The Benefit of Getting to Acceptance as Soon as Possible
Photo by QUOI Media Group
I don’t think you’ll be at all surprised to hear that I’m no superhero. I’m a business owner, just like many of my coaching clients, and I experience a lot of the same stresses and concerns. I’ve also had my fair share of bad mental habits, though I know how important is is to proactively address each one as soon as I become aware of it.
In the past, one of my most common bad mental habits was a tendency to wallow in failure. When something goes wrong it’s so easy to get caught up in reliving it. Near obsession can set in with the question of how you could have avoided it, what you could’ve done differently, or how your decisions put you at fault.
Sound familiar? I bet it does. Almost all of us have been known to throw ourselves a pity party from time to time!
But here’s the thing: the time you spend caught up in that pity party is completely wasted. It’s not productive, it’s certainly not enjoyable and it stops you from moving forward.
Many years ago, a wise business mentor reminded me of a very simple fact: what’s done is done. Once you’ve made a mistake, there’s nothing you can do to totally undo it.
Instead, the only sensible response to failure is to reach a place of acceptance as soon as possible. The sooner you can look your mistake in the eye, shake it off and move on, the better.
This is such a straightforward piece of advice, but it had a big impact on me. It helped me realise how pointless my ‘wallowing’ time had been, and how important it was to forgive myself (and the circumstances) and move on.
Once I started aiming for acceptance as soon as possible, I realised how much of a time saver this was. No longer was I wasting days of important time looking backwards and feeling bad: reaching acceptance allowed me to step straight into a more resourceful and solution-finding mode.
This had two key benefits:
One. I was then in a much better position to address any fall out from my original mistake and make amends if necessary.
Two. My mental space was clear to process what I’d learnt and start work on the next project.
I’m very grateful to that wise business mentor for passing on this simple piece of advice. It’s made a huge difference to my productivity over the years, and I now pass it on to countless other business owners who need to hear the same thing.
Have you ever been given a nugget of advice that should’ve been obvious, but wasn’t? I’d love to hear it if so. Share your little gems in the comments below, or pop on over to the Green Shoots Coaching Facebook page.
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