From Lemons to Lemonade: Squeeze Every Last Drop of Success Out of Your Mistakes by Dean A. Shepherd

Author:Dean A. Shepherd [Shepherd, Dean A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: Business & Economics, General, Psychology, Self-Help, Personal Success, Corporate Finance, Motivational, Economics, Organizational Behavior, Skills, Research & Development, Entrepreneurship
ISBN: 9780131362734
Publisher: Pearson Prentice Hall
Published: 2009-04-16T05:00:00+00:00

to their respective projects. They both felt bad

when it failed. But Emily understands that these

new projects involve uncertainty and time pressure and that, in these environments, mistakes happen.

Her self-kindness allows her to explore her mistakes and weaknesses without threatening her self-beliefs.

Common Humanity and Failure

The second dimension of self-compassion is common humanity. If you scored high on the common humanity subscale of Table 4.2 (total score above 0), you put your failures and yourself in the

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From Lemons to Lemonade

perspective of others rather than cut yourself off from the experiences of other people. Compare

yourself to Emily and Henry. Which one are you

more like? Emily’s total score for the common

humanity subscale of Table 4.2 is 15 (22 for com-

mon humanity and 7 for isolation), and Henry’s total score for the common humanity subscale is –13 (6

for common humanity and 19 for isolation), as

shown in Figure 4.1.

First, we exhibit common humanity when we

remind ourselves that our feelings of personal doubt are shared by most people who experience failure.

For example, Emily reminds herself when a project fails that her feelings of inadequacy are normal.

Most people have a negative emotional reaction to the failure of their project, especially if that project ptg

was important to them, and they feel a little insecure about their ability to be successful in the

future. But Emily was able to say to herself that “All people feel this sadness I feel when a project fails”

and “Others can cope with these feelings; so can I.”

She can take some comfort in that “Those who

have felt this bad in the past eventually feel better”

and that some people “feel they are a better person as a result of the experience.” This enables her to keep her emotions and feelings of vulnerability in check.

Henry, in contrast, becomes self-critical even of his emotional reaction to the failure: “You feel sad; you’re such a baby,” “I’m the only emotional mess in this whole organization,” “Why am I so weak?”

Henry starts feeling bad not only about the mis-

takes that led to the project’s failure but also about 104

From the Library of Garrick Lee

Self-Compassion to Learn from Failure

his emotional reaction to the failure, which com-

pounds the problem to make him feel even worse.

Second, showing common humanity recognizes

that the project failure was caused by our personal mistakes and weaknesses. But it puts those mistakes and weaknesses in context by acknowledging

that all people have weaknesses and all people make mistakes sometimes. For example, Emily reminds

herself that most people experience a failure of

some sort during their working lives, especially

those working on new projects. By putting it in this perspective, Emily triggers a caring and compassion attitude toward herself in the face of the Dolphins Away failure. This enables her to see the failure as not so much an indictment of her mistakes and

weakness, because we all have them. On the other

ptg

hand, Henry’s self-judgmental approach focuses on his mistakes and weaknesses and highlight how different he is from others. For example, his self-talk includes “Andrew would never make such a

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