Trying to cover up your mistakes might be an automatic response. We are, after all, geared toward success and making mistakes can mar that success. Not acknowledging the mistakes, however, can not only worsen our emetophobia but can result in even more detrimental consequences.
Not only can it pump us full of guilt if we try to pretend a mistake never happened or attempt to blame someone else, both of which are forms of lying, but it can eat at our consciousness and worsen our overall anxiety and mental health issues.
Besides, if we admit to our mistakes and take a mere second to provide a self-affirmation, great things can happen.
Those great things were discovered by a study published in Psychological Science. It found that folks who owned up to their mistakes but then gave themselves praise of some sort were more readily able to spot mistakes going forward and also made fewer mistakes to spot.
The bottom line? Self-affirmations really work! In this case they work to decrease your errors and improve your performance. Try them with other issues and see how high you can soar.
Check out the study: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23090755
