Below, co-authors Joshua Steiner and Michael Lynton share five key insights from their new book, From Mistakes to Meaning: Owning Your Past So It Doesn’t Own You.
Joshua has worked in government, finance, and the nonprofit sector. After serving as chief of staff at the U.S. Department of the Treasury, he became a banker at Lazard before co-founding two investment firms and serving as an executive at Bloomberg LP.
Michael has spent his career in the media and entertainment business. He is the former CEO of Sony Entertainment and now serves on the boards of the Rand Corporation and the Smithsonian.
What’s the big idea?
The only thing worse than making a mistake is keeping it bottled up inside. Learning from the mistakes of others could help you embark on the healing journey of sharing and working through a mistake of your own, with someone you trust.
Listen to the audio version of this Book Bite—read by Joshua—in the Next Big Idea App, or buy the book.
1. Almost everyone has kept a mistake hidden for too long.
Michael and I had both made big mistakes that we buried for years. To write a book about mistakes, we needed to include our own—in all their ugly glory. Michael made a rash decision that caused one of the worst corporate hacks in American history. I kept a diary that embarrassed the White House and landed me on the front page of The New York Times.
But we also wanted to include other stories. So, we called some of the most interesting people we knew and asked them about their biggest mistakes. Everyone had a story they wanted to tell. A story that had stayed with them for too long and that they hadn’t fully explored.
