Don Knoup dot com

If you are perfect please feel free to stop reading this blog right now.  If you’re perfect then none of this really applies to you.  However, if  you are like me, then you make mistakes (sometimes more often than you care to admit).  I ran across this quote recently that I thought was so simple that it was absolute genius advice.  I’m not sure now where I saw it or who said it, but here it is: 

“Never make the same mistake twice.” 

I make mistakes all the time and chances are you do to.  Instead of beating ourselves up over our mistakes, the best thing we can do is make the changes necessary to avoid repeating them.  I think this is simple yet profound at the same time.  Never make the same mistake twice.  In other words once a mistake happens we should recognize it, make a change, and avoid it in the future.

Here are 3 simple steps for dealing with our mistakes:

1. Recognition – We need to realize that a mistake has happened.  This means we need to listen to feedback from others and we also need to evaluate ourselves.
2. Change – If we make no changes, it’s crazy to think that our results will be different the next time.  This means we need to analyze why the mistake happened in the first place.  This might be painful, but we have to do this in order to understand what changes are likely to present different results in the future.
3. Repeat – Once we have recognized their is a problem, we have made our analysis and followed through with the change, it’s time to be ready once again to recognize if the mistake happens again.  And if it does then it’s time to do like the shampoo bottle says and we rinse and repeat…if you know what I’m saying?