I Made the Biggest Mistake
Photo by Jenny Ueberberg on Unsplash
One day, when I was 18 years old with a not-quite-fully developed brain, I made a mistake. An error in judgment, as it were. I smashed my dad’s motorcycle through the front of our garage, pulverizing the wall to the new addition to our house on the other side. The peach-colored paint was barely dry.
I wasn’t driving the motorcycle; it wasn’t even running.
I had hustled out to the garage, running late for my summer job at the bookstore, where I plopped my rear end in the driver’s seat of my Nissan Stanza. With my feet still hanging out of the car, I started the engine. It was a standard transmission that had been left in first gear, so it lurched forward, colliding with the motorcycle in front of it, and proceeded forward through the wall before I could get my foot on the brake.
I was terrified of calling my dad at work and telling him what happened, so I embarked on a series of choices to shirk responsibility. First, I asked my sister to call him, to which her answer was, “Absolutely not.”
Then, I phoned my mom at work and asked her to do it. She chuckled with incredulity: “You made your bed; you lie in it,” she said.
Not to be deterred, I called my dad, but I went on the offensive. This is what I led with: “Hey, Dad. I started the car, and it pushed your motorcycle through the wall, but it’s only because YOU left my car in gear, and YOU were the one who worked around the safety feature that kept it from starting without my foot on the clutch!”
He laughed hard. I thought he’d lost it at first, but actually, he found my efforts to avoid responsibility so ridiculous, he couldn’t hold it in. In the end, he wasn’t overly mad about it, and he had me help fix the wall I destroyed -- logical consequences that went a long way toward rectifying my screw-up. It ended up being a bonding experience for us.
I had not yet learned, at that young age, to practice recovery from my mistakes.
So I compounded my error with a bigger one: denying responsibility. I was willing to cross over into the absurd to avoid the consequences of my actions. It took a lot of energy, and it would have been easier for me to call my dad straight away, own up to it, apologize and ask what I could do to help fix it.
Even as fully-fledged adults, we often spend a lot of time and emotional energy feeling guilty, rationalizing why we made the wrong decision and trying to pawn responsibility off on someone else. But things go much more smoothly when we can quickly move on to admitting to our mistakes and rectifying the situation.
It comes in small and large forms, this practice, and doesn’t necessarily involve the destruction of drywall.
Yesterday, I was late for a video conference meeting. When I realized I’d lost track of time, I muttered some minor expletives, jumped on the call, apologized for being late and did my best to make the time we had as productive as possible. I hate being late to things, and historically, I’ve felt terrible about it. This time, I didn’t go into hand-wringing or excuses, which saved time and helped make up for my lateness a little.
If you are a human, you will make mistakes -- sometimes because you made a decision with incomplete or wrong information, sometimes because you forget things. If you have a persistent issue, like you are constantly 15 minutes late to meetings or you always forget to pick your kid up from gymnastics, perhaps a deeper dive is in order. But when it’s a one-off, best to own up and move on.
And if you are my dad, maybe don’t remove the safety features from a car when the driver is under 20.
Sincerely,
April
Fundamental #23: PRACTICE RECOVERY
When mistakes or errors in judgment happen, “own it.” Take the necessary steps to communicate to the appropriate parties, acknowledge your accountability, and set corrective steps in motion. “Get back in the game” quickly.
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