Modern Dilemmas: Learn to forgive yourself and move on – don't be a martyr

Dear Alex – The sales team I'm a part of were recently up for a great reward, the trouble is I under-performed in the final weeks because of a family issue and so we just failed to reach our target. I feel it was my fault and that I really let the team down. Everyone is so disappointed, how can I make amends?
By The Newsroom
Published 17th Jun 2010, 12:17 BST
Updated 17th Jun 2010, 12:17 BST

It's not up to you to motivate your team but if you feel you would like to make good then the simplest thing is to make a small gesture of some kind to show how you are genuinely sorry for your recent team effort. That should be enough and from there as a team you should move on.

What bothers me though is how well you can bounce back from this without it haunting you every time your team is given a new target. As I have worked with many people who rely on their own consistent results to be successful I understand how feeling guilty or lacking of faith in yourself can cause performance paralysis.

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This leaves you feeling you have lost your hard-earned skills to do what you can usually do with ease and it can go from bad to worse and in some extreme cases destroy a career completely.

Your ability to be mentally strong is imperative, and by that I mean don't let yourself down by thinking that you are no longer good at your job. Putting what happened down to a blip rather than an over emotionally charged reaction will help your recovery time and get you back in the fold much quicker. The sooner you carry on as normal, the sooner others will too and the whole thing will be forgotten. But if you choose to make a martyr out of yourself and carry around the burden of your mistake then people will begin to lose their respect for you. Forgive yourself for what happened and do it quickly. Put it down to experience, notice what you can learn from it and then look to the horizon for your next challenge.

Let's not forget that you had a family issue to deal with that caused your distraction, so you do have a valid reason for not performing at your usual best and therefore another reason not to beat yourself up quite so readily.

Ask any successful business person and they will tell you that everyone makes mistakes and that's just part and parcel of life. Try not to make mistakes but if you do the more quickly you can recover from them the closer you are to mastering your job. It's the same in our personal lives too because making mistakes helps us to get to know ourselves a little better, test our mettle and give us a chance to feel triumphant over adversity which of course builds character and self-respect.

Alexandra Watson is a leading Happiness Coach and best selling author.

If you have a dilemma ask Alex by going to www. AlexandraWatson.com