Same Mistake Twice

My father always told me that making mistakes was inevitable, but that I should try not to make the same mistake twice.

Of the many pieces of wisdom my father bequeathed me, I really internalized that one. In fact, I consider it a deep character flaw to ever have to apologize for the same thing a second time.

That doesn’t mean you only get one failure before you must succeed at any given task! It just means that it’s a character flaw to fail for the same reason more than once.

Consider: You forget your friend’s birthday one year, and you apologize for it, vowing to not miss it next year. If you simply “try harder” and miss it again, you’ve messed up. However, if you write the friend’s birthday down, put a reminder in your phone, and then your phone breaks? You still missed your friend’s birthday, and you still owe them an apology, but you’re apologizing for a different thing now. You didn’t rely on your fragile memory, you made a genuine effort to adapt your behavior. You own the outcome, but at least you’re no longer apologizing for making the same mistake twice.

If you mess something up twice, do an honest accounting: What did I actually do differently the second time? If you can’t point to a concrete thing, then you’ve made a grave mistake.

Try not to make it twice.