When a Mistake Defines You

What do you do when you make a mistake and it
has named you? Other people talk and you have
allowed it to enter into your head as part of your identity.

That is a serious problem that will cost you in your 
career and it's also a lie.. Everybody makes mistakes
even stupid ones and you'll probably make two or three more this year.

It's a bigger mistake to let it define you. What to do?
Here's the answer from Victor Frankl's book, Man's Search for Meaning.
He says to redeem that mistake..

Which means, ask yourself 'what did I learn?'
You may have lost money, relationship etc..
You already know the negative, you just never
took time to see the positive.

Our minds love problems and mistakes, but you
can sit down and ask 'how did this make me better?'
Perhaps you hired a manager because you wanted
more free time, but he did things differently than
you and was spending more money than you would.

So, you had to let him go. Bad thing? Not at all 
because you learned that future managers need 
a set of guidelines to follow that meet your standards.

Mistakes are not bad.. not learning from them is.
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Source: Donald Miller