Own your mistakes, focus and sense of wonder

Everyone makes mistakes. What separates people isn't that they made a mistake, it's what they do once they realize. You can own the failure and work to fix it, or you can reach for an excuse and pin the outcome on something else. I've watched both play out, in myself and in the people around me, and the choice says more about a person than the mistake ever could. Take or Abdicate? When you're confronted with doing something wrong you have two choices. First, you can take responsibility and work to correct the error. This is the harder path and means you have to be honest with yourself and others about your failings. The benefit is that this path builds integrity. Even when you've made a big mistake, people respect you after when you're honest about it. The second, and the one I see far too often, is to come up with some other reason that the mistake happened and abdicate your responsibility for the outcome. You didn't get your chores done because someone else was in the way. This one…