Do you regret your mistakes?
Following on from my recent blog about Murphy's Law, I've been thinking more about mistakes, not only how frequently we make them (whether we recognise them as mistakes or not) but how making mistakes is the key to our learning and whether we can truly regret these mistakes if we've learned from them.
Frank Lampard, the current manager of Everton FC was interviewed for a second time on the The High performance Podcast with Frank Lampard, this time talking about being sacked from his dream job as manager of Chelsea at the start of 2021.
Frank has no regrets over taking the Chelsea managers job or what he did as manager, ultimately resulting in his demise. This is a person who became a talisman as a player for the club, took the manager's job while still very inexperienced as a manager and then was unceremoniously dumped from the position 18 months in.
He could easily regret taking that dream job so early in his managerial career, wondering that if he'd have built up his experience, maybe he'd have been able to do better for the club that means so much to him. Maybe he'd have been able to handle the weight of expectation or deal with the difficult conversations with the limitless egos a little better.
Or maybe, if he'd missed this opportunity, another chance may never had come again.
If he'd not taken the job at that time, he'd have not learned all the things these mistakes have taught him.
In the podcast, he tells us there were plenty of things he could've done better but he has no regrets about taking the opportunity in front of him or the mistakes he's made.
We should never harbour regrets about taking an opportunity that may help you grow, even when it doesn’t work out.
If we always act with best intentions, we will still make honest mistakes but there should be no need for regret in this situation.
To regret is to wish something had never happened.
If it had never happened we'd have never learned.
If we never learned we wouldn't be who we are today.
I don't live with the burden of regrets. Perhaps this is the naive perspective of someone who's been fortunate enough not to make a mistake serious enough to warrant such a regret and perhaps this will change in time. At present, I can acknowledge that I have made thousands of mistakes but with each one came a new opportunity to grow a little bit stronger.
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