Dear PiePie,
I was careless during a work trip today – I left my passport in the hotel safe when checking out and only realised when I reached the airport later in the day. It wasn’t that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things, since I rebooked myself on a later flight and the hotel was nice enough to courier my passport to the airport, but I can feel myself shaking with adrenaline and cursing myself at the mistake made. It’s the palpitation of fear that happens when you discover that you made a mistake, whether in school or at work or elsewhere.
I obviously still make mistakes and get shaken by them, but stepping back and reflecting, here are some reminders to myself that I thought might be useful to jot down.
Most mistakes aren’t quite as large as they feel. It takes a while to realise this, and even if your mind knows that it is a rectifiable error, it is still a sucky feeling to make a mistake. But this feeling is what will hopefully keep you from making the same mistakes in the future. So it is preferable to feel terrible when you make a mistake than not, since it means you still care, but take a few deep breaths and try to move yourself pass it.
Look ahead – it is more important to solve the problem and move forward than to dwell on the error. What’s done is done. How you deal with it will define you. Sometimes the mistake isn’t even made by you, but by someone you are partnering with that affects you. Again, move past it quickly to solve the problem at hand than to try and immediately assign blame. Move along. Reflection of mistakes can come later.
But always reflect. Eventually, however, you will need to think about why the mistake was made, and how you can prevent yourself from making the same mistake in the future. In my case, I should always check the room and safe before leaving, or I can choose not to leave the passport in the safe since it is probably more likely to be forgotten in the safe than to get stolen from a hidden place in the luggage. In general, it’s better to learn from others’ mistakes, but at the very least, you should always be learning from your own errors, figuring out processes or procedures you can change as a rule of thumb to avoid the same mistakes.
The upside of my mistake, and thus having to take a later flight, is that I now have the time and impetus to write this note. Things can turn out for good!
Love, Dad