Reframing Mistakes as Learning Opportunities

**Reframing Mistakes for Growth**

In this episode of *Practicing Connection*, Coral Owen provides co-host Jessica Beckendorf and listeners with a practical guide to reframing your mindset when you make a mistake. Drawing inspiration from her two-year-old toddler's ability to move past errors effortlessly, Coral contrasts this with the adult tendency to analyze mistakes deeply.

Coral introduces a simple, two-step approach that fosters grace and understanding, helping to turn mistakes into opportunities for personal growth. This method encourages building a healthy habit of self-compassion and learning over time.

We’d love to hear what’s inspiring you! Share your thoughts using the “Send us a text message” feature or email us at practicingconnection@oneop.org.

Transcript

Jessica Beckendorf: [00:00:00] Hi, thanks for listening to the Practicing Connection Podcast. I'm Jessica. My co host Coral is here as well. Today we'll be talking about reframing mistakes as learning opportunities, and Coral's going to be sharing a practice with us. Hi, Coral. What's inspiring you lately? Let's just rip the bandaid off and get right to the question I really want to ask you!

Coral Owen: Hey, Jessica. I've been inspired this week by watching my two year old Kai learning to bake. Biscuits are a very common request. I've also been digging into some sourdough here lately, but it's been really fun cooking with him, of course. But also just seeing him practice a beginner's mindset at its finest.

And this is actually something that is very heavily related to the practice we'll be talking about today, but I love seeing how kind he is to himself. Toddlers can be, you know, a little uncoordinated, so he tends to spill things from time to time, but it's really sweet whenever that happens. He'll, he just, you know, he doesn't make a big fuss about it. He just says to himself, "That's okay. Accidents happen. We can try again!" And I just, I just love that.  

Jessica Beckendorf: He says that?

Coral Owen: Yeah. 

Jessica Beckendorf: Oh my gosh. Did you teach him that?

Coral Owen: I think we model that at home, you know, cause we say that to him, but he says that to it, like narrates it to himself and it's just, it's really sweet. But I just think we could all use a dose of that every now and again.

Jessica Beckendorf: Yeah, that's beautiful. I mean, and like you said, what a perfect example for the topics we've been talking about lately. So we'd love to also hear what's inspiring you. So please share what's inspiring you by clicking the "Send us a text message" at the top of the description of this episode. When you click the link, your text messaging app will open and you'll see a seven digit number and the words "Do not remove."

Type your message after that and click send. Don't remove that number or we won't see your message! To protect your privacy, we won't see your phone number and we can't [00:02:00] text you back, but we'll share your feedback on a future episode. If you're listening on a computer, you can also email us at practicingconnection@1up.org

So let us know what's inspiring you right now.

- break -

Jessica Beckendorf: Let's learn more about reframing mistakes as learning opportunities. Coral, can you tell us a little more about the practice you'll be sharing and why you chose it? 

Coral Owen: Sure thing. So obviously based on today's intro, you know that beginner's mindset has been on my mind a lot lately. I was also talking with someone about cultivating a beginner's mindset a little bit last week, and I just, I love the idea of a beginner's mindset.

I love the practice, and it's really just a beautiful thing to be a beginner at something, and regardless of our age or proficiency in another area, you know, we expect to make mistakes when we're a beginner. And so, in other words, we're "failing." I do think that failure tends to be a little bit of a loaded word, right?

But in the context of being a beginner, making mistakes and learning from them along the way is normalized and it's celebrated. And so, if we could carry this practice of making mistakes and treating them as learning opportunities into everyday life, in context where we're maybe not beginners, It could be really, really powerful.

And so a key part of having or practicing a growth mindset, which I kind of feel like in some, you know, circumstances is like having a broad application, an all context application, of the innerst mindset in certain ways. It's simply adopting this habit of expecting to make mistakes as part of a human being doing life.

And it's simply impossible to live and not make a mistake every now and again, whether it's professional, personal relationships, parenting, hobbies, you name it, it's going to happen. And so today's practice is on how we can do this to level up and level onward in our day to day. 

Jessica Beckendorf: Oh, I love [00:04:00] that. You said, "It's impossible to not make a mistake every now and again," and I would maybe say every day and again (laughs). So let's get to it, Coral. Could you walk us through this practice? 

Coral Owen: Absolutely. So before we dig in too deeply, I would like to invite anyone who's going to join us for the practice today to grab a bit of grace and self compassion and just wrap yourself in it like a blanket.

It does take courage and it can be uncomfortable to do a post-mortem on scenarios when we're not at our best. So let's like kind of lay that as the foundation for today's practice, right? So to begin, think of a scenario where you made a mistake. It can be any space of life, even if it's a mistake that didn't impact anyone but you.

Next thing we're going to do, we're going to drop it into one of two buckets. First one is just a simple mistake. The second one is something like a personal limitation, things like that. So to just unpack those a little bit: a simple mistake is something that we're pretty practiced at, and we would probably typically get that right.

For these, we just need to wrap that blanket of self compassion a little bit tighter and acknowledge that we're human. And like you said, every now and again, every day and again, mistakes just happen. And so we just need to acknowledge that fact, drop any weight we're still carrying from that mistake and just keep moving forward.

Bucket number two is where we're going to dig in a little bit deeper. And this bucket is our collection of growth opportunities. And so if the mistake that you're reflecting on is in bucket number two, what I'm going to invite you to do is ask you two reflective questions. One: "Was this within my control in this scenario?"

And if so, number two, "Where could I shift my approach so that if this happens again, it will yield a more positive result?" So it's really that simple. We just take these takeaways forward with us. And this isn't something that, you know, will make [00:06:00] mistakes, big or small, necessarily feel comfortable or familiar overnight.

But it's one of those things that when practiced over time, each time we experience these friction points, and leverage this practice, we begin to find the value in them as learning opportunities. And I think also too, just thinking of how stagnant we would be without these areas of opportunity for growth, there'd be no feedback on how we could grow just to be more expansive, more amazing, more wonderful. Just as an individual, but also to the other people in our lives.

That's it. 

Jessica Beckendorf: That's beautiful. And it reminds me of how seeing a mistake like this or mistakes like this as an opportunity for growth, there's even sort of a little bit of a reset, like a, "Okay, now, like, what do I need to do next so that I can continue in my growth?" So I think there's even maybe a slight potential celebration point that you can move on.

And it reminds me of how, I was reading about this recently, where when improvisers make a mistake, they do this huge circus bow a lot of times. And there's a muscle memory in doing, having that little moment of celebration. And so, yeah, I think this sort of pivot point of like, "Okay, what's next?" Is a really great way to kind of move through that and move on.

Coral Owen: I love that so much. And I do think, you know, this is something that I have practiced personally for quite some time. And I'm not saying that to, to pat myself on the shoulder, but, you know, over time, there is sort of a welcoming that I experienced when I go, "Oh, I kind of screwed that up!" And sort of celebrating or welcoming in that opportunity for creativity of, "Well, how can I do that better?"

And bringing that problem solving approach to it. It adds an element of fun or celebration or just, it's a much more positive experience than the, "Oh, shucks. Here we go again." 

Jessica Beckendorf: Yes! Yes.

Coral Owen: Yeah, but you totally nailed it. [00:08:00] I love that. 

Jessica Beckendorf: Well, that's it for this episode. Thanks so much for joining us. If you enjoyed this episode, click the share button in your podcast app to share it with a friend.

We'll be back next week with a practice for leveraging forgiveness as a strength. Until then, keep practicing.

Credits: The Practicing Connection podcast is a production of OneOp and is supported by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, U. S. Department of Agriculture, and the Office of Military Family Readiness Policy, U. S. Department of Defense, under award number 2023-48770-41333.