There are people who will never admit a mistake. In their mind, it is better to deny the obvious than to look weak by having been wrong.
You can count most politicians among that group. I have run across people who are positive they have never made a mistake in just about all professions.
Some people just really have a hard time saying, "I am sorry, I made a mistake, it will not happen again." There are corporations where admitting a mistake can seem like career suicide. The whole culture of Apple is built around Steve Jobs never being wrong.
The interesting thing is that being in an enviroment where making mistakes is not the end of the world is often better than being in place where mistakes are swept under the carpet and ignored.
Everyone makes mistakes, and as I used to tell my team members, the first time you do something wrong is actually a learning experience if you are wise enough to see what has happened. Only when you do the same wrong thing a second time have you made a real mistake by not learning from your own experience.
We all learn by trying things and figuring out what works and what doesn't work. We run into trouble when we refuse to admit that our best efforts haven't accomplished what we intended for them to do.
It is then that you can easily get trapped into doing the same wrong thing over and over. When you objectively look at what you have done and decide that there must be a better way to accomplish your goals, you have made some progress.
When you stubbornly refuse to abandon what is clearly a wrong-headed effort, you end up causing yourself embarrassment and then often the problem spreads to others.
Mistakes can be fatal, but more often than not the bigger problem is an attitude that cannot admit to making a mistake.
In a certain sense admitting to a mistake frees you from the mistake and gives you a chance to redeem yourself.
Trying to blame someone else for your mistakes is an exercise in arrogance and futility, but in our world it is something that we see every day.
The next time you have screwed up, trying apologizing and making a best effort to do better the next time. You might be surprised at how liberating it is.
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