Made a Mistake? Here Are 5 Things To Do To Recover
Have you ever said something that offended your friend when you didn’t mean to? Or married someone who turned out to be a pretty bad fit? Or spent six years getting a degree on a topic you didn’t like very much? Or made an executive decision that cost your company hundreds of thousands of dollars?
Mistakes are often as diverse as chalk and cheese, but what they all have in common is that everyone makes them. No one is immune — not scientists responsible for advancing knowledge, not physicians caring for our health, and certainly not the rest of us. Making mistakes isn't evidence that we've failed at being human; it's part of being human. And while mistakes can be painful, embarrassing, or even life-changing, they also become some of our greatest teachers if we're willing to learn from them.
Knowing with 99.9% certainty that mistakes will happen, we’d be remiss not to prepare ourselves for what to do once they happen. Here are five things that have helped me — and many of the people I've worked with — recover after making a mistake.
1. Take 10 to 20 minutes to be mad or sad about it.
Give yourself permission to react. Whatever thoughts your mind is thinking, whether “Argh! How could I have been so careless?”, “I can’t do anything right”, or “@#$! That situation was so unfair!”, give them a space to be. Do not become them but do notice, observe, and acknowledge them. These thoughts are your mind’s very natural reaction to something that hasn’t gone the way you’d hoped. To silence these thoughts would be a disservice to the essence of who you are as a human being with goals, dreams, desires, and on occasion let-downs.
So take some time to really hear your thoughts and notice the emotions underlying them. It’s likely that you’re experiencing some version of anger, frustration, or embarrassment. It’s also likely that underneath all this, you’re experiencing the very real and raw emotion of sadness and perhaps a sense of loss of what could have been. Whatever is there, let yourself feel it. Making space for these emotions is often what allows us to begin moving from self-judgment toward learning.
2. Take a nice long deep breath.
Breathe in through your nose, and breathe out through your mouth. Now do it once more but slower, and then continue on for a few more moments at a comfortable pace. If you’re feeling particularly rattled, see if you can breathe in slowly for 4 or 5 counts, and breathe out slowly for 4 or 5 counts. Your breath, you see, is the powerful force guiding your body and mind in each and every moment, and mindfully attending to your breath can work wonders in bringing you back from the fight-or-flight ‘OMG’ experience of having made a mistake you wish you could undo.
As you breathe with conscious, mindful attention, your nervous system will begin receiving the message that, while this situation matters, it isn't an emergency. Your heartbeat will slow down, your blushing, sweating, and/or trembling will ease, and you will become more relaxed. The best part about this? Your mind will follow suit. As your heart rate slows down, so too will your thoughts. As your body relaxes, so too will your mental chatter. And the redness in your cheeks will soon enough make its way to warm the center of your heart.
3. Forgive yourself.
Once the initial wave of emotion begins to settle, you may notice that you're able to see yourself with a little more perspective. This is often where self-compassion becomes possible — not because the mistake suddenly feels okay, but because you're no longer relating to yourself only through the lens of shame.
This is your opportunity to respond to yourself differently than you may have in the past. Instead of criticizing yourself, see if you can speak to yourself the way you would speak to someone you deeply care about. Instead of convincing yourself that this mistake says something terrible about who you are, remind yourself that mistakes are part of being human, not evidence that you're failing at it.
Above all, practice forgiveness. Forgive yourself for not being perfect. Forgive yourself for living in a culture that often teaches us that mistakes diminish our worth. Forgive yourself for every time you've believed that getting something wrong meant there was something wrong with you. And forgive yourself for doing the one thing that every human being does, over and over again throughout life: make mistakes.
Mistakes are part of being human, not evidence that you're failing at it.
4. Do what you can to resolve it.
Despite the desperation and fatality that might strike you when you first make a mistake, most mistakes are actually not end-all be-all “end of the world” experiences. Many, in fact, can be and are resolved sooner than you can say “Will this ever get better?”
Once you've made room for your emotions and you’ve acknowledged the mental soap opera that the mistake aroused within you, gently turn your attention toward what can actually be done (what psychology researchers often refer to as going from ‘emotion-focused coping’ to ‘problem-focused coping’). Can you fix the mistake, try again, and have another go? If so, fix it, try again, and have another go. Whether it means replacing excuses with taking full responsibility, making a phone call to apologize, or mustering the confidence to go at it again, do whatever you have to do to actively improve the situation.
5. Carry the lesson, not the shame.
Over time, many of our mistakes become part of the collection of experiences that shaped us far more than they harmed us. They become stories we tell with perspective instead of pain.
The lesson is worth carrying forward. The shame isn't. One helps us grow. The other keeps us stuck, convincing us that one difficult moment says something permanent about who we are. It doesn't.
The lesson is worth carrying forward. The shame isn't.
Your life is meant to unfold in the present, not to be lived in the past or dragged along behind you into the future. So do whatever you need to do to keep this mistake from becoming the lens through which you see yourself, other people, or the world. If you're going to give this experience meaning, let it be this: I made the best decision I could with what I knew then. I'll learn what I can, repair what I can, and keep becoming the kind of person I want to be.
You'll make mistakes again. I will too. That's part of being human. The question isn't whether mistakes will happen — it's how we'll meet ourselves when they do. Every mistake is another opportunity to practice responding with a little more honesty, responsibility, wisdom, and compassion than we did the last time.
Making mistakes often activates the parts of us that feel ashamed, inadequate, or "not good enough." the parts of us that feel ashamed, inadequate, or "not good enough." Learning to meet those parts with curiosity and compassion instead of criticism is something I explore more deeply inside my course Happy from the Inside Out®. And if this article resonated with you, you might also enjoy A New Perspective on Self-Love (And How to Increase It), where we explore a gentler way of relating to ourselves — especially when we're struggling.
