No matter how you messed up, following this advice will help you earn forgiveness.
By Susie Moore
“Susie, can I please have the report from last week? I don’t see it in my inbox.”
My heart sank. My boss was asking me for a sales report that I had to submit every Friday. It was Monday. I totally blanked on doing it last week.
I did the only thing I could think of: I lied. “That’s odd—it should be there. I’ll re-send!” In 15 minutes, I scrambled together the shoddiest report ever created and hit send as if my life depended on it. You can imagine the questions my boss had about the errors in the Excel cells later that day. He knew; I knew. But I was resolute in my lie.
I was young. I thought this approach was safer than honesty. But I was wrong. I had not only failed to do the work, but I was also dishonest about it—trying to cover my tracks instead of admitting my mistake.
Trust me, I know there's nothing like the sting of making a mistake to make you feel inadequate, remorseful, and just plain pissed at yourself. But we all make mistakes in many different ways. Maybe you laid into your S.O. over something insignificant, forgot to text a friend back about plans, or made a glaring typo in an uber-important work memo. No matter what you messed up, acknowledging your error or poor judgment can make you feel like a naughty kid again—not the confident adult you’ve become.
Even worse, instead of addressing our mistake head on, apologizing in an instant, and remedying the situation, many of us do the opposite. We do nothing. We ignore it. We get defensive. Sometimes we even blame the other person. We say he or she is “too sensitive,” or we tell ourselves we’re right and the other person is wrong because we’re too scared to own our mistakes.
Even the most unintentional error, when poorly handled, can snowball into a mess of finger pointing, judgment, and ruined relationships. Instead of sweeping it under the rug, here’s how to remedy any mistake in (almost) any situation.
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