Confucius said that “making a mistake and not correcting it is another mistake. “Following this reasoning, is it true that we do not learn from our mistakes in denying them?In other words, is recognizing mistakes the first step in correcting the consequences of what we have done?
At the end of the day, when we say the famous phrase “it wasn’t me,” which in many cases implies an obvious denial of our possible responsibility, aren’t we trying to justify a mistake?way of not acknowledging something we’ve done wrong?
- That is.
- By not saying: it is my fault in the face of our mistakes.
- We often try to create a distance between what happened and its consequences.
- But it is also true that that same distance hinders the knowledge of what happened.
- This eliminates the ability to review the process and identify defects.
On the other hand, this distance can also make us breathe relief at first, a relief that will become anxiety, in case we encounter the same challenge again, when we start to pull our hair out because we do not have enough means to correct our needs.
For example, if the department of the company for which we work has to communicate with a country that speaks another language and we, as CEO, do not assume that there must be someone (or ourselves) who is able to make that communication, we will hardly be responsible for it, communication will not be done on that occasion and will hardly be on future occasions.
In addition to making the future impossible, giving up the exploration of our faults, not recognizing them, is an attitude that results in an obstacle to self-care. By renounting this process, we also refuse to accept responsibility for the arrangements that have taken place, thus ignoring our strongest capabilities and preventing us from creating them.
At this stage it is worth recalling a team study among researchers from the universities of California and New York, in which it has been revealed that not taking responsibility for our own mistakes is related to our personality, which diminishes our growth potential.
To reach these findings, millions of profiles were analyzed and researchers attempted to identify dominant personality types based on participants’ reactions to errors.
Definitely the study revealed curious results, it is estimated that 70% of the population can be perfectly classified into three large groups based on their reactions to error:
Such a common phrase in children, the classic “it wasn’t me,” is still widely used by many adults, that is, when they’re wrong, they decide to ignore their responsibilities and entrust them to a second person.
The truth is that by blaming others for their own mistakes, they somehow deny these mistakes, so because they do not have the maturity to recognize them they do not have it to improve their own qualitative inner knowledge either. victimistic attitudes, incapable of being blamed and without constructive criteria about what happened.
Another group of people are among those who don’t blame each other, but they don’t see mistakes either, that is, no longer because someone shows you evidence, they are unable to recognize the mistakes.
So this group of people will deny doing something wrong, they are not able to deal directly with guilt because they do not see it, that is, for them it is impossible to learn from something that does not exist, or that they are unwilling to recognize directly under any circumstances.
Learning from our mistakes requires admitting that we failed and saying phrases like ‘it was my fault’, fortunately another large part of the population is able to recognize that it has been wrong and is therefore willing to correct, repair, modify and improve.
However, care must be taken, because sometimes one encounters people with an attitude that is at the other end, assuming their responsibility and that of others, so that the resources they can devote to the remedy are numerous and the sanction they can impose on the errors granted, being proportional to this assignment, can also be very important.
That said, making mistakes is human, but recognizing mistakes and learning from them rather than denying them is also human. In fact, it’s a great opportunity to get better and get to know each other better. This doesn’t mean we have to. She spends the day making mistakes, but if the opportunity arises, don’t waste her denying everything.