On the way to The Cheesecake Factory Saturday, my wife and I drove by the Venetian nail salon where she gets her nails done. It’s also where many local celebrities including Faith Hill, Amy Grant, Carrie Underwood, and Nicole Kidman have theirs done.

The Keith Urban song “I Want to Love Somebody Like You” was playing on the radio, and I heard the line “I’ve forgiven myself for the mistakes I made.” I pondered out loud “But I wonder if Nicole Kidman (his wife) has forgiven him for his heroine addiction”.

Later that night when my brain awoke me at 4:00 am with one of its regularly scheduled nocturnal thought eruptions, I remembered a recent episode of Grey’s Anatomy. The hard driving perfectionist chief resident Miranda Bailey, who never makes a mistake at work, forgot to close the child gate at home. It resulted in her infant son falling and suffering life threatening injuries.

If there’s one thing that you can never accuse perfectionists of, it’s failing to hold themselves to the same unrealistically high standard that they hold others, and that’s exactly what she did. Throughout the episode, she relentlessly and unmercifully beat herself down for making a mistake that any busy parent could make. Her husband forgave her, but she couldn’t forgive herself.

It's funny how forgiving we can be of others while being so merciless with ourselves. Have you ever wondered why forgiving ourselves is harder?

Perhaps it’s because of the way the forgiveness process works. If you wrong me, I can’t completely forgive you until:

Often we hear people who’ve done something wrong scream “I said I was sorry, didn’t I?" as if forgiveness must be immediately and automatically granted.

Of course, the timeframe for forgiveness is set by the person who’s been wronged, not by the person who’s done the wrong.

When you’re the wrongdoer, a burden is immediately lifted off your shoulders the second the other party grants you forgiveness. It’s like a judge has pardoned you from your sentence.

But when there is no other party, there's no one to grant this pardon. This is why it’s so important for people who beat up on themselves to learn how and when to forgive themselves too (Perfectionists of the world, pay attention!).

One way to do this is to set a timeframe and vow to yourself that if you don’t repeat your offense again during that time, you’ll forgive yourself. Once that time has passed, you have to keep your promise to forgive.

Some mistakes are reasonable, some are not. But mistakes are inevitable, in personal lives and especially in business. In fact, they get bigger and costlier the more successful people become.

IBM founder Tom Watson once had an employee whose mistake cost him $600,000. Tom was asked if he was going to fire the employee, and replied, “Of course not! I just spent $600,000 training him. Why would I want somebody to hire his experience?”

While speaking in Rome, Georgia in March of last year, I discovered a mistake I’d been making that had cost me approximately $1.2 million over the previous six years. I beat up on myself for exactly three hours – the time it took me to drive back to Nashville. Then I made the decision that while I wished I had discovered it earlier, I would be grateful I figured it out before another six years went by.

If one of your good employees – or you yourself – screwed up in a major way in 2007 and are still hanging on to it, now is a great time to have one of “those conversations” about it. Just as doing something outstanding last year does not make one a great employee this year, making mistakes last year doesn't make one a bad employee this year -- as long as they're not still holding on to it.

This was portrayed perfectly in last night's NFC championship football game that determined who would go to the Super Bowl.

Despite having kicked two field goals that had the New York Giants tied with the Green Bay Packers, New York's Lawrence Tynes missed two late field goal attempts that could have won the game. His boss, Coach Tom Coughlin, was caught on camera verbally pummeling Tynes for one of his costly failures.

As the game was forced into overtime, the TV commentator said that it better not come down to another field goal attempt for Tynes, because he couldn't have much confidence left.

As fate would have it, that's exactly what happened. Tynes was called out for a fifth attempt with the entire country watching after he had been publicly humiliated by his boss. It was a long 47 yards in brutal conditions with a frigid Wisconsin wind and below zero temps.

No one would have been surprised if he  missed again, but he didn't.

That football sailed right through the goalposts, propelling his improbable Cinderella story team to the Super Bowl, and making himself a real hero in the process. I suspect that he's forgiven himself for the mistakes he made in that game.

Now that 2008 is upon us, it’s time to look at the mistakes of 2007 as an investment into learning how to do things better this year. As Vince Gill sang, “There ain’t no future in the past”.

To Your Success,

P.S. Speaking of succeeding in 2008, now is also the time to send in one of your New Year’s resolutions if you haven’t yet done so. Click here now.