Gym tutelage illuminates lifelong war on errors

A few weeks ago, I started working with a trainer at my gym.

One of my aims, I told her, was to improve my form on certain weightlifting moves. I’m not new to lifting, but I had never sought formal instruction beyond what I’ve learned from friends or what I’ve seen in online demonstrations.

It didn’t take long for my trainer and me to figure out that a lot of what I had been doing was, well, just plain wrong. (That’s probably not the word she would use, but it’s an accurate description.) When she corrected my technique, all of a sudden the lifts I thought weren’t so bad turned into a struggle.

I’m slowly getting better, but every session still involves a lot of correcting and adjusting. I know this is the whole point of training and coaching, but it nevertheless makes for a humbling experience.

I hate being wrong. I think most human beings would admit the same thing. As much as I despise the feeling, I’m getting better at sucking it up, admitting my error and working to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

Being in the journalism industry is a great way to practice this, because with daily deadline pressure, mistakes are bound to happen. And when I screw up, every subscriber, online reader and newsstand peruser sees it. There’s no getting around the inevitable “Who let that happen?” and the admonishment/correction that follows.

When I was greener in the daily newspaper business, I would be absolutely mortified if I was responsible for an error that got published. (They’ve been rare, but I can still remember each one.) I would get down on myself for days and fret over my future at the paper.

I still get deeply embarrassed when I make a mistake, but at least now I have better coping skills. Logging more years in the newsroom has helped, but it also doesn’t hurt to come from a family of journalists.

My dad and uncles have talked me down more than a few times. Their message is simple: Move on. Mistakes happen. No one is infallible. It’s toxic to dwell on what happened, especially since nothing can be done to take it back.

The best thing to do is to calmly acknowledge the error and work to ensure it doesn’t happen again.

Adopting that mindset hasn’t been easy, and I still tend to get down on myself if I screw up. But it’s easier now to return to normal after a setback, and often I’m even more vigilant than before.

This method of coping helps outside the newsroom, too. Working with a trainer is much more enjoyable when I use her advice to improve rather than beat myself up when I do something wrong — which, I’m happy to say, happens a little less often now.

“She Speaks” is a weekly column by the women writers of the Honolulu Star-Advertiser. Reach Celia Downes at cdownes@staradvertiser.com.