Nobody is Perfect. Give Yourself a Break!
The Pressure to Be Perfect
Police officers are trained to hold themselves to the highest of standards in both their professional and personal lives. I have witnessed this first hand with my experience thus far with our Sugar Land Police Department. However, at times we all can put ourselves through unnecessary stress by “trying to be perfect” all the time. Let me remind you of one simple fact. Nobody is perfect – 100% of the time.
Famous Failures Who Kept Going
Babe Ruth hit 714 home runs – struck out 1,330 times. Henry Ford failed and went broke 5 times before he succeeded. Walt Disney was fired by a newspaper editor for lack of ideas. He went bankrupt several times before he built Disneyland. In elementary school, a teacher declared Thomas Edison “unteachable”. Mr. Edison went on to accumulate 1,093 US patents and inventor of the light bulb. Edison and his researchers tested over 6,000 materials gathered from all over the world until they found the optimal filament material: carbonized cotton thread (1897). Edison appreciated failures not just philosophically, but practically: “That’s one more way it won’t work, so we’re closer to a solution.” Abraham Lincoln lost his bids for either the state legislature or U.S. Senate 7 times between 1832 – 1858 before he was elected President of the United States in 1860.
Fail Forward
The best way to experience failures is to determine to fail forward!
Decide to learn from your mistakes. We all fail. However, after we fail we can choose to either step back and learn from our mistakes or just ignore our failure. More times than not when we ignore failure, we are doomed to fail again.
Determine to seek wise counsel. No one person is an expert in everything. Choose to seek out those who are succeeding in the area that you have failed and learn! The Scripture says from a multitude of counselors comes wisdom.
Define the failure. By that, I mean this: YOU as an individual person are not the failure. Define specifically what the failure was. Then, own it, learn from it and improve yourself.
A Final Reminder
As we continually strive to hold ourselves to that high standard of being the absolute best law enforcement agency that we can be… remember to give yourself a break when a mistake is made! Nobody is perfect – 100% of the time!
