“Honesty is the fastest way to prevent a mistake from turning into a failure.”

-James Altucher

Some people think that speakers and authors have got it all together.

I suppose some speakers and authors think that too.

Not this one.

In fact, I still have a lot of work to do on the person in the mirror.

A case in point was at the airport recently.

I was not at the top of my game.

Not even close.

I woke up that morning to a notification that our flights had been canceled.

We were leaving another country and heading home where I had less than 24 hours to re-pack and hit the road again.

I’d been gone for most of the previous 30 days.

I took a deep breath.

I called the airline and after what seemed like days had passed, we were re-booked on a flight leaving seven hours later in seats we would not have chosen and connected through an airport that is two and a half hours past our home airport.

Things didn’t get better.

Everyone I encountered in the process had an “attitude.”

Including me.

I know, I’m a motivational speaker.

I talk about patience, kindness, and optimism.

And yet, I had a meltdown.

Not proud of it. In fact, I’m embarrassed.

I lost it.

I let myself down and everyone around me.

But here’s what I know.

There will be times when our “humanness” gets the best of us.

Especially when we’re tired and stressed.

We make poor choices, and our emotions take over. Trying to control the uncontrollable.

As I shared in a recent article, my therapist tells me when facing our mistakes there are only two questions, we need to ask ourselves:

1. What’s the positive?

2. What did I learn?

In this case, the positive is, I can do better.

The lesson?

I learned what not to do when things aren’t going the way we want them to.

My meltdown changed not one single thing.

We can’t control what happens to us sometimes. But we can always control what’s happening inside of us.

I failed.

Here’s what else I learned.

We all make mistakes.

Forgive yourself, but don’t let yourself off the hook. Own it. Say you’re sorry. Learn and grow. Dig a little deeper.

Be better next time.

It has been said that we teach others what we need to hear ourselves.

I do believe that.

We’re all working on something.

Or should be.

Something that makes us better.

Something that keeps our mistakes from becoming failures.

I am going to work on myself this week.

I hope you will join me.

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