The Price of Wrong

“There’s never enough time to do it right, but always time to do it over,” so the old saying goes.

Yet when it comes to doing something wrong, there’s more than just time and money at stake. “Wrong” comes with a much higher price tag than we might think.

Okay, let’s first take a look at the obvious things we do lose whenever we do something wrong…

Time
The farther we go in the wrong direction, the more we double the distance we have to go to get back. Sometimes we can’t go back; and “starting over” isn’t even a possibility. Then we lose time trying to figuring out where we are, where we have to get to, and how to get out of the mess we’re in.

There’s also a lot of time lost when other people are involved. Even before you spend time fixing the problem, there’s all that time spent on finger pointing and trying to find someone else to blame.

Money
Yes, time equals money in many instances. If we’re messing up in business, it’s obviously a loss of money… but other types of ‘wrongs” can cost us cash – we could be using our time to make money instead of getting ourselves out of trouble, or we literally could have to spend money to fix the issues.

And here’s just some of the other stuff we lose, that we might not even think about right away…

Knowing “what if”
The difference between a successful person and an unsuccessful one, is that the successful person actually KNOWS what it’s like to do it right. They don’t have to wonder what it would be like “if only…” because they experienced it.

If we do it wrong, we can only wonder.

Self-Esteem
People take failure personally. We may come up with excuses and we may not want to take the responsibility for our wrong doing, but ultimately it affects the way we feel about ourselves. How we feel about ourselves will affect how we behave in the future – the choices we make; the chances we take.

Reputation
It’s not just how we feel about ourselves that matters; it’s also how others feel about us. If people think we’re someone who does things wrong, they’ll be less likely to want to support us in our attempts to do it right.

Another chance
Other people might not help us try again, or someone else did it right and now has what we wanted, or perhaps doing it wrong hurt us in such a way as to take away our ability to ever do it right. Sometimes all we get is that one chance.

More opportunities
Different opportunities happen all the time; giving us chances for different kinds of success; but having done it wrong in the past might put us in the wrong place at the right time; or the right place at the wrong time.

Opportunity needs synchronicity. Doing it wrong can put us out of sync for good.

Some things in Life are truly trial and error; and we need failure many times to help show us what works, by seeing what doesn’t. We should never be so afraid of doing something wrong that we do nothing, because that would be even more wrong.

Doing it “right” takes more planning, more energy, and more commitment in the beginning, but it pays off much more in the end.

Always strive to do it “right”; even at the expense of getting it done “right now.” The price of “Wrong” isn’t worth what you get for your money.