Reflect

Failing and making mistakes is not enough in order to learn and become better. You also need to dedicate time on reflecting on what has happened and why it didn't work.

Here's where a problem lies. When most people reflect on bad experiences, their feelings resurface. There's anger, anxiety, stress, fear, tears and emptiness. In order for the reflection to work and make you better you need to turn these feelings around.

Examine the past experiences without passing judgement and feeling bad. Things happen for a reason and by reflecting positively on the past you learn and expand your brain capacity. You can even create new pathways in your brain and start feeling better. Think of what could have gone worse or how your failure protected you from things getting worse.

As always, for this to work you need to turn it into a practice. Try to at least dedicate an hour once a week reflecting on past experiences. Turning the bad ones into good ones and learning from them. You will then gradually start feeling better and facing problems with a more positive attitude.

Posted by Harry Mylonadis 

A Mouse in a Salad and Owning Mistakes

About a week ago I was listening to a Freakonomis Radio episode called A Mouse in the Salad. What’s the Worst Restaurant Experience You’ve Ever Had?

To cut the story short, what happened was that at the restaurant where Stephen Dubner and James Altucher were having lunch, someone found a mouse in their salad. The shop where this happened is called Le Pain Quotidien, and it's famous for a selection of organic food and well crafted beverages.

When something like this happens, it really challenges the values of the brand. The reality was that this was a mistake, and a big one. What brands usually do when this happens is try to pay their way out of the mistake and keep the noise to a minimum level. What did Le Pain Quotidien do? They acknowledged their mistake. They explained their thinking, stayed honest and really tried to make sure this will never happen again.

The lesson to learn from this is that we are all human and mistakes happen. How we deal with them can make or break our brand. If one of your values is honesty (organic food can be associated with honest food) then when a mistake happens you need to acknowledge it and discuss with your customer why it happened and how you are going to make sure it won't happen again.

How did this play out for Le Pain Quotidien? Not only did it not stigmatise their brand, the lady that had the incident still eats at their shop on a regular basis.

Posted by Harry Mylonadis 

Learn From Your Mistakes

Everybody tells you from a young age that you need to learn from your mistakes. And it's true, it's one of the best ways of learning. The problem is that people try to not make mistakes that often.

We live in a world that awards compliance and achievement of specific targets. If you are a "failure", you're out, if you are an overachiever your peers won't be happy with you. As a result, what we all do is work safely, without taking any risk and without having anything to lose. We show up, punch the card, get the work done, punch out and head home. This leaves no room for mistakes to happen, since compliance doesn't like mistakes.

If you want to see change in your life then you need to take more risks. Start new things, projects, companies, if it fails you'll learn something, if it succeeds then pat yourself on the back. Take risks and don't succumb to compliance, mistakes are a great learning experience.

Posted by Harry Mylonadis