In Praise of Screw Ups

Do you have a professional blooper reel?  Something that chronicles personal and occasionally excruciating gaffes in your career?

I do.  It’s epic.  Recently, colleagues told me that it still exists (gulp). 

It’s a video outtake reel of me from a prior job, recording website content, shooting event invitations.  Typical stuff, which I handled well. Except when I didn’t. 

My videotaped screw ups are less interesting than my reaction to them. Apparently, on certain days, I didn’t have the growth mindset that I have today.  In frustration, I may have made up some new words. 

My genius team (assassins, all of them) saved me from myself.  They complied my greatest hits, set ‘em to music, and played ‘em at a company offsite.  We laughed, cried and no one died.  I never wanted a political career anyway.

But upon reflection, here’s what I’ve learned in reconsidering my own blooper reel. Our gaffes help us grow.  Unlike shared failures that all the business blogs tell us we should celebrate but don’t, bloopers are personal.  As mistakes go, they tend to be lower stakes, but searing, nonetheless.  On the bright side, bloopers:

• make us human and accessible

• bond us with colleagues differently than our successes

• give perspective; today’s foul-up will be inconsequential tomorrow

• ground us yet lift us, when we see how we’ve grown

• prepare us for the REAL tests that await us all

Whether your bloopers are 1080p or metaphorical, don’t fear them.  You’re more than your inevitable mistakes.  But your mistakes are always funnier.