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Seven Big Mistakes Men Make


A man on my staff once made a mistake that cost our company about $35,000. He asked me if I was going to fire him. “No, I’m not going to fire you,” I said, “Not after we just spent $35,000 in on-the-job training. You just became our most valuable employee!”

As a man, you make mistakes. You can’t avoid them all. But you don’t have to make the most costly type of mistakes -- the type I call mistakes of the heart. These mistakes can be deadly. If you wish to succeed in life, mistakes of the heart must be avoided at all costs. Let me share some of them with you:

1. Blind Ambition
Blind ambition is an ego trip, not a mission. People with ambition at all costs will lose their brightest, most valuable people because they eventually see through a facade that thinly disguises them. Before long, the real priorities begin to make themselves known.

Traits and attitudes of the blindly ambitious person:
--Nothing will stand in the way of my success.
--People are to be used, not valued.
--The end justifies the means.
--The winner takes all.
--Those who don’t support my success are enemies.

Of course, the result of unbridled ambition is personal emptiness. The blindly ambitious are lonely, isolated by their own agendas and trapped in self-involvement. They may have accomplished their mission. They may have all kinds of money, but they are blind to the real meaning of their existence. In their path are strewn all those who helped them, but received only a raw deal for their assistance.

There is nothing wrong with ambition, but when it drives you beyond the line of humane treatment and integrity, it eventually destroys you. The only way to bring blind ambition into check is to become accountable to another and listen to the truth about yourself. Humbling yourself in that way is the first step to true greatness.

2. Manipulation of People
The man who manipulates people produces only temporary results. Instead of building a team, these men have a divide-and-conquer strategy. You may recognize some of their tactics:

--Manipulators pit one person against another.
--They withhold information and use it as a control device.
--They motivate through fear and intimidation.
--They use shallow flattery as a ploy.
--They explode when they are thwarted.
--They use underhanded means to get their way.
--They reduce people rather than reward them.

In families, manipulative people can be abusive. In companies, manipulative management causes inner-office turbulence, poor morale and disloyalty.

But there is good news: manipulators can become motivators. If they do, they will benefit just as much as the ones who work with them.

3. Pride
Pride takes many forms and shows itself through an arrogant manner rooted in insecurity. Both in business and family, pride gets in the way when men and women:

--refuse to listen and face facts;
--refuse to admit wrongs and say “I’m sorry”;
--refuse to acknowledge others’ accomplishments; and,
--refuse to negotiate.

Pride stands in the way of teamwork because it alienates rather than unites. It stands in the way of success because two heads are nearly always better than one, and teams often succeed where individuals fail.

People who love someone else’s idea more than their own are the real winners. Today’s new wave of management is not a prideful empire, but a humble system of servant-leaders motivating followers to greatness.

4. Shame
In some families shame is used as a means of control where children learn very early in life that they are unworthy of good things. Whether the parents are fanatical about discipline or highly authoritarian, a childhood with lots of shame can be destructive.

Whether our families made us overly sensitive to shame or not, all of us have failed in some way, and we have things in the past we wish weren’t there. Those shameful incidents or passages of time may cause us to sabotage our positive accomplishments because:

--We feel we should always pay penance for the past.
--We believe God is always going to punish us.
--We can’t see ourselves as successful.

The first thing we have to understand in order to embrace Christianity is that we aren’t able to keep all the rules, but God has chosen to forgive us and love us anyway. As Christians, we believe the price of our shame was paid by Jesus, through His death and resurrection.

Once that account is settled and you see that God has forgiven you, it is easier for you to forgive yourself. And that’s exactly what you have to do. Otherwise, your mistakes of the past continue to get dragged into the present, tripping you up. Accept God’s forgiveness and move on. Who you are today is far more important than any misdeed you have done in the past.

5. Fear
It’s not the circumstances that threaten to destroy us; it’s our own fears that do the damage. No one is free from fear, but some individuals courageously respond to it. Others cower in its face and are immobilized. Usually, apart from our typically human fear of death, our most debilitating fears involve:

--fear of failure;
--fear of abandonment;
--fear of change; and,
--fear of loss.

As we consider these possibilities in the clear light of day, we should be able to see that the worst-case scenario is never as bad as our unwillingness to take risks. Fear will prevent us from stretching our limits. It will block us from gaining new ground.

Much of our fear has to do with how we appear to others. And the fear of failure is far more detrimental to us in our careers than actual failure could ever be. Such fear keeps us from making bold moves. And when we do move and find that we haven’t succeeded as well as we’d hoped, fear of looking foolish again prevents us from picking ourselves up, dusting ourselves off and starting over again. The Bible says “The fear of man brings a snare” (Prov. 29:25). Truth is, any time we’re more concerned about what others think than about doing right, we’re headed for that proverbial snare.

Don’t be afraid of failing. Instead, keep your eyes on the opportunities before you, and pray for the courage to keep moving forward. An oft-quoted New Testament teaching states that God hasn’t given us a spirit that makes us afraid. Instead, He’s provided a spirit “of power and of love and of a sound mind” (2 Tim. 1:7).

6. Lust
No sexual misdeed has ever been as great as the pain and regret it caused later. And yet many men fall into the snare of lust and never get out of it. Although sexual temptation is always there, these factors can lead to a deadly obsession with lust:

--A need for stress reduction with no healthy ways to reduce it.
--A pornography habit that may have begun in childhood.
--A need for comfort, and no healthy relationship in which to find it.
--A need for attention.
--An unclear understanding of true intimacy.
--Anger, bitterness and resentment.

It’s important to avoid the pitfall of lust before we lose our balance and topple into it. In this sex-saturated society, we need to set boundaries if we plan to stay sexually pure. People with major lust problems usually have major ego problems. Some become convinced that they have needs beyond normal ones. Others have ego problems that go in the other direction. Their self-hatred or insecurity is tempered by the flatteries of romantic involvement or sexual involvement. These people get caught in the lust trap in a search for someone who can convince them that they really are not as unattractive or unlovable as they believe themselves to be.

Don’t fall for the ploy that has dashed many lives on the boulders of instant gratification.

7. Laziness
It is interesting to note that one of the original seven deadly sins was sloth. It was described in these ways: disinclination toward action or labor; idlenes; sluggishness. When you think about it, the definition of sloth sounds a lot like something we call depression. We need to be aware that what looks like laziness may actually be symptomatic of depression, a condition that can last for years. If you are genuinely depressed, laziness is not your problem. Something else is troubling you, and you need to find out what it is.

Laziness is a different story. The following will help you determine if you are inclined toward laziness:

--Do you find ways to avoid tasks?
--Is there a list of things you should have done by now, but don’t want to deal with?
--Do you dump responsibility rather than go to the extra trouble of delegating it?
--Do you say to yourself: “Why bother? It really isn’t important anyway?”
--Does leisure time activity (watching TV, reading novels or playing golf) become more important to you than getting things done?

If you said yes to more than a couple of these questions, you may have a problem with laziness. How do you change? Just as with any other bad habit, admitting you have a problem is the first step toward overcoming it. Then, overcoming laziness requires the one thing a lazy person doesn’t want to experience: work. You need to work on determining to finish a job, being accountable to others and making a plan of action to change lazy behavior.

Laziness leads to an entire lifestyle of self-destruction where every opportunity is blown and every challenge is missed. When you overcome laziness, meaning will be restored to your life because you will be living up to your God-given potential.

There are many reasons why people do not win and why they destroy their many opportunities to win. If you find yourself struggling, if you find yourself losing over and over again, review the list and examine your patterns of behavior. With God’s help you can change -- and win!

By Stephen Arterburn for “New Man” magazine. All rights reserved.