Own It!

Own It – No Excuse

Recently I learned a great lesson on bad decision making. Even though my decision had good intentions; I did not follow through with what I said I did. I could sit here and give excuses or play the blame game, but I won’t.

I will OWN IT. By doing this I am saying I made a mistake and I am sorry.

We in the fire service have run into a problem one time or another and it is hard when we have to face a mistake that we made. Most of these situations are harmless and good learning experiences, but OWN IT, give no excuses, learn from it and move forward.

Don’’t dwell on something you cannot change because it has already happened. We cannot correct the past, but we can our future actions.

For the more serious offences you better OWN IT right away. The more we try to give excuses or lie which is the worst thing to do; all we are doing is digging our own grave.

We all make mistakes; it does not mean we are a bad person it just means we need to stop and think about what we are doing and ask ourselves is this right, ethical or moral?

Someone once taught me to look at things from a balcony; if we can see from above that the we are about to make a bad decision then from our level on the ground it is a no brainer, don’t do it.

Own our mistakes, it’s okay we all make them. Learn from them so they can empower us to not make them again. Remember give no excuses, do not lie and explain your thought process so everyone can understand what we were thinking so we can correct or change our thought process.

The process is stressful, as I know, but the quicker we own it and learn from it the quicker we can move on from it in a positive manner. In a future article we will explore eight steps on recovering from our bad decisions.