When a person is in low self esteem, making a mistake only amplifies an existing sense of blame and disapproval. To them, a mistake is only proof that they are “less than”. They may even be in denial of what really happened and may feel they have something to hide, even from themselves. These people can be very self defensive or destructive to themselves or even destructive and harmful to others. To compound that loss, they also don’t avail themselves of a fantastic and timely leaning opportunity; they get no useful and positive feedback and not much chance of making a change for the better.
In fact, they are probably condemned to repeat the same past mistakes, right? Why? It’s human nature for someone still struggling with emotional mastery and self esteem issues to ruminate on or even gloss over a failure. Besides getting stuck in feeling badly, they are missing so much good feedback because they don’t assess what went wrong with the intentions of learning so that they can do better next time! Learning from your failures can and should be as informational and productive as learning from your successes.
But only with this caveat: You need to examine your failures from the very same success mindset of thinking and behavior that gave you your successes! Having a strong and solid inner sense of self worth means that a failure or a mistake doesn’t define who you are. When you believe that you are still a good person, it’s simply feedback that you need to try something else to get the outcome that you want. You will stop equating your self worth and self esteem with making mistakes or not making mistakes.
A person that believes that they have 100% self worth as a birth right will see a mistake or a failure as an opportunity to learn how to do it better the next time. They can get right back up, dust their knees off, and get going again. They won’t beat themselves up because, after all, humans will make mistakes. Instead, they ask themselves what can I change to do it better the next time I encounter the same situation. to make a list of what didn’t work for them each day and to reflect on specifically what changes they can make to do it better the next time.
There is no self condemnation allowed, only continual and incremental improvement. Being a totally worth while human being is what defines you, not your failures. Now, Failure is only feedback to help you do better next time. And now here is a great quote from a guy that epitomizes success: Failure is success if we learn from it. Malcolm S. Forbes. If Malcolm Forbes saw his failures this way, and we know how successful and self confident he was, we all can learn from his self perception.
