Did I just screw-up?

Anyone who has never felt this way is a poster child for the unfulfilled life. Remorse is a negative feedback with destructive potential if ignored. It's also the catalyst for developing our potential if accepted and appreciated.

There is a story about a successful Active Investor, a business owner or professional,  who was being interviewed. She was asked to revel the secret of her success (a great question networking question by the way). Her answer was that success was the result of not making mistakes. This lead to a question on how to avoid mistakes. Her response was that experience would teach you how to avoid them. The obvious follow-up question was about the best way to get that experience. Her concluding wisdom was that the best way to obtain experience was to make mistakes.

The difference between an accomplished athlete and an amateur is not just natural ability. It's the experience gained from extensive training under the watchful eye of a great coach. Even small mistakes are honed away in hours of work on the practice fields. This repetition of action and corrective feedback gently and powerfully develops the the successful athlete's abilities on the playing field we all admire.

Life doesn't give Active Investors a practice field; but the coaches are very present. Everyone benefits from mentoring. This can be from those who invested themselves in us during our past. It can also be from a current network of professional advisers we can develop. It's feedback necessary for grwoth. Being able to get good coaching is critical; however, these are only our external coaches.

There are also our internal coaches that watch our play and seek to guide us. Remorse is such a coach when we appreciate that it moves us towards better ways to achieve our goals. The feeling, although negative, is there as a driver for improvements that inevitably increase lasting values. The feelings are designed to make us stop. Not for self-pity; but to take a moment to learn from what just happened and to guide change.

Our actions may now forever limit us in the future. Limitations in one area creates opportunities for specialization and excellence in what's remaining. They may be cause for an apology. This starts the miraculous process of healing. But, most of all, they are a basis for us to rise above our past performance levels and become who we feel we should become. We get there by thinking about alternatives to our present situation that will make us feel better. It may happen in a single insightful step. Recovery may also be from one slightly better emotional state to another as we recover over time. However, there is always some better feeling way to think about a remorseful situation and our job is to find and follow it.

Although mentioned in a previous blog posting this bears repeating. The Active Investor's emotional strategy when experiencing negative feedback of any kind should be to move from a position of judgment to a position of curiosity.These negative feelings are our sensors and guides, not our enemies.

image credit: TheeErin