Made a mistake at work? You need to stop beating yourself up over it.
The consequences of your actions (or inactions) will come, and you must be prepared to learn from the situation. There’s no value in piling on the bad feelings through negative self-talk and pity.
Instead, put your energy into growing from the feedback you receive. Handle the situation with grace and professionalism. Be prepared to make things right.
You can’t do these things if your head is not in the right place.
Start by separating who you are from what happened.
You are not a mistake; you made a mistake. You’ve made mistakes before. You’ve overcome other challenges and even helped others do the same.
But you won’t do so if you’ve talked yourself into believing that you can’t.
You can’t change what happened. You can’t go back and prevent it from happening in the first place. All you can do is focus on how you respond.
And that starts, first and foremost, with the mentality you bring to a situation. Make things right. Do your best to learn and keep it from happening again.
But don’t make the job of doing so harder than it needs to be by beating yourself up.
