I had an interesting day yesterday.  The culmination of some recent mistakes left me reeling from the moment I took my first sip of coffee.  I love my coffee in the morning.  I like mine thick, dark, and creamy.  I like the smells of the wet grounds and the sound of the hissing, steaming frothy goodness that comes spewing from my machine, the one that sits waiting on my desk, eager for me to smile at it. *pets her coffee maker*

The first sip is always bliss.  But I was interrupted with some information about a few things I had made mistakes on– not by virtue of an angry boss, but by crying parents, sobbing mothers, and my office mate saying, “hey that surgery that was cancelled, well…”  Anyway, it was a pretty hellacious morning. I learned something about myself throughout the experience though.  First of all, I’m impressed with my honest and my immediacy in taking responsibility for the errors, and then scrambling to do whatever was necessary to fix them.  I got my boss involved.  Her boss, too.  I discussed with the nurses.  I apologized, and I did it with passion and integrity.   I like me for this. I also realized just how much I beat myself up over making mistakes.  I am one of those people who won’t let it go for a bit.  I constantly re-play in my head the key parts where I dropped the ball, re-enacting, figuring how I might do better in the future.  I learned how to talk myself down, calm myself, and accept that I’m human, and I make mistakes sometimes.  Ultimately, it’s better to make mistakes early on in the experience rather than never make mistakes at all and thus never learn from them. So, this really turned out to be a good experience for me.  I learned from it, and I’m learning more about the job, and getting better at it.  A greater understanding is always something that benefits me– reminds me why I’m doing something, etc. Anyway, so the moral of the story is this: It’s okay to make mistakes–even HUGE ones.  It’s okay to be human, and it’s okay to not necessarily get it right the first time.

• “The best managers are the ones who make mistakes and then figure out how to fix them…”  -Sheila

Yet another thing I learned from the former job from hell. Huh. *nods* It’s always perfect, isn’t it!

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