, Author at Paul Duxbury

How to Move On When You Make a Mistake

If you are like most people, then you have probably lost quite a bit of sleep to ruminating on past mistakes. Everyone does that. They lay in their bed at night and just as they are about to sleep, they start dwelling on some mistake they made.

Sometimes the mistake was yesterday and sometimes the mistake was a decade ago. Thankfully, there are a lot of different strategies that you can try to make getting over a mistake a lot easier. In this article, you will find out a few different ways that you can get over mistakes, no matter how severe.

Look for Some Positives

No matter how severe a mistake is, there is a good chance that it may have some positive aspects to it. You have to try and look for a silver lining in any mistake and focus on that, instead of the negatives. A good example of this would be mistakes that cause you to learn something.

We all make mistakes, but we also all learn from our mistakes as well. Focus less on the mistake, and more on what you learned as a result of the mistake.

Look at the Mistake in Context

One thing about humans is that we tend to really overinflate the impact of mistakes in our mind. Sometimes it can be helpful to try and distance yourself from a mistake and ask yourself “did it really matter in the end?”

This happens a lot with social gaffes. People say the wrong thing to someone and assume that the other person was very offended by it and is thinking about it; however, the reality is often that the person has forgotten about the conversation entirely. So, it is worth distancing yourself from a mistake and asking if the mistake is really as bad as you are making it out to be.

Do Something to Make Amends

A big reason why so many people dwell on mistakes is that they don’t ever do anything to make up for the mistake. Making up for the mistake, if that’s possible, can really help you to stop dwelling on it.

Obviously, this doesn’t apply to every mistake, but if you can think of a way to try and repair the damage done by a mistake that you made, that will go a long way towards helping you to overcome the mistake and move on.

Letting Go

Do we need to focus on letting go of the negativity which is so prevalent these days? I almost titled this post “Is Brexit Bad for You? because if you live in the UK it feels as if you cannot avoid the topic when you go online! There is no doubt (and I have read research around this) that Brexit or rather what my late Grandmother would have called the shenanigans is having an impact on the Mental Health of many in the UK.

Are You Experiencing Compassion Fatigue?

Do you wonder if you are perhaps suffering from Compassion Fatigue? In today’s world we are bombarded by news 24/7 and events around the world come into our homes. It can at times feel overwhelming can’t it when so many things compete for our emotional reactions? I have heard people mention that they feel a sense of being overwhelmed and unable to feel the depth of compassion that they might have had when we knew less of the world around us.

Should we feel guilty about that? In my view the response is no – we are probably finding ourselves suffering a form of Compassion fatigue brought about because of the level of demand placed upon us by our consumption of news from around the world.

What Do You Really Want?

Do you know what you want in life going forward from today?

Over the past few months I have had the opportunity to reflect on where I want to focus my energies going forward, the sort of work I want to be doing and the type of organisation I want to work for. I feel quite fortunate that I have had the time and space to think about those things and to come to some conclusions.

However, even in the rush of our daily lives we can find some time just to stop and think about what we really want from life can’t we? Whether it’s when travelling by train, taking some time at the weekend to go for a walk or just quietly sat in a corner at some point in the day.

Starting Your Personal Development Journey

There is a Chinese quote ascribed to Laozi although sometimes also to Confucius that goes “a journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step.” So it is when we set off on a journey of Personal Development.

When you first start your personal development journey, it can be tempting to take short cuts. You think that you already know who you are, what you want, and what you stand for, and how to exemplify that. However, that’s not how the human mind works.

Often, we hide truths from ourselves and are not honest with ourselves about these issues. For this reason, the following ideas will hopefully help you think about how you approach starting your personal development journey so that you will succeed.

Don’t Skip the SWOT – It’s imperative that you perform analysis on yourself in every aspect of your life to find out what strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats you face for any of the target issues you want to address. For example, if you perform a SWOT and realize that you’re not very good at something, you then have a choice. You can find someone who is to do it for you, or you can find training to learn to do it.

Nurture Your Strengths – When you perform the SWOT for any sector of your life, you’ll also identify your strengths. The best thing to do in life is to choose to lead with your strengths. You want to keep doing the things you’re strong at and learn to do them even better since you’re obviously interested in those things.

Improve Your Weaknesses – When you find out that you are weak in some area, you’ll need to determine whether you should improve it yourself or improve it by outsourcing it. To determine which is better, ask yourself whether it really matters who does it or just that it is done.

Understand The 3 Domains of Personal Development – They are, physical, cognitive, and social-emotional. Together, these domains cover all aspects of your life, including health, work, personal growth, spiritual life, and so forth. Working on all aspects of your life usually is much better than focusing only on one as they are sometimes indistinguishable.

Plan for Action – As you work through crafting your plan, nothing is done until you’ve set up action-packed steps and put them in your calendar scheduled for you to implement them. Whether you are doing it yourself, or outsourcing it, doing is the most critical part of the plan.

Focus on The Right Target Issue First – One reason it’s helpful to go through every single domain and issue you have before setting up a plan is that it helps you to know which issue to focus on first. For example, you cannot write a novel until you can read, and you can’t learn to write until you can read, first things first.

Be Persistent – Once you have your action plan, which is developed based on reality and not on how you wish it to be, you only now need to be persistent and take the steps to success. It truly is that easy. Once you have the steps scheduled in your calendar and you start implementing them, your life will begin to change.

Get a Coach – If you understand everything but your implementation skills leave something more to be desired, you may want to employ a life coach to help you. If you know some life coaches who specialize in personal development, you might want to talk to them. If you don’t know anyone, ask your colleagues for recommendations. It’s likely they will know someone or can direct you to someone who would know more on the topic.

One thing to remember about personal development is that it’s an ongoing process. You’re never done with it. There is no real finish line. For this reason, it’s best to develop tenacity and persistence as you follow the path you’ve created for yourself, adjusting as you go based on facts, and learning about what is really and truly important to you deep in your subconscious. It’s all about knowing who you are and living a life that illustrates who you are.