“Do the best you can until you know better.  Then when you know better, do better.” – Maya Angelou

Last week in this space the conversation was about how the choices we make are typically not permanent.  We can choose, and if things don’t go the way we like, or even if they do, we can choose again.  Almost never are leaders stuck in a situation without any options at all.

I thought more about that this week, but from a little different perspective.  Sometimes leaders spend a lot of time beating themselves up over mistakes they’ve made, or decisions that didn’t work out.  We all want to be perfect, and when we’re not, it’s easy to get frustrated with ourselves.

The best leaders I know don’t do that.  It isn’t that they ignore things that don’t go well.  It’s that they look at those things as opportunities to learn, as things that needed to happen on the path to whatever success looks like.  For them, even things that appear to be failures are really just building blocks for the future.

How do you think about mistakes?  Or at least, what you perceive to be mistakes?  Do you spend hours (or days, or years) regretting them?  Or convincing yourself that you’re incompetent?  Or, do you look at them as opportunities to learn?  Do you look at them as opportunities that help you find the path you truly want to be on?

Leaders, and the organizations they lead, need to have a mindset of growth.  They need to be focused on learning and building and improving all the time.  The only way any of that stuff happens is through doing things and learning from them.  Sometimes you learn from success; more often, we learn from struggles.

What struggles are you either avoiding or beating yourself up over?  What can you actually learn from them?  What benefit have they brought you that you aren’t seeing? 

Don’t spend your time regretting things that didn’t go the way you thought you wanted.  See the successes that those things led to, learn from them, and lead better today.