenzied behavior.
On its own, being afraid of making mistakes doesn’t make you more or less likely to make better decisions. If you focus excessively in a way that focuses only on how bad the experience of stress and uncertainty feels, you still might make the wrong decision, do the wrong thing, or say the wrong thing. However, if you understand how anxiety works at a cognitive level, you can use it to motivate careful but bold and well-reasoned choices.
| | | | MORE From Ministry Development would work. If it failed, then you need to own it and keep moving forward. Facing the mistake is necessary because what happened affected more than just you. Also, owning a ministry mistake allows you to show the love, benevolence, grace, and mercy of God. The Bible is full of victorious people who made mistakes. Don’t misrepresent God by trying to live a life that is mistake free and force others to do the same. You will error even if there was no malice on your part and even if your heart was completely pure in motive. There are things you need to do.
1. Be the first to break the news. Remember, no matter how much you love God, you are human. You are going to want to try and fix the issue instead of talking about it. Maybe no one will have to know. And yet most people in ministry hate surprises. Don’t let those who trust you discover your mistake. Tell them first. Break the news. As soon as you detect even the potential of a problem, if you are the pastor, let your team know. If you are a ministry leader, let your pastor know. Instead of the confidence and trust in you being reduced, it will increase it. Make the phone call. Stop by the office. Tell. Those who love the Lord and want to represent Him well verbalize their mistakes before someone else has to.( James 5:16, 1 John 1:9)
2. Fully state the seriousness of the problem. Here’s what I know to be true. In ministry, things are almost always worse than you first think they are. It is the devil’s job to make sure of it. Don’t minimize a problem or blow it off. Fully state the seriousness of the problem. You don’t need to overstate it or understate it. - Why shouldn’t you overstate it?
Why would you create a panic when you are not sure it is necessary? Do you need to prepare them for the worse, really? Aren’t you thankful when something doesn’t turn out to be as serious as someone initially thought it might be. Again, just state the seriousness of the issue as well as you can articulate it, nothing more. - Why shouldn’t you understate it?
Think through a time when someone let you down and understated the problem. If you were told, “It’s no big deal” only to discover it’s a bigger deal than they told you, what happens to you inside? You wonder why they acted like it was not serious. You may even think they are not competent enough to understand the issue. Either way, your confidence in them drops.
If you own the seriousness of a situation, other people won’t have to. (Ephesians 4:25, Proverbs 6:16-19, John 8:32)
3. Own the problem completely, even if you didn’t directly cause it. When you are in charge, the buck stops with you. Outstanding leaders own problems. Even the problems they didn’t directly cause. This is difficult because sometimes you really don’t directly cause the problem. You were not in the room, at the meeting, or even at the event. But if I’m you’re the leader, it’s still your responsibility when things go wrong. (Hebrews 13:17)
4. Offer the most complete diagnosis you can. Part of owning an issue is demonstrating you are doing everything in your power to diagnose and remedy the situation. Rarely will you have all the information you need to make a full diagnosis when a problem emerges, but bring everything you have to the table every time. Again, this will increase your ability to be trusted. Don’t fall prey to being afraid of telling the truth. (1 John 4:18)
5. Get input. Because you’re still struggling to some extent with shame or fear, you’ll be tempted to think, “well since I’m responsible, I have to fix this myself.” You don’t. You are fitly joined together with the other believers and your honesty will rally those who will want to help. Get help. Be open. Ask for input. Don’t act like you have all the answers because you are in charge. Show some humility. Being open does not diminish your authority. An open leader is an influential leader. You know you have blind spots and believe it or not, so do the people you are in ministry with. Get input from those the Lord has placed around you. If you do, you’ll get a better diagnosis, a better solution, and a better ministry in the end. (Proverbs 11:2, 1 Thessalonians 5:12, Proverbs 15:22)
6. Follow up quickly and often until it’s fully resolved. Don’t make the members of the ministry keep asking you whether everything has been taken care of. Give them updates. Give daily updates if it’s serious. Hourly if necessary. Just remind them it is being worked an and will continue to be worked on until it is resolved. (1 Peter 3:15)
7. Fix the system, not just the problem. Once the problem has been resolved, go the extra mile and ask yourself, “Was this really a completely unpreventable problem, or is this an organizational/administrative issue?” Chances are something in your current system produced the result. As you know, you perfectly designed your system to get the results you are currently getting, good or bad. Go back and now work on the larger issue of how to handle the issues that will help ensure problems like this won’t happen again.
In ministry, you are going to make mistakes no matter what position you hold. Remember, God will test you. Mistakes are a great tool for you and for the Lord. It is His desire that you become the best version of yourself; the you He created you to be. Don’t be afraid to make mistakes. Seek the Lord, make a decision, and allow Him to cover you. (James 1:1-4) | | | | MORE From Personal Development
we get so defensive when it comes to our mistakes: - We are embarrassed
- We don’t want to be perceived as less competent
- We don’t want to be ridiculed
It is important is to be brave enough to make mistakes, own them, rectify them, and learn your lesson from them. In addition to the pointers given in the main article, here are some personal ones I hope will inspire you.
1. Mistakes help you discover your style. Each one of us has a pattern or a style of doing things. It won’t be wrong to say that this pattern or style is always changing and evolving. You can be successful even if you don’t do things the same way someone else does them. If you think you don’t have any specific way of working, you do. You just don’t know what it is yet. Mistakes will help you figure it out. They play an instrumental role in helping us discover our style. If you feel you are making too many mistakes, see if you need to change your style of working. Sometimes, trying an alternative approach could take your overall efficiency a notch higher.
2. Mistakes teach you to live a life without any regrets. It can torment you to walk around harboring regrets about something you always wanted to do, but didn’t because you were playing it safe. You cannot go back in time. Those feelings create a dark cloud you can’t get away from. Believe it or not, the habit of playing it safe will not get you far and will give you more regrets than rewards. Always remember that you are going to regret the choices you didn’t make more than the ones you did.
3. Mistakes help you grow and develop. Most of us are stuck in the area between the paralyzing side of the fear of making mistakes and gathering the courage to give it a shot. Make those mistakes even with your hands trembling, voice shaking, and heart beating at astounding speeds. Even if you don’t come out victorious, you will come out a better and more developed human being.
4. At some point, you have to decide or someone or something will decide for you. Instead of feeling embarrassed for your mistakes, it’s time to celebrate and learn from them. Anyone who has become great or successful, owe their success to their mistakes. It’s time to change our perspective and celebrate our mistakes than running away from them. | | CALL (OR) EMAIL 904.830.0737 | help@drpamrussell.com
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