Happy New Year one and all. On this first weekend of 2024 I was looking forward yesterday to a relaxing day getting up late, removing the Christmas decorations and doing a Tai Chi class. Instead, I was rudely awoken early in the morning with the news that there was a power cut. Normally this is just some light bulb going which triggers a cut-off switch you push back up again. No, this time when I phoned the electricity emergency line (105 in the UK and it really works they answer quickly) they informed me there was a fault at a local substation following reports of a fire and they had had to turn off the electricity to the whole street. Whilst an emergency engineering team was on the way they would not arrive for half an hour – and then it could take another 4 hours to fix (which it duly did). The text communication with the emergency line was good and kept us up to date, if a little worrying because it said the engineers after fixing the fault might “walk our cabling route throughout the area!” In the event the electricity came back on after about four and a half hours – not before we had a fight with the burglar alarm, which insisted on going off whatever code we entered and was only silenced after removing its emergency battery (please don’t tell our house insurers!).
What struck me was the amazingly thin line we walk to successfully support our daily work and home lives. Everything needs electricity from lighting and heating to cooking and refrigeration. And of course, our router was down so we could only use phone connections to access the Internet and that only whilst the battery lasted. I finally found a use for the low power mode on my iPhone. And of course, no charging of electric or hybrid cars. In this instance when things went wrong we could not fix the problem by, for example, calling an emergency electrician out (at no doubt great cost) because the fault was with the electricity system not in our house. After some initial panic we did however did what we could to mitigate the power cut including lighting a stove fire, but we were a bit in the lap of the gods. The cat simply went and sat by the fire!
When things go wrong in our professional lives, as they inevitably will, it is I suggest not the event itself, but how we react that matters. See this short University of Nottingham blog When things go wrong which advises “Your first step should be to recognise the problem and try to get a sense of scale. When you first notice an issue it's easy to feel overwhelmed but try to take a moment to think things through calmly. Next, identify any immediate action you need to take in order to rectify things and limit any further damage.” It also points out that you can turn things to your advantage by reframing them positively which can lead to:
“The one thing you can always control, however, is how you respond to these challenges. The way you think about your circumstances affects your mental strength.” It has some helpful suggestions on what to tell yourself when things do go wrong including:
Be proactive.
Once you are aware of the mistake you have made, try to get in front of the situation before it spirals.
Offer an apology.
Offer a genuine and humble apology, acknowledging your error and the harm you caused to the other person, team, or the business.
Have compassion
…we can become excessively self-critical. While practicing self-compassion will support you in regaining clarity and confidence, and moving forward productively from a setback.
As an illustrative postscript, we had not lit our stove fire since I replaced the glass in the door late last year; because it did not fit back on again properly, I assumed it was broken. In fact, I had not properly reconnected the door to the oven, and because of our electricity crisis I found and remedied my error. So now we can have fires again just as it seems to be getting colder.
As Vincent Van Gogh said “Even the knowledge of my own fallibility cannot keep me from making mistakes. Only when I fall do I get up again.”
While another painter Camille Pissarro, a contemporary of Van Gogh, sagely says “Don't be afraid in nature: one must be bold, at the risk of having been deceived and making mistakes”.
And George Bernard Shaw counsels “A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.”
I particularly like this quote for the new year from the English writer Neil Gaiman “I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes. Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You're doing things you've never done before, and more importantly, you're doing something.”
To end on a sporting note as the Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp observed “Football is a game you cannot play without making mistakes.”
What struck me was the amazingly thin line we walk to successfully support our daily work and home lives. Everything needs electricity from lighting and heating to cooking and refrigeration. And of course, our router was down so we could only use phone connections to access the Internet and that only whilst the battery lasted. I finally found a use for the low power mode on my iPhone. And of course, no charging of electric or hybrid cars. In this instance when things went wrong we could not fix the problem by, for example, calling an emergency electrician out (at no doubt great cost) because the fault was with the electricity system not in our house. After some initial panic we did however did what we could to mitigate the power cut including lighting a stove fire, but we were a bit in the lap of the gods. The cat simply went and sat by the fire!
When things go wrong in our professional lives, as they inevitably will, it is I suggest not the event itself, but how we react that matters. See this short University of Nottingham blog When things go wrong which advises “Your first step should be to recognise the problem and try to get a sense of scale. When you first notice an issue it's easy to feel overwhelmed but try to take a moment to think things through calmly. Next, identify any immediate action you need to take in order to rectify things and limit any further damage.” It also points out that you can turn things to your advantage by reframing them positively which can lead to:
- Learning opportunities
- Building resilience
- Improving work relationships as colleagues pull together and help.
“The one thing you can always control, however, is how you respond to these challenges. The way you think about your circumstances affects your mental strength.” It has some helpful suggestions on what to tell yourself when things do go wrong including:
- I’ve Survived Tougher Challenges
- Some Things Are Going Right
- Five Years From Now This Won’t Matter So Much
Be proactive.
Once you are aware of the mistake you have made, try to get in front of the situation before it spirals.
Offer an apology.
Offer a genuine and humble apology, acknowledging your error and the harm you caused to the other person, team, or the business.
Have compassion
…we can become excessively self-critical. While practicing self-compassion will support you in regaining clarity and confidence, and moving forward productively from a setback.
As an illustrative postscript, we had not lit our stove fire since I replaced the glass in the door late last year; because it did not fit back on again properly, I assumed it was broken. In fact, I had not properly reconnected the door to the oven, and because of our electricity crisis I found and remedied my error. So now we can have fires again just as it seems to be getting colder.
As Vincent Van Gogh said “Even the knowledge of my own fallibility cannot keep me from making mistakes. Only when I fall do I get up again.”
While another painter Camille Pissarro, a contemporary of Van Gogh, sagely says “Don't be afraid in nature: one must be bold, at the risk of having been deceived and making mistakes”.
And George Bernard Shaw counsels “A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.”
I particularly like this quote for the new year from the English writer Neil Gaiman “I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes. Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You're doing things you've never done before, and more importantly, you're doing something.”
To end on a sporting note as the Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp observed “Football is a game you cannot play without making mistakes.”
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