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Stand Up and Make a Change

2. Failing can be good. Really.

When you do something wrong, you may learn more than when you do it right. There is an old saying that good judgment comes from experience and experience comes from bad judgment. Mickey Mantle has the record for the most strikeouts, and NYC Mayor and financier Michael Bloomberg was fired from his first job in the financial industry.

Most new things will have some rocky steps. Your new boss may not like how you completed your first task; you might be passed over for promotion this year. Perhaps your performance review isn’t where you wanted it, or you didn’t get chosen for a special project. Maybe you sent out 30 resumes and didn’t get called for an interview. Instead of berating yourself, ask yourself, “What can I learn from this, and how can I prevent it from happening again?”

Seek help — it’s out there! — from friends and family to career mentors, from resume writing services to self help books, from that comforting ear to talk to specialized websites like Excelle. Instead of being afraid to fail, consider it another learning step in getting where you want to go.

Not quite convinced? Then it’s time to share some advice from my greatest mentor, my mom. Whenever I would hesitate, she’d ask me…..

3. What’s the worst thing that can happen?

This is a particularly helpful process because BEFORE you take the step, you can compare and prepare. If I wanted to enter a contest or take a particularly hard course or run for a class office or try a sport I had never played before, I would worry I couldn’t measure up. So Mom would ask, “What’s the worst thing that can happen?” I’d imagine scenarios and she’d ask me, “What would I do if the worst thing happened?”

By asking me what I would do if the worst thing did happen, I realized that I could handle it. She’d keep repeating the question until I figured out some ways to reduce the pitfalls. But most of the time, she’d make me realize that the result of not trying was exactly the same as the result if I tried and didn’t succeed, so what did I really have to lose? I remind myself of this often whenever I encounter a new challenge and use it frequently in mentoring sessions.

Anything worth having is worth working for. Remember the people who overcome those seemingly impossible obstacles are just like you but they have learned to say, “Yes I can!" and figure out how as they go along.

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