Take Off the Failure Patch
Jeff Nischwitz (he/his/him)
Consigliere, Performance Coach, People Whisperer, Snow Globe Shaker ... Lover of bold red wine ?? .. Cuban cigars .. Hearty bourbon ?? .. Broadway theater ??
You may not want to admit it, but you are human, which means you are NOT perfect. Sorry to be the one to tell you, but it’s true. We all make mistakes, come up short and sometimes fail. The problem is not that we fail, but how we respond when we do fail. While we may learn from our mistakes, we often spend hours, days, week and even longer beating ourselves up over those mistakes and failures.
Sadly, (and wrongly) we believe that beating ourselves up is the path to learning, but a beating is just a beating. We learn from understanding, becoming more aware and making different choices in the present and hopefully in the future. However, when you beat yourself up, it’s not an act or practice of learning and growing.
The way I describe it is that when we fail or make a significant mistake, we put on a failure patch (kind of like a nicotine patch), which continues to leak into our psyche over and over and over. No matter who else thinks you failed, you are the only one who can put the patch on yourself and only you can take it off. NOW is the time to take off your failure patch!