Last week I shared a newsletter about two mountains. Everest and Gangkhar Puensum.
You can read it here.
Like a numpty, I messed up the opening line. I think most people worked out what I was hoping to say.
I had some lovely fun comments from kind readers apologising for their pedantism (I had to look that up) and suggesting with winky emojis 😉 I should check twice and press send once.
But then there were a few, let’s say… ‘snarky’ comments.
‘Not very brilliant Heppell’.
‘This doesn’t make sense!’
And my favourite – sent in caps. ‘YOU MEAN ‘LEAST’!!!’
I’ve been running a personal development company for 25 years and in that time I’ve made a few gaffes.
My mate Patrick Kielty shared with TEAM17 his wonderful mantra on the subject of making mistakes, ‘No one cares’.
Miss a comma, ‘No one cares’.
Forgot to put the bins out, ‘No one cares’.
Mess up a presentation, ‘No one cares’.
Messing up the first sentence in a newsletter to 10,000 people, ‘No one cares’.
Well a few did!
So, I flipped it, messaged back thanking them for caring and reminded them there’s an unsubscribe button at the base of every newsletter.
The replies were wonderful.
‘Thanks for your message. Nice to know you are real person.’
‘Noooo, I love your messages’.
And from the shouty one: ‘NO PROBLEM MATE’ (still screaming 😂)
You could be thinking, ‘Well you care enough to write this’.
True.
But the message remains. And maybe it should be:
Made a mistake?
It’s OK. No one cares enough that you should feel bad.
As always, I’d love to know your thoughts below.
Be Brilliant!
Michael
comments
add comment
If we were all brilliant ALL of the time, there would have been no requirement for you to write a best selling book ‘How to be brilliant’.. making mistakes is what makes us human. ❤️
i love this. I read last week’s mail out and realised what had happened. I looked at the earlier comments on here and saw a couple of people had noticed too, so i didn’t comment. I knew what you meant, and it wasn’t spoiling my life, so on i went! I love how you turned it around, and the fact you can say that those people really, really cared to point out the ‘glitch’ IN CAPS!!!
oh Michael, this is the best. My mantra is slightly different. “No one cares and then we die.”
We all need to get things in perspective at times, especially when so many people are facing and enduring and sufferng such dreadful lives at this very moment.
So when someone comments about, say, how someone looks, or what someone is saying about something trivial or, worse, a mutual acquaintance, my answer is “no one cares and then we die.” I know it’s a bit dark, but we all need to appreciate what we have a little more, and care about trivial stuff a little less. AND I LOVE SHOUTING IN CAPITALS.
best wishes to you and the family
Jane
Interesting, as always Michael,
On this point, isn’t it interesting that you (like others in the modern era) believe that capitalisation denotes anger or shouting, when if fact it may simply be that the person forgot to take off caps lock or indeed may not know there’s another way to write.
This is exactly why I wrote my book about truth, i.e. we all interpret truth in our own way and that can change over time. So now, it seems, that writing in capitals is offensive, when if fact it is only offensive if the recipient chooses to perceive it that way. It’s all about choice (perhaps the title of your next book or perhaps mine?).
All the best, love it as always.
Love this response, how you dealt with it 🦋
I saw the mistake Michael, but it firmly sat at a ‘1’ on my Shitometer! (If that!) I’ve also expanded the function and purpose of the Shitomter since I wrote that book. (It’s becoming an incredibly versatile tool – something of a Swiss Army Knife for managing emotions.)
So in this instance, the scale of 1-10 can also represent the number of shits to give any given situation, and you can probably guess where this particular mistake sat! Some people really do need some perspective in life!
Michael, a mistake is just a small misstep in the grand dance of life. Patrick Kielty’s mantra, “No one cares,” is liberating, freeing us from perfectionism. But, some people do care, and that’s what makes us human and builds communities. In the end, it’s not about whether others care, but how we respond to our mistakes. Do we berate ourselves or own up, fix what we can, and move on with a smile? I choose the latter, because life’s too short to fret over the small stuff.
It’s the difference between aggression and assertion. With assertion everyone feels ok !
Even brilliant humans can’t be brilliant all the time, or they wouldn’t be human!
A bad experience in a bad job years ago makes me cringe and fret over every mistake I make, and gives me an overriding need to be right. I’m trying to unlearn all that now, at 49. It’s slow going and sometimes hard, and today I needed to read your piece, that no one cares. Thank you.
Nobody cares! (Written in small caps)
Your newsletter intrigued me as I’d never heard of Gangkhar Puensum until then!
I often see posts, tweets, texts etc with a ‘typo’ but so long as I understand it, then I too don’t really care. I would never judge a person on their spelling at all as I know a lot of people with dyslexia, I personally suffer from the Autocorrect system! I also wouldn’t judge them on their mistakes, it’s their ability to admit them and move on that I prefer to focus on.
At work once, many years ago, the top bosses got together to decide on a new name for all the Covert teams when they created regional teams. These bosses were all above Chief Superintendent rank. So far only East and West was staffed, so they focussed on those to start. I was just there to take the notes. Halfway through one of them presented the new maps for the area complete with new names, Covert Unit – East Team was born.
They carried on discussing staffing levels for the new to be formed south team. I started to laugh, the then Chair shot me a look and asked what was funny. At that point I realised no one else had seen it, I looked up at the board which had Covert Unit – East Team, Covert Unit – West Team written on it and said… “nothing Sir, I was just going to suggest some people who would really suit the North Team!”
Only then, did they realist what the acronym would be! Needless to say, these changes were never implemented.
I found it very liberating when I heard Patrick Keilty say that. I laughed a lot but I took that valuable piece of wisdom on board. I’m sure you’ll survive this. I dictate into a phone that can’t spell and sometimes the results are so funny that I send them unamended. We all need to lighten up. You help us to do so. Keep it up
Bob Ross always used to say:
“We don’t make mistakes, we have happy accidents”.
Since I watched Patrick Keilty on Team17 and heard his no-one cares dialogue, I have carried this with me and it has liberated certain aspects of work/life. I’m slightly embarrassed that I don’t recall reading your mistake initially, and don’t think I missed the intention/meaning despite this. Having wasted far too much time and effort dwelling on my own mistakes in the past, you and your many inspirational speakers and followers have shown me how life can be navigated without regrets and that imperfection creates opportunities.
Aww Michael. I noticed the minor error, and it did make me smile, but I completely understood the point you were making, so did it matter? Not to me.
Everyone makes mistakes and when it’s our turn, we’ll hope and maybe even expect others to ‘cut us some slack’. In preparation for that, I suggest we should all learn to let each other off the hook whenever possible.
Its my pet hate on social media when I see the grammar/ spelling police 👮♀️ detective inspectors on patrol. I wonder and often do comment about where the kindness is in making someone perhaps feels stupid. People have different literacy levels, English may not be their first language, they may have dyslexia, or simply have made a mistake, mistyped, been in a hurry, got distracted, keyboard key stuck. Who knows? But who cares??? Just accept, be kind and move along, no Detective Inspector Grammarly needed!