Learning to Unlearn: Musing from a McDonald's Midlife Crisis

As I was reminiscing over my 22-year-old quarter-life crisis - yes, I aim to live to 88 at this point - I recognized the lost art form of learning from mistakes and was stuck reacting in response to perfection.

Now, in the grand scheme of things, I am very young and still have heaps of learning to do, but I also have heaps of unlearning to do and that is what I was inspired to focus on. 

Surely, we have all been told in one way or another that "to succeed, you must fail and learn from your failures." 

🏀 If you played sports growing up, I can guarantee that you learned more after a loss and played harder in the next game because you had something to prove. When you win all the time, your flame is seldom fanned. 

📚 In school, if you don't do well on a test, you can't simply give in and fail a course (although C's get degrees); you must dig deep and study harder or differently to succeed. You've learnt past tactics weren't helpful, and perhaps a pivot is required. 

Upon reflection, that has become clear to me; unfortunately, that was never how I felt in those moments of failure. I never saw those losses as an opportunity for growth because leaders, bosses, and coaches struggled to clarify that. As a child, I often faced disappointment, and early in my career, I felt I disappointed bosses if I tried something for the first time and it didn't work. Low-quality leaders made me feel small and useless rather than courageous enough to make an attempt.

This misalignment in leadership styles stalled my own growth because I chose to stay safe and in my comfort zone and could never break past the fear zone.

At this point, you're probably thinking, what a boring sob story about a regular experience of starting out in the business world, dealing with "corporate cultures," and learning how to navigate turbulent waters. Fortunately, for my lived experience, this isn't a simple sob story because I did have super supporters along the way, which helped me reshape my thinking and unlearn the behaviour of staying small to avoid failure. 

During my time with McDonald's, I experienced heaps of personal growth. Although I made mistakes constantly and had to work through them, it wasn't until one day that a manager looked at me after I admitted to making a mistake and felt full of panic and casually said, "Oh, that's just a small mistake." At that moment, I grasped the idea of managing mistakes and leveraging them to learn. 

Rather than beating myself up over something labelled as small, I knew I had slipped up and learned how to overcome it. It was simple, and I felt more confident than ever.

Later on, in my McCareer, I made a big mistake by forgetting about bun pull, so we had frozen buns going into the lunch rush. Although this wasn't great, it wasn't the first time more senior staff had to deal with this and knew what to do. Again, it proves that everything is a learning experience, and you are only better for it. 

Surely, I will continue to learn and unlearn things as I enter the next 75% of my life and enter back into the world of startups, but I am happy to have recognized this and approach each day, week, month, and year with a fresh perspective. 

What happened yesterday only helps to shape who you are today; it doesn't make or break you. If something no longer serves you, give it thanks and delete it!