If you want to avoid bad things happening to you in your life, then don’t make bad decisions. If you want to make sure good things are happening to you in your life, then keep making those wise decisions.

How honest are you when it comes to telling the truth? Being honest with people is how we build trust and improve our credibility. Are you honest and do you tell the truth because you have to? Or are you honest and do you tell the truth because you want to?

1. Honesty

I want to be open and honest with you through this and my other articles. I don’t want to just tell you that it is right to be open and honest and tell the truth all the time if I don’t follow that up by actually being open, honest and tell you the truth.

By being open and honest you are increasing your influence, and you can positively influence others to think about the decisions they have made in their lives, and you can inspire them to improve themselves by deliberately making positive changes in their lives.

Being open and honest is powerful and can motivate people to be open and honest too and put in the effort to take action. By increasing your influence through openness and honesty, you are giving yourself a great chance of inspiring others to follow your example.

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Highly effective leaders use openness and honesty as a tool to increase their influence with others, and to inspire them to do the same.

When we make mistakes in our lives or we fail, that is when we learn the most. We do not learn more when we succeed in what we do, or we talk about our successes with others.

2. Learning From Mistakes

We also help others to learn from us when they listen to our mistakes and failures, so they can put those learnings into action to prevent them from making the same mistakes and failures as we did.

When we reflect on our past mistakes and failures, we can use these reflections to help us create the future we want for ourselves. In other words, our past experiences can be leveraged into the future we create.

Thinking about the bad decisions we have made in the past, when we have learned from those decisions, we can make a good decision into a great learning experience. By making that good decision, we can produce great results that again will create the future we want for ourselves.

In April 2011 I moved to Edinburgh in Scotland to become an engineering production manager. I was so excited because it was the first time, I had left my hometown of Liverpool on my own, to live in a different country, never mind different city.

After about six months of carrying out my new role, I was on the shift pattern, so it wasn’t a straightforward Monday to Friday 9pm – 5pm job. I was getting paid well and my cousin Adam was living in Edinburgh too, so we became really close.

When I say we became really close, what I meant was that we went out drinking together a lot when we had our days off. We would stay out until all hours of the morning, sometimes to sunrise when we went to the 24-hour casino. Anyway,

I was on dayshift, and it was a very tough day. Things were going wrong; the trains weren’t being fixed on time and my boss was getting on my back because of it. Then when my teammate came in to take the next shift from me, my handover wasn’t too good for him. So, he wasn’t very happy with me either.

On my way home from my dayshift, I called my cousin Adam up and asked, “Are you up for going for a drink this evening?” He replied, “I am, but are you sure because you’re back on shift tomorrow at 7am, and we both know how you feel in the mornings?” I said, “Of course, I am only going to have a couple and I just want to tell you about my day.” He said, “Fine, I’ll meet you at our usual place at 1730.”

I was 29 at this time, and I had been drinking alcohol since I was 15 years old when I lived in Liverpool. I used to hang out with my high school friends in the park and ask adults to go into the shop to get the alcohol for us.

I didn’t have any alcohol issues and I wasn’t drinking every day, but this particular evening in Edinburgh didn’t end up too good for me and my cousin.

The plan was to only have a couple of drinks each while I talked about my tough day. At least that’s what I told Adam in my phone call. But when I had my first sip, I could feel myself wanting to stay out for more and having a good night.

I felt that I needed to after my tough day at work. This was a huge mistake for me because we both ended up going to the 24-hour casino and staying there until 0200.

We were both heavily intoxicated and we both thought it was a great idea to spend more money on gambling, and hopefully meeting some girls.

As I say this was a huge mistake because I did end up meeting a girl, staying over at her place, and waking up at 0600 in a panic that I had to start work in an hour, and I didn’t know where I was.

So, I called a taxi, got my house, took a very quick shower, and ran to work (I didn’t live too far). I was so hungover and felt very ill that I knew I was going to be sick at work.

When I got to work, my teammate who was handing the shift over to me and my boss were already there. They looked at me and the first thing they said to me was, “Where the hell have you been?” As soon as they both said those words, my heart sank.

My boss pulled me aside and told me to go back home to sleep my hangover off. He advised me that if he saw me doing anything like this again then I would probably be fired.

He took the shift over from me and said he would tell the team that I was just ill, and it had nothing to do with alcohol. At the time I thought this was very kind, but when I think about it now, he was being a leader.

The day earlier when I made the decision to go drinking on a work night with my cousin was a very bad decision. The decision I made when my boss sent me home was to never drink on a work night again, and this is something I haven’t done since.

3. Making Better Decisions

Following the very bad decision to go drinking on a work night and stay out so late was followed up with a great decision of not drinking on a work night again, so I couldn’t make that same mistake of nearly being fired.

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The good decision has outweighed the bad decision and I can use this mistake as an example to help me with any future mistakes I make.

I made a transformation within myself that day that I can’t let this happen again in my whole life. I was 29 years old at the time and as I am writing this article, I am 42 years old.

No matter where I am in my career, I can’t let a bad day become an obstacle that I think I can remove through drinking alcohol. No way. Change is the foundation of transformation, and we cannot transform ourselves without changing ourselves.

The decisions you make today will determine who you become tomorrow.

I welcome hearing how this post has influenced the way you think, the way you lead, or the results you have achieved because of what you’ve learned in it. Please feel free to share your thoughts with me by commenting below.

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All the best,

Tom (Lead, Grow, Influence)