Making mistakes is part of our everyday lives. Instead of being bitter about your mishaps or constantly try to avoid them at all, why not use them to your advantage? April Shprintz explains how to use your mistakes to improve your mindset by sharing one of her most awkward experiences.

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Improve Your Mindset By Making Mistakes

I’m so glad you’re here. In this episode, I want to talk about mistakes. Specifically, I want to talk about how you feel about mistakes. Be honest with me. Are you one of those people who goes out of your way to avoid ever making a mistake? You try so hard to be perfect. That was younger me. 100%. Are you one of those people who goes with the flow and figures, “Some mistakes will be made, but we’ll be doing awesome things so it’s fine.” Maybe you’re one of those people who looks forward to making mistakes because the more mistakes you make, the more chances you’re taking, the more things you’re learning, the better your life is getting overall. That’s the goal.

 

When you look at mistakes in a different way as an opportunity, that reframes everything in life. It makes you more willing to go after the things you want. It makes you less worried that you’re going to look crazy while you’re doing it. It allows you to enjoy the process more. For me, I really have turned around the way I thought about mistakes over the last couple of years because I used to be ashamed of them. I would want to hide them. I wouldn’t want anyone to know.

When you look at mistakes differently, it makes you more willing to go after the things you want in life and become less worried that you look crazy while doing it. Share on X

Now, I’m leading with mistakes. I don’t know if you see any of the stuff that I do on social media, but every Friday, I do something called a Fail Friday. It is where I pull from the hundreds of mistakes that I’ve made throughout my life and career or that very week and share with people what I learn. It really changes the way that you feel about things.

 

One Awkward Moment

I’m going to give you an example. This is a Fail Friday I did. It’s a funny story. I can’t believe I haven’t told it here before. An organization that I love to support and volunteer with is called Warrior Rising. It helps veteran entrepreneurs. Not long ago, they did a business shower at a big gala in San Antonio. I was at the gala event and was walking through. There were a bunch of men who were super excited and trying to take a photo on a phone and I offered to take the picture for them. I do this for people all the time. I hate when people are stuck with selfies because there isn’t someone to take their photo.

I go to take the photo with them again. They’re very excited, and they’re insistent that I take a photo with one of the gentlemen as well. I’m like, “Okay.” I go to take the photo and I’m standing there beside him. All of a sudden, this man who’s about maybe 6’, 6’1”, or something like that, and I’m in heels, his fist starts coming towards my face. I was a little caught off guard. I thought, “Maybe he wants to do a fist bump,” so I fist bump with him.

I didn’t see his reaction at the moment because we were taking a picture, but it was a live photo so you could see what happened. I saw afterward that I made him feel awkward. He gave me this look like, “This woman is crazy,” and then he recovered because he is a professional. They wanted to do one other picture, so it’s me, him, and another gentleman. They’re both holding their fists up, so I’m like, “There’s got to be something to this. Should I know who this guy is?”

It turns out that gentleman was the keynote speaker. It was a gentleman by the name of Robert O’Neill who was the Navy SEAL who took out Osama Bin Laden. He was the guest of honor. I didn’t know who he was, so I fist-bumped him. It was a little awkward. It was probably the only person that fist-bumped him that night. It’s a funny story. It lets other people know that if you have an awkward moment, it’s okay and you can tell people about it. Candidly,  that is the only time an Air Force broadcaster made a Navy SEAL feel intimidated. Who knows?

 

Mistakes Aren’t That Bad

The point is this. We all make mistakes. We all do things that at the moment, we’re like, “Ah,” and hand slap the forehead. When we share them with others and let them be funny, an experience, or a learning experience, that retrains our brain to not be afraid of things and not be afraid of what might happen. That goes a long way toward training you to improve your mindset. The less you’re afraid of, the more you’ll go after and the more of your dreams that you’re going to make, happen, accomplish, and see the opportunities for.

Try this out. Try looking at mistakes as a funny story to tell all of your friends or something that you can share with your very best friend because maybe it’s really cringey. I have a few cringey ones too. If we can look at them as a way to entertain ourselves, a way to learn, and a way to experience life a little differently, we become unstoppable. Here’s to your success.