Why You Repeat Some Business Mistakes

Why do you make certain mistakes over and over again? No matter how hard you try to fix or control the situation, they seem beyond your control.

For instance, I was working with a client who has a number of staff working under him that he wanted to delegate to more efficiently. Despite his efforts, the same problem showed up in employee after employee.

Okay, so it got incrementally better, somewhat. But even after several years he was still exhausted, and the delegating wasn’t really taking the load off.

Harumph… His way of trying to fix the mistakes didn’t seem to be fixing anything, because they kept coming back.

Does this sound familiar? Do you have problems that keep cycling back over and over again in your business? What’s going on? How do you fix these “unfixable” mistakes?

The Problem with Human Mistake Radar

Here’s what I’ve learned through the Sufi teachings about mistakes: our human guidance system is nearly infallible in detecting that a mistake has happened. All the emotional, physical and inner-knowing symptoms that tell us something is “off” or not right are usually very, very reliable.

Maybe you’ve got a sinking feeling in your stomach. Or just a knowing that something is out of whack. However you get it, you know that a mistake has occurred.

Unfortunately, most of us have not been taught how to look behind this discomfort to see what the mistake actually is.

Let me restate that: as a human, you know when a mistake has occurred, but you rarely know what the true mistake actually is.

Why We Misidentify Mistakes

It’s hard to name the mistake, because as humans we usually grab onto the most visible part of it: our actions, and the results that came from them. But the action wasn’t the mistake. You need to look behind the actions.

The mistake that occurs within a project or with a person happens before the action.  When that relationship is out of whack, then your actions reflect that out-of-whack relationship. In the example with my client, he had to eventually look at not what he did with his the employees but at his own relationship with delegating.

Why Mistakes Are a Gateway, the Sufi View

Mistakes are required. Without mistakes an essential part of our humanity would be missing. The part of you, deep in your heart, that really wants to know that you don’t have to earn love and acceptance. That no matter what you do, love is available.

Forgiveness is the bridge. Without it, we can’t truly relax into being our full human selves. And without mistakes, we wouldn’t be able to taste forgiveness in our hearts. There will always be a place in us saying: “But if I goof up, I’m doomed, unlovable.”

Allow me to quote from a Sufi teacher, who is describing God’s perspective on our mistakes (please forgive the Old Testament flavor):

“Through the gate of the mistake, most of My beloveds come to reach Me. First, I put them in the fire of the mistake, then this fire brings them to the deeper fire of My love. Then I show them My light in the fire, and in a moment they jump and are face to face…” (from Music of the Soul, by Sheikh Sidi al-Jamal).

The first “fire of the mistake” that the Sheikh mentions refers to our internal guidance system-that place that feels yucko that something went wrong.

The second fire is the return to love that burns away the yuck. it’s the insight that comes in this second fire that shows you the true mistake without a tinge of shame or guilt. It will feel pure, simple and very true.

Back to my client above, the insight he finally achieved was understanding that he actually wasn’t really delegating anything, because he continued seeing his employees as something less then the responsible adults they were.

Seeing and acknowledging his employees as responsible adults was the change needed to correct his mistake.

Marinate Before the Fire

Before you jump in with both feet, take a gentle breath, and just let your heart marinate on this insight. Ahhhh.

Still the mistake happened. A goof-up occurred, and the mess is here and now. So you still have to clean it up. How do you jump from the first fire of yuck to the second “deeper fire of love,” so you can clean things up?

Keys to Cleaning Up the Mess

• Take responsibility for the unknown.

When you feel that yucko feeling of a mistake, your first inclination may be to push it away. But that doesn’t work so well. Instead, take full responsibility, even though you don’t know what that looks like yet.

That’s right, find the place in your heart that is willing take full responsibility for the mistake. It’s yours, and remember, it’s your gateway to love.

• Ask for forgiveness.

The way the Sufis ask for forgiveness is to call into the heart: “I ask for forgiveness from Source. Please help me to see what I don’t know.” And be willing to be surprised.

Be patient. This process has taken me as little as one minute, and sometimes as long as 30-60 minutes of quiet reflection and asking in my heart, especially if it’s a big mistake in my life that I’m having some reluctance looking at directly.

When you receive an insight, and that insight doesn’t have any tinge of shame, or wrongdoing, or that “just have to suck it up and fix it” energy, then you know you’re complete. You’ll probably feel a relaxation and peacefulness come into your heart and being.

• Fix the mistake.

Follow through with the clean-up actions as soon as possible. This is the integrity that comes with love.

Your mistake had consequences in the world. You and people around you were affected by it. Do your best to make up for any miss-steps you made. Ask your heart, and ask the people involved, what will help to make things whole again?

My client followed these three steps and found that the hardest thing was simply finding the humility to apologize for his past behavior, which was much easier than continuing that painful cycle.

After this insight, my client felt an increased depth of love and trust in relationship with his employees, and his delegating skills grew in leaps and bounds.

When you do all three steps to resolve a mistake, the Sufi teacher I quoted above calls it “consuming the essence of the mistake.” Once the essence of the mistake is consumed, you may have a healing in your heart that keeps these kinds of mistakes from happening again.

An achievement that will definitely help your business bloom.

This is a bit of a radical approach to mistakes–the idea that maybe they don’t need to be fixed, at least in the way one often thinks about “fixing” mistakes. And yet, you don’t ignore them either.

Does this resonate for you? What’s your experience with unfixable, or repetitive mistakes?

This is not about collapsing and begging to be forgiven because you messed up. This is about asking deep in your heart to see something that you haven’t seen yet, and to know that you don’t have to be perfect in order to earn love.

How are you at handling and identifying the true mistake?