• Skip to main content
  • Skip to footer

Kevin W. McCarthy

The Professor of On-Purpose

  • Book Kevin to Speak
    • Programs
    • Be On-Purpose®
    • Making Meaningful Money™
    • Leadership Mettle™
    • TOUGH SHIFT®
  • About Kevin
    • Endorsements
  • Blog
  • Search

New Age

Are You Owning Your Mistakes?

May 15, 2018 By kwmccarthy

Mistakes are inevitable, yet the fixation on perfection in our society is debilitating.

Whether it be lawmakers, bakers, payroll makers, or homemakers, the fear of making a mistake can flatten one’s life into a “safe zone” of mediocrity. Risks and loss are inevitable when one ventures into life or work with a sense of wonder and discovery. You are better off to have a mistake than to miss-a-take at what could be.

It is a mistake to view mistakes as merely mistakes.

Instead, mistakes can lead to retakes and become invaluable guideposts to life and growth of one’s personal growth and leadership. Mistakes open doors to learning or blaze new pathways that might otherwise go undiscovered.

  • “Mistakes” enabled Thomas Edison to discover 9,999 ways a light bulb couldn’t work. And in the process, he developed a reliable means of tracking research and increasing his knowledge of elements.
  • “Mistakes” created the Post-It® Note. “Mistakes” often open doors to new frontiers of thought, use, and development.

Just Say It!

“Yes, that’s my mistake.” These are the four magic words that when said sincerely are your path to a healthier and happier life without the stress and strain imposed by the pride of perfection and the need to be right. It will take practice and some hard swallowing, but you’ll be amazed at how much simpler life becomes.

Problem ownership is your best chance to open the door to mercy, grace, and forgiveness. The risk of owning up has a downside of consequences, but it also has the upside of building trust and rapport. In practical terms, when the mistake is out in the open versus covered-up, a solution or fix will happen sooner and with less cost.

Take Your Mistakes Like A Leader

When we make a mistake, our natural reaction is to be defensive. We retreat and distance ourselves from the mistake and then look to whom we can pass off the blame. Shedding responsibility for a mistake may momentarily soothe the psyche, but each pass of the buck creates a self-inflicted bite upon one’s soul.

Admittedly, most of us prefer to cover our mistakes under a blanket of embarrassment, shame, or self-pity. Stopping dead in our tracks at our mistakes to point fingers at people, circumstances, and systems invites a bitter and negative stronghold to enter our emotional and spiritual system. We’re stuck in a self-imposed unhealthy manner of living that taints every aspect of our lives. Now that’s a tragic and true mistake!

Compounding our initial mistake with another more sinister mistake knits a habit of ill-fitted denial into the fabric of our lives.

Do this too often and we live in a straitjacket of fear of failure and bitter close-minded defensiveness. In time, the fear of exposure arrests our maturity and so we become the very thing we fear most—a dull and ordinary blank slate of a person with no distinguishing quality. We live small (which is different from living humbly). Repeating these actions and circumstances reinforces a debilitating pattern and fuels a vicious cycle of defeat.

Lincoln memorial cent, with the S mintmark of ...Image via Wikipedia

A Penny For Your Thoughts

Life need not be this way. Instead, what if mistakes are friends in the form of hard lessons? They’re not roadblocks, per se, but guideposts revealing a better way to navigate life. Mistakes can help us know who we are and what we’re called to be about with our special gift of time on the planet.

Mistakes are an odd currency of redemption. Their true value comes with a cost in the form of a workout where we have to face ourselves. Throwing “good money after bad” is viscerally upsetting. We’ve been given an intellectual and spiritual capacity to rise higher and dig even deeper to strengthen our condition regardless of the proposed outcome. It only requires us to admit our mistake and gain the clarity and opportunity to set things right—stronger and better than before in some cases.

Wisdom is often the byproduct of mistakes, provided we invest in processing the lessons to be learned. Here’s where a mentor or coach can help us reflect and grow. If you’re seeking that mentor or coach, perhaps we can help you?

Am I Irritating The Living Hell Out of You?

March 6, 2018 By kwmccarthy

Typically when someone is irritating the living hell out of us, this bothersome behavior provokes the fight or flight impulse. While the expression is often used, what if there really is more than meets the idiom?

How many of us find ourselves or someone close to us caught in a living hell within our body, mind, spirit, and financial condition?

There’s nothing worse than this sense of hopelessness except resignation to the hopelessness and denial.

On-Purpose® is about awakening us to face our “living hell” by getting to the core of our being which by definition is good, pure, and whole—our purpose. Here is the keyhole to the escape hatch into being true to ourselves.

Choose hope!

Putting a name on our situation strengthens us to face it more directly, boldly, and successfully.

Why not experience the promise of “on earth as it is in heaven” on-purpose? Yes, I hope tshareasimage(5)his message irritates the living hell out of you … and you’ll thank me for it.

Escape Your Living Hell

On a highly selective basis, I’m looking to mentor and develop quality people who want to build a true business as a coach. This will mean learning, ongoing dialogue and development, determination, and a long-term commitment to stay the course. You’ll be helping your clients get to a healthier place in their lives in the most robust sense of well-being. For you this means work, learning to engage clients, and growing as a leader on-purpose.

Interested? Email me why you think this sounds like you. I’m conducting interviews to work with 3 people.

Are You Happily Distracted?

February 5, 2015 By kwmccarthy

 

Warning: This On-Purpose Minute blog post has a sting. Proceed with caution.

Free From Fear February

Click For My Special Offer To Help You

 

We live in the entertainment economy. We’re so immersed in it that we’re like fish who don’t realize they’re swimming in water.

For example, the February 1 NFL Super Bowl XLIX drew an estimated 114.4 million viewers. Admittedly, I was one of them taking in the game, commercials, and halftime. Pro football is my sports distraction of choice along with suspense thrilling movies and TV shows.

I know these next two paragraphs will be controversial, but here goes anyway. When halftime performer Katy Perry rode out on a giant golden lion, Moses came to my mind. Remember Moses (Exodus 32) coming down the mountain with the 10 Commandments and seeing the people with a golden calf. Despite being delivered from Egypt, led through the Red Sea, and fed with manna from heaven, the people were easily distracted with images of gold.

Now compare tens of thousands in a packed stadium cheering and the millions of us at homes and parties who were glued to the TV in utter fascination as this tiny singer decked in flames entered the arena strapped atop the golden king of the jungle. And we wonder why the Jihadists call us the Great Satan. Seen through their eyes and without context, we look like worshipers of false gods “deserving” of punishment. The difference of course was that God didn’t smite the Israelites, but thanks to Moses’ intervention they received mercy and grace, not murder and mayhem.

I share my disturbing vision to shock you out of the depth of the “entertainment immersion” to invite you to breathe the fresh air of a life lived more thoughtfully and fully alive. Think of this message as CPR for the soul. 

Be sure to invest yourself in the matters of life that matter the most. Go more deeply into the discovery of knowing who you are, how you were designed, and the difference your life can make in the world of the “happily distracted” who are filled but unfulfilled.

Distractions abound in an ADHD-paced schedule and life. Distractions prevent us from getting to clarity and building lives of maturity, depth, and greater contribution. When distractions become our way of life, the way of our life is passing us by.

How many times have you said, “I just want to be happy”? Perhaps you’ve said it about your children, too. To be happy is certainly a worthy emotional state. 

A smiley by Pumbaa, drawn using a text editor.Image via Wikipedia

Dare I ask …

Is happiness the true gold standard for the ideal emotional state?

Can we always be happy?

Are we entitled to happiness? 

Yes, I believe in the book title from the Minirth Meier New Life Clinic, Happiness is a Choice. I’m happy to be happy!

Perhaps my age is showing with my questions (and answer). Hopefully, I’m not a cynic, but a keen observer of the human condition. The “pursuit of happiness” as we understand and apply it in the 21st Century may actually not be in our long-term best interest. Too often the pursuit of happiness is the unhealthy avoidance of reality. Denial and distraction are a dangerous one-two combination that take us down an unhealthy path of avoidance.

Happiness, for all its good as it is in use today, is a fleeting, temporary, or surface emotion. Happiness is circumstantial and has the effect of drug tolerance. What it takes to makes us happy tends to get ramped up over time. We need more and bigger to satisfy our happiness quotient. 

The more enduring emotions are love, joy, and peace because they are attitudes of choice, not circumstances. The matter becomes, not what can I do to be happy but can I be at peace regardless of my circumstances.

Viktor Frankl in his book Man’s Search For Meaning profoundly observed that those who survived in Nazi prison camps had a compelling reason and will to live. In essence, they made peace with their circumstances and captors. They lived until another day because they had a purpose, a reason for being.

Pursuing your purpose (instead of happiness) opens the back door to the prosperous and joyful life of being more at peace. Get off the “happy drug” of distractions. Stop paying the high price of avoiding being the true you.

On-Purpose Logo tag w color 500Frankly, we need you to be more of you. You’re the only one who can be you.  

 

 

 

 On-Purpose Minutes Plus 
Are You Prepared To Prosper?
Is Your Business Running You Ragged?
What Is Personal Leadership?
Enhanced by Zemanta

Nic Askew’s Film: Freedom From Stories

February 7, 2011 By kwmccarthy

Being on-purpose sounds like a great concept… and it is.  There's a harsh reality to it in that it stirs up stuffed emotions and realities more easily tossed aside than faced head-on.  Delayed emotions inevitably rise to the surface.

I'm a fan of Nic Askew's Soul Biographies series.  This particular film features Brandon Bays and vividly illustrates the cost of living in emotional denial.  Men may slough this off as "just another emotional female."  Don't!  I'm convinced that heart attacks – a major killer of men – are no different than Brandon's tumor.  Manifestations of ill-feelings can result in illness.

While Brandon Bays is a New Age spiritualist, I have to admit a bit of a smile as I listened to her deepest truth to be right out of the ancient scripture from the Gospel of John (8:32). 

Share your thoughts.  Also visit Nic's website and donate to his film making efforts.

 

Related articles
  • Will You Have A Happy, Healthy, & Prosperous New Year? (kevinwmccarthy.com)
  • Why Am I Fearful? (kevinwmccarthy.com)
  • What Is The Meaning of Life? (kevinwmccarthy.com)
  • Do You Want More Balance In Your Life? (kevinwmccarthy.com)
Enhanced by Zemanta

Footer

Search this site.

  • Making Meaningful Money™
  • Leadership Mettle™
  • Booking Kevin
  • About Kevin
  • Endorsements

Copyright © 2025 · Kevin W. McCarthy, Winter Park, FL