Your ability to deal constructively and effectively with mistakes and temporary setbacks is a mental skill that you can learn and sharpen. The quality of “intellectual honesty” is perhaps the most respected quality to acquire. When you are intellectually honest, you look at the world and deal with your circumstances as facts and realities, rather than hoping, wishing and praying that they would be or could be different. And the minute you begin to deal straightforwardly with life, you become a far more positive, creative and constructive person. You become more effective in overcoming your obstacles and achieving your goals. You become more admired and respected by other people, and more capable of getting the critical results expected of you.

On the other hand, the inability or unwillingness to face the fact that you are not perfect, that you have made bad choices and decisions that have turned into mistakes, is a major source of stress and career dissatisfaction.

Experience has taught me this: You learn what you’re really made of only when things go wrong and you are tumbled, end over end, by some adversity or setback that hits you like a Mack truck. Since your behavior on the outside is the real indicator of who you are on the inside, only by observing how you behave when things go wrong can you tell what you have inside you.

Some years ago in Washington, D.C., a survey of a large number of that city’s most successful people turned up a surprising fact: Under questioning, these people had to admit that their success hinged directly upon the jobs they left. Whether they’d been fired or quit made little difference. Every one of them shuddered to think that they might still be slaving away in a job not a 10th as interesting or rewarding as the one they now held.

I once had a client that told me a true story of an old, established department store in a large city that closed its doors forever. Four hundred employees, many who had been with the firm 30 years or longer, were without jobs. One of those longtime employees, stunned by what had happened, sought my advice.

“I’m 55 years old,” he said. “There were 80 employees more than 50 years of age in the store. What’s going to become of all of us?”

Without sounding callous to the situation of the other people without a job, I said, “The first thing to do is to realize that it’s not a question of ‘all of us.’ It’s a question of you – one person – with the problem of finding new employment, which statistically is difficult after the age of 50, but not necessarily individually. So stop thinking of yourself as a statistical entity or a victim of mass calamity. You’re a person with skills that the world can utilize and appreciate, as is each of the 79 other employees in your age bracket.”

To make a long story short, this man began to see himself in a new light. He went to other discharged employees and was able to raise enough money from several of them to open a new shop downtown. They pooled their money to start a store that could again provide them employment.

As I said earlier, smart people have developed the habit of analyzing their mistakes and quickly cutting their losses. Your ability to realize that something is not working and then to change course quickly is the mark of a superior mind. The great majority of people, on the other hand, would rather die than admit making a mistake. So they keep on doing what they’re doing, even though they know in their hearts that it’s no longer working or giving them the results for which they had hoped. That’s the reason it’s so important for you to separate yourself from your mistakes, to stand back and objectively analyze and dissect them so that you can get the most out of them before moving on to new projects and possibilities.

The next time you find yourself in an inappropriate job or it seems that career calamity has struck; remember what may appear to be a terrible situation might be in the long run the best thing that could have happened – if you have the courage to act in your own self interest.

Joe Hodowanes, a career strategy adviser in Tampa, Florida, offers a free resume and career analysis. Fax your resume to (813) 936-0201 or email it to jmwanes@jmwanes.com For questions, call Joe at (813) 936-0091 or visit www.jmwanes.com on the Web. All Job Search Advisor articles on this website are the property of www.jmwanes.com (J.M. Wanes & Associates). You may download
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© 2005 J.M. Wanes & Associates.