Just Own It!

Why is it important to take ownership of our mistakes?

Let’s all be honest, we all make mistakes, big and small. But sometimes the little mistakes can be easy to hide away, but sometime mistakes can have a bigger impact or fall out, creating a negative outcome for us as individuals or for those around us.

Whether it is in a work environment, a team sport or a personal relationship. It is very easy to take the road of no accountability, to lay or to shift blame away from ourselves in a form of self-preservation.

Previously I have spoken about learning from our mistakes, and how failures are in fact, leading us to success. But to fail we must first accept the mistake that we have made, we must take ownership. This is the very first step. Own Up!

By not taking ownership of our mistakes, we feel we are protecting ourselves from judgment, whether this be from our peers, our teammates or our partners. It is a human reaction to want to seem perfect, to appear to others as competent. But in reality, we are human and we do all make mistakes.

When we own up to our mistakes we demonstrate an independent accountability, personal integrity, and responsibility. By taking ownership of our mistakes we can identify the errors and break them down, we can work variated solutions to how things could be improved or done better.

• If we take ownership of mistakes in a work environment, we are respected by our peers and co-workers.

• If we take ownership of mistakes in a team environment, we are respected by our team members.

• If we take ownership of mistakes in a relationship, we are respected by our partner.

Now it’s not easy to do, I would be lying to you if I said it was simple to Just Own it, but it does get easier the more that you do it!

To be able to say, ‘I am sorry, my bad, I take ownership of that mistake and I apologize for the error, it was not intentional” takes a lot of nerve and a lot of strength as an individual but once you start to do it, you will see the results and you will feel the empowerment of ownership. Try it and see!