Learning From Your Mistakes vs. Growing From Them

Tell me if this sounds familiar. 

You make a mistake at work and you cannot stop thinking about it. You replay everything leading up to what happened, the decision you made, and all the ways you should have handled it differently. This has happened to me many times, both in my career and in my life.

For years, I ruminated on my mistakes. I would beat myself up and worry constantly that it would happen again. Eventually, I realized why. I expected perfection from myself. If I was not perfect, I felt shame.

It was not until I changed how I viewed failure that I began to go easier on myself. That shift came through therapy and, surprisingly, through Jiu Jitsu.

In therapy, I worked through the shame tied to not being perfect. This pattern started early in my life. I felt pressure to have the best grades, and when I did not, I spiraled. I constantly compared myself to others and criticized myself if I was not the best. That mindset followed me from childhood into adolescence and eventually into my professional life. My therapist and I explored where this came from and how to reframe mistakes as opportunities to learn. That alone reduced a significant amount of shame.

Then I started Jiu Jitsu.

Anyone who trains learns quickly that failure is part of the process. Over the course of my grappling journey, I have lost far more than I have won. I showed up again and again only to get beaten by people smaller and less physically strong than me. Over time, though, I made fewer mistakes. When I lost a match in competition, I could remember every mistake in detail. When I won, I could rarely recall the specifics.

There is power in failure, if you choose to use it.  Here are some ways that you can reframe mistakes and learn from them:

• Separate the mistake from your identity. You made a bad decision. You are not a bad person or a bad employee.

• Set a time limit on reflection. Review the mistake, extract the lesson, then deliberately move on instead of replaying it all day.

• Remember that improvement usually looks like fewer mistakes, not zero mistakes. Progress is subtle and earned over time.

• Use failure as motivation.. Let it sharpen your awareness and preparation rather than drain your energy.

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You have a choice. You can let your mistakes define you, or you can learn from them. That internal shift not only improved my mental health, it made me better. I still catch myself being hard on myself when I make a mistake, but it is far less damaging than it used to be. Mistakes now motivate me to improve rather than spiral.

There is a quote from Ted Lasso that has stuck with me. He is talking to a player who made a mistake and asks, “You know what the happiest animal on Earth is? A goldfish. You know why? It has a 10-second memory. Be a goldfish.”

Make the mistake. Learn from it. Move on. That is how you grow while protecting your peace.