Mistakes: 5 Reasons Why you Should Admit and Own your Mistakes

How does it make you feel if you make a mistake? Shame? Guilt? Sadness? Chances are, you will try and push these emotions away and just move on with your life. With some mistakes, this is pretty easy to do as they’re more likely to be minor (picking the slowest lane in a queue). However, some mistakes we make are life changers, as is the way that we deal with those. Sitting with a mistake, processing what’s happened and owning it can unlock a very different future for you.

This is a topic that I’ve been thinking about A LOT over the last 9 months. I quit a job that I loved at JCB to take a risk on the apparently exciting opportunity that was presented to me at Ruroc. I thought making the move back into the motorcycle industry was what I wanted, and working for a dynamic up-and-coming company would be a great move for my career. However, the truth couldn’t have been much further from that, and this opportunity soon turned into a nightmare. There are so many topics I’m going to be talking about based on my experiences in the coming months, because I think it’s really important to normalise talking about the ugly truth, alongside the positives that can be drawn from this.

For today, my point is that leaving JCB for the job at Ruroc was a mistake. And a pretty big one at that. I left a job I enjoyed, working with people I really respected and got on with, to end up becoming a complete shadow of my former self. My personal and professional integrity has never been challenged like it has whilst working at Ruroc, and it’s made me reflect a lot on things I didn’t think I liked about working for a bigger company. I have never started dreading the week ahead the second I woke up on Sundays, and have never been in tears so many times on the commute home.

It took me a good few months to be able to admit to myself that leaving was a mistake, because for me to say that made me feel like a failure. I was embarrassed that the opportunity I’d been so excited about and been so supported in taking had backfired. I felt like it must just be me and I should be living the dream. But now I have processed that my feelings were valid; it wasn’t just me and I had been thrown into a completely toxic work environment. Once I knew things weren’t right and it wasn’t just me, I spent more time just sitting with the thought that leaving JCB (for this job at least) was a mistake. And that was okay.

It was also okay that I didn’t regret making that mistake. It feels a bit backwards admitting that you’re glad you put yourself in a terrible situation, but for me it has opened my eyes to a lot of things. It’s made me appreciate things I took for granted before, and I believe it’s helped me clearly identify where I want to be going with my career. (More on this another day…)

I truly feel like I needed to make this mistake, learn from it and then be able to move on. Which is where I hope I’m at right now with three weeks off before starting my next adventure.

Why Should I Admit I’ve Made a Mistake?

#1: Admitting you made a mistake means you will learn from it.

Once I had got my head around the notion that the job at Ruroc was a mistake, I could then look closer at it. Why had I made that mistake? Was there anything I could have done to foresee that it was going to be a mistake? It was important for me to process as much as I could, so I didn’t make the same mistake again in the future.

For me, this is the main reason I think it’s so important to go through the painful process of digging deeper and understanding your mistake. Living in denial will never push you past the mistake and you will drag it with you for the rest of your life. And chances are you will make a similar mistake again in the future, because you haven’t analysed what went wrong and how you can change that.

For this situation, I’ve learned that you should take promises with a pinch of salt as people will say anything they want in an interview if they want you. I’ve learned that you should find out AS MUCH as possible about a company before even applying for a job. Slick marketing campaigns should be ignored, and the real truth dug up where possible! I’ve learned that you should never be too proud to admit a move has been a mistake, and you should never burn bridges so you could always return to where you came from. And finally, I’ve learned that you don’t have anything to prove by continuing to commit to said mistake, and it’s vital for your mental health to throw in the towel.

#2: Owning your mistake means you will be able to talk to others and dissuade them from making the same mistake.

By freely owning up to making a mistake, you will empower others to do the same. If you’re openly talking about an opportunity not being what it cracked up to be and it was a mistake taking it, they might also be privately feeling the same about their own situation. By you normalising that it’s okay and you’re not a failure, you will hopefully inspire the other person to change their situation if they can. Protecting your personal integrity and wellbeing is nothing to be too proud to do.

You will also share warning signs that it was a mistake, so others can maybe ask some more questions before they make a similar mistake. For a few very specific examples you can warn someone off a bad company to work for, an untrustworthy acquaintance to avoid or a legit looking scam that’s going around. You don’t want someone to repeat the exact same mistake you have made, because chances are they will be put through the same pain that you have, and ultimately come out with the same lessons you could have shared with them yourself.

#3: Owning your mistake might inspire someone to take a risk and not be afraid of making their own mistake.

Whilst this is a bit of a contradiction to #2, I hope it makes sense that I’ve included this as a reason to admit to your mistake. Whilst you don’t want someone to make the exact same mistake as you, you might inspire them to make a change which they’re fearful of doing in case it’s a mistake and therefore a FAILURE.

Mistakes are a part of learning, growing and becoming the people we do. Mistakes can be failures and they can hurt people. But if your mistake impacts solely you and pushes you on to better things, you might not have been confident enough to go for that if you’d stayed in your comfort zone.

“It’s not that the grass is greener on the other side, it’s that you can never be on both sides of the lawn at the same time” – Laura Fraser

I’m hoping I am doing this by sharing my story; I might inspire someone to take that risk. They might be afraid to in case it’s a mistake, but you can give them confidence to by showing that it’s okay to take risks, make mistakes and learn from those. At the end of the day, all of these experiences (good or bad) can make you a better person, especially if you learn from them.

#4: Making a mistake forces you to grow as a person in ways you never would have done prior to said mistake.

This mistake has challenged me in every way professionally and personally, and it has actually made me a much more resilient person. Myself 3 years ago would have taken everything that was happening very personally, and completely crush my self-confidence in my skills and abilities. I believed in myself strongly enough to know that I do know what I’m talking about, and I am better than the situation I was in.

I’m also not afraid of making mistakes (with my career at least) because I know it doesn’t mean I’ve failed. This acknowledgement has taken the longest; fighting the feeling that I was a failure was a hard step to get through, and now being so open about this conclusion. This personal growth is one of the main reasons I wanted to share this story, and if I’m honest had this happen to me a few years ago I wouldn’t have felt confident enough to talk about it so openly.

#5: Relationships will be repaired by being honest with those you may have hurt.

If your mistake involves those around you, it’s so important you hold your hands up to them and be honest with those you care about. Some mistakes can be worked through and repaired, and it’s never going to end well if you can’t admit your mistakes to those around you.

I’m fortunate enough that my particular situation doesn’t apply to this point, but I thought it was an important one to make. I left JCB with great relationships and no hard feelings, which meant that I still feel like I could reach out or apply for a job there and wouldn’t be blacklisted! Those closest to me have been impacted by my mistake, but they’ve all been super supportive and given me the confidence to hold my hands up and make a hasty retreat. They haven’t been hurt, but they’ve had to deal with an off-form Em for too long.

Your future self will thank you for going through the painful process of sitting with your mistake, so you truly understand what went wrong, how you can fix it and know the things to look out for so you don’t repeat the same mistake. Flip the negative situation that is a mistake, and find all of the positives you can in it. Yes, it’s awful you’ve had to go through this and maybe you shouldn’t have done it, but process what’s happened and take all of the lessons you can from it to make you a better person.

Life is all about making (some) mistakes. You need to make mistakes to grow, and this healthy mental state to arrive at is fortunately where I’m feeling like I am now. I don’t regret leaving JCB, because I believe I needed to go on this wild ride and arrive where I am now. It has been a difficult journey to get to this point, which is why I wanted to openly talk about this situation and show that admitting to a mistake isn’t a failure. I don’t believe I failed with this job, I believe that the job failed me and there’s no way I would have known until I went through this experience.

Have you taken an opportunity that ended up being a mistake? Are you afraid to admit to a mistake you’ve made? Reach out in the comments or via email, and I hope my story and ramblings on this subject have helped in a small way!

Emilie
The Female Engineer