How to Recover from Mistakes and Dropped Balls
My sons are amateur jugglers. They practice weekly with a juggling company, and last week was the biggest performance of the year. Hundreds of parents, grandparents, friends, and others streamed into a local high school auditorium to watch a series of choreographed routines. What’s most amazing about this performance isn’t the coordination or the skill. It’s what happens when a ball or a pin is dropped. The marvel is in how they recover from mistakes.
Have you dropped any balls in front of others lately? Said anything stupid in a meeting? Made the wrong decision on behalf of a team? Hurt your family by doing something selfish? Missed a deadline or commitment? Nevertheless, we all have to recover from mistakes from time to time.
Here’s one mistake I made recently: People realized I was obviously multi-tasking during an important virtual meeting. I forgot to hit the mute button, and the group heard me typing. Then, when it was my turn to provide input, I had nothing helpful to add. Worst of all, some on my team surely felt devalued. I metaphorically dropped the ball in front of my audience.
Everyone drops the ball from time to time. The question is, how do you recover?
4 Recovery Lessons from the World of Juggling
Few examples of recovery are as instructive as a juggling performance. In other performances, your mistakes are harder to see, or it’s easier to blame someone else. It’s difficult to hear a misplayed note in a band performance by one instrument. It’s not easy to pick up on a missed line in a play. Even a strikeout in baseball can be attributed to good pitching. However, in juggling, it’s often you and your rings, pins, or balls. When one hits the ground, everyone sees it.
Here are some ideas I picked up from the juggling performance that may help each of us when we drop balls in life:
- Own the drop. Rarely do jugglers leave what they dropped on the floor. Sometimes the routine requires them to leave it behind, but even that is intentional. Most of the time, they move toward their drop and deal with it. I was hoping no one noticed my disengagement on that virtual meeting. Maybe they’d forget about it, I thought. Instead, I apologized to the leader of the meeting. “I should have been more engaged,” I said.
- Pick things back up and keep going. Jugglers take a breath, pick up their drop, and keep going. The mark of a strong juggler is the poise they demonstrate after they recover from a mistake. They don’t slouch, frown, curse, or shrug. They stand tall and start again. I was embarrassed by my behavior on that virtual meeting. It tempted me to turn off my webcam or even leave the meeting. It made me uncomfortable thinking about joining the next meeting with the group. Rather I took a breath, swallowed my pride, and actively re-engaged.
- Recognize the jugglers around you. Jugglers gain comfort knowing that, even if they are the only one on stage at that moment, they are part of a company of performers. Everyone around them is or will be juggling too! And everyone is dropping. Everyone is vulnerable and exposed. That indeed provides perspective and comfort. It’s also what makes it easier for me to write about my dropped balls in work and life. I know you’re dropping balls too. We’re all part of a company of ball-droppers. Take comfort in that.
- Finally, find encouragement in the audience. No one threw fruit at the stage or heckled the jugglers in that high school auditorium. Of course not; these were kids. In fact, an audience at a youth juggling performance might be among the most encouraging and forgiving you’d find. Hopefully, you too, have an audience you can look to for encouragement and forgiveness. Maybe it’s not your boss or your family members. They may be too focused on their own juggling to be forgiving and encouraging. Perhaps it’s a friend, colleague, or God. Find someone who says, “This is hard. I’m with you. And you can recover from your mistakes.”
Have you dropped any balls lately? Consider taking a cue from the world of juggling. Furthermore, take comfort knowing that the world is full of jugglers.
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