{"id":172,"date":"2011-01-24T16:34:32","date_gmt":"2011-01-25T00:34:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/?p=172"},"modified":"2011-01-24T19:25:14","modified_gmt":"2011-01-25T03:25:14","slug":"oops-reflections-on-coping-with-mistakes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/?p=172","title":{"rendered":"Oops: Reflections on Coping with Mistakes"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sometimes I mess up. Not that it\u2019s \u201cmy\u201d fault, you understand. I have these foibles. Foibles are sort of mental gremlins that fuzzy my mind and generate errors. It\u2019s their<\/em> fault, so cut me some slack. Seriously, though, mere exorcism won\u2019t do the job, and what I\u2019m really getting at is that it doesn\u2019t help to merely scold myself or call myself names. On analysis, oops tend to involve a number of factors.<\/p>\n

1. A simple oop (singular) might happen when I\u2019m trying to fit a key into the lock and put it in upside down, or I\u2019m aiming for something and miss. Keyboarding (typing) on a computer or text messaging generates lots of oop(s) that are rapidly corrected. Just motor incoordination or overlooking an obvious cue\u2014easy to diagnose and correct and try again. Hardly registers, although the average person will do about 54 \u201coop\u201d episodes a day\u2014maybe more if one is writing a lot on a blog. But it gets more interesting:  <\/p>\n

2. Sometimes I don\u2019t recognize that anything was wrong. Sometimes there is no feedback until the oop gets compounded by other circumstances ending up in what the old early-mid 2oth century comedian Jimmy Durante called a \u201ccatasta-stroke.\u201d If not interpersonal, I haven\u2019t noticed that I goofed, made a mistake, was off the mark. If I\u2019m lucky, a proofreader will catch me and correct my error. (\u201cBut I tried to proofread it!\u201d) If I\u2019m not so lucky, well, a mess. <\/p>\n

3. Then there are times when I do get feedback, but didn\u2019t register it or know how to interpret it:  \u201cBut I scowled at you.\u201d or \u201cDidn\u2019t you notice that I grew quiet?\u201d No, I didn\u2019t notice. Or, \u201cBut I thought you were finished.\u201d Then I get a feeling of \u201cUh-oh.\u201d Luckily, I\u2019m with a very forgiving, generous spouse who works toward clarity rather than enjoying the unconsciously sadistic role of being \u201cright\u201d at catching me out. <\/p>\n

4. Sometimes once it\u2019s pointed out to me, I go, \u201cOh, yeah.\u201d I recognize what I did wrong and can fix it. But at other times I don\u2019t get it\u2014I couldn\u2019t figure out exactly what it was that I did wrong. For the other person to say, \u201cYou weren\u2019t sensitive\u201d or some generality like that doesn\u2019t help. <\/p>\n

This is an ambiguous situation because occasionally it wasn\u2019t in fact anything I did wrong, but the heightened sensitivity and imperfect interpretation of the person I was with. But it\u2019s hard to know who is \u201cat fault\u201d in these situations, especially if the other person isn\u2019t interested in finding out where the misunderstanding happened. I\u2019ve found this to be a common pattern among acquaintances as well as when I conduct therapy with couples or families. 
    So if I say, \u201cHm, apparently something I said annoyed you, but I don\u2019t know what,\u201d and s\/he responds, \u201cYou should know,\u201d that is definitely not helpful. <\/p>\n

5. Sometimes I know I did do or say something wrong, but I\u2019m not sure what part of what I said was wrong\u2014parts of it seemed pretty right to me\u2014or why the part that was wrong was perceived so? Lack of tact? Inaccuracy? Overstatement? Timing? There can be a number of things that can be upsetting. <\/p>\n

6. Here\u2019s a funny twist. Occasionally I get annoyed not because what the other person said something un<\/em>true\u2014that can be annoying, too, but sometimes that\u2019s not the issue: rather, what was said was all too true, uncomfortably true. Alas. It\u2019s a slightly different kind of annoyance, and I take responsibility for identifying it correctly: \u201cNo, what you said is true; it\u2019s just irritating that it is so.\u201d <\/p>\n

7. Sometimes I realize that what I did was not optimal, but I don\u2019t know what else I could have said, how else I could have phrased it. My wife Allee is generous in this regard, saying (without reproach), \u201cI hear you saying…\u201d and then fills in the rest of the sentence so that it would feel optimally tactful to her. <\/p>\n

The point of all this is that unless the complexity and ambiguity of the aforementioned issues are cleared up, mere scolding does little to turn the episode into a learning moment. And unless I learn, scolding only serves the tension-reducing, revenge-seeking, or sadistic impulses of the scold-er. (When it\u2019s me scolding myself, the part scolding is an introject of the not-very-good supervisor I learned to use in mid-childhood\u2014a time in which more sophisticated and constructive modes of problem-solving and tactful criticism had not yet been learned.) <\/p>\n

In mid-adulthood I psychologically took my inner critic and supervisor to an imaginary modern management school and he came out as an optimally tactful and supportive ally\u2014I named him \u201cUncle Bud\u201d and he has since operated like a savvy Jiminy Cricket (remember Pinocchio\u2019s conscience in the Disney movie?) <\/p>\n

All this is related to a common tendency people have to \u201cbeat up\u201d on themselves\u2014and this in turn relates to another blog entry called \u201cWatch Your Language<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sometimes I mess up. Not that it\u2019s \u201cmy\u201d fault, you understand. I have these foibles. Foibles are sort of mental gremlins that fuzzy my mind and generate errors. It\u2019s their fault, so cut me some slack. Seriously, though, mere exorcism won\u2019t do the job, and what I\u2019m really getting at is that it doesn\u2019t help […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,11,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-172","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-follies","category-literacy","category-wisdom-ing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=172"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}