Sometimes, we pee our pants. This is the text I received from my wife 30 minutes before going on stage to speak at a recent conference:
I loved seeing this. I didn't love that he had to change his clothes and that his preschool teacher needed to do extra clean up. But I loved that he tried! He tried using the potty, failed, and moved on with his day.
Imagine if this happened to you right before a meeting with your boss. I'm sure you'd be mortified. I know I would! And most likely we don't all keep an extra pair of clothes in our desk drawers for this exact reason.
Something kids are great at is making mistakes. They try everything, often fail, and then pick themselves up and move on to the next adventure. There's very little shame, embarasment or blushing that occurs in the face of failure. Feeling this way is something we learn later in life as we start to develop ego.
Learning to pick ourselves up after a failure is a skill I love to teach adults. It's really really imporatnt with all the chagnes that are going on at work, in our lives and the broader world to get comfortable with the idea of being a beginner or non-expert in a lot of things. If you fear that mindset, you'll trap yourself in doing the same things, the same way over and over again. This might be fine for your weekly lunch order at the $20 salad place, but if this is your approach to new technology, job responsibiliies, leadership and relationships, you're going to be sunk. And sunk fast.
Try this - Improvisers use a tool called the "failure bow" to help people recover from mistakes on stage. Any time someone in an improv practice (or show!) completely drops the ball, they stick their arms up, yell out "I failed!" and take a little bow for themselves. It's a quick and simple way to 1) Acknoweldge the error 2)Take accountability and 3) Move on!
Why this works - 1) It's fast - It avoids the "woe is me" mindset and gets the error off your mind 2) It's public - it shows everyone you understand what happened, and that they don't need to remind you or point it out 3)It's silly - don't underestimate the value of being self-deprecating. Leaders that show they can laugh at themselves have been scientifically proven to enhance team communcation and trust (link: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10166087/)
So try this next time you botch something - take a little bow, and move on.