It has to be said.

I know. Some people are going to look at this and go “umm, who do you think you’re talking to?” Well, to those people, I guess I’m talking to you.

Here goes.

When a mistake is made – whatever it happens to be – sometimes it’s your fault.

It’s not always someone else’s fault.

• You forgot to finish that deliverable before Monday morning because you were too wrapped up in having a good time with your awesome buds that weekend. It’s not your boss who has a problem, that would be you who does.
• You thought that that job interview was going to be a piece of cake. Of course they want you, who wouldn’t? You didn’t get the job. Who should have spent more time prepping for the interview? Yeah, that would be you.
• You didn’t mean to be “just a few minutes late” (aka half an hour late) to pick your kids up after school. But you did stop and get that extra large frappa-mocha whatever. It wasn’t the person at the coffee shop who was taking too long. That was you who didn’t manage your time properly.
• You didn’t spend the time preparing for that big meeting the next day. It was a total flop (no surprise). No, it’s not everyone else’s problem that they asked you hard questions. You should have been ready.

Take responsibility for your actions. 

Yeah, sure. Sometimes, mistakes can be the fault of others.  But when you really think about it, many mistakes are a result of your actions – or inactions. Take responsibility for what you did or didn’t do.

Reflect on it.

Part of taking responsibility for yourself is to understand what happened.  There is a level of vulnerability here that you just have to work through.  Ask yourself these questions.  What went wrong? What could you have done differently? How can you prevent this from happening in the future?

Learn from it.

Once you’ve done that, only then can you truly learn from your mistakes and move on.  Owning your actions, and taking steps to improve on this, is going to result in greater success for you. You want that, I know.

That’s it. That’s your tip for today.

Take responsibility for your actions. Reflect on it. Learn from it.