Allow yourself to make mistakes. Very, very publicly. - The Chief Happiness Officer Blog

Allow yourself to make mistakes. Very, very publicly. - The Chief Happiness Officer Blog I was looking through Christine Kanes wonderful blog (thx Mike) and lemmetellya, the lady can write. Shes smart and funny and thats in addition to being a great musician and singer. On her site I found a post called 8 things you get when you order my new DVD. Reason number 8 is my favorite: 8 You get to feel better about yourself. So, the concert ends with a song called The Problem with Jazz. And we mess it up! Right at the end! Right at the last drum beat! The band falls to pieces. Not only do we mess up a song ? but it?s the end of the whole evening! Now, as you know, these things can be edited. We could?ve re-filmed it. We could?ve even cut to a different shot and taken out the sound. But I was in the editing suite, and I said, Nah. Let?s leave it. It?s funny. Here?s why I left it, really: If I can screw up the ending of a show in front of 400 people and thousands of other viewers, then you don?t have to feel so bad if you mess up, say, at your office in front of five or ten or twenty-five people. Or when you give a speech. Really, it?s a way to make you feel better about yourself. Most music videos don?t offer such a raw glimpse of human foibles. They?re all edited and perfected, and so you don?t get a chance to see the human side of performing. Well, now I?ve changed that trend! By next week, you?ll see videos of Celine Dion tripping over one of her dancers and falling face first onto the stage and then laughing it off as she hoists her sequin gown back over her left buttock. Just you wait! Thats hilarious. And it totally sealed it for me I had to order the DVD just to see them get it wrong :o) Christines point is also a great reminder to allow ourselves to fail and to be seen failing. This goes great at work too. Peter Druckers said that companies should find all the employees who never make mistakes and fire them, because the only people who never mess up are those who never do anything interesting. Prasad Kurian suggests we should promote people the way some ancient societies chose a new chief pick the person with the most scars. That person has taken risks but not enough to get killed. Randy Nelson of Pixar says that You have to honor failure, because failure is just the negative space around success. And finally, theres my own experience from learning to wakeboard over the last two months. Ive been getting pretty good at it (as you can see here), but it has cost me a lot of falls. Some of them very public and more than a little painful. Like last Sunday, when I got a little overconfident and steered right into a pier :o) And yes, these days anything is an excuse for me to mention wakeboarding. Im hooked, dammit :o) Thanks for visiting my blog. If you're new here, you should check out this list of my 10 most popular articles. And if you want more great tips and ideas you should check out our newsletter about happiness at work. It's great and it's free :-)Share this:LinkedInFacebookTwitterRedditPinterest Related