Whether you are a football fan or not, there is a high likelihood that you have heard about the “blown calls” or the “no calls” that took place during the recent NFL Championship Games. Everyone from the fans to television and radio programs continue to share how things went so horribly wrong and how these missed calls impacted the teams who are now not going to the Super Bowl.

There are even some who are pointing the finger of blame on specific players and coaches for poor decisions and ineffective play calling or the ability to score when they had the chance as the reason for the loss instead of the poor officiating. And we all know how this works too, right? It’s usually the fans of the teams that lost who have the most to say about the bad calls and refs, and the fans of the teams that won who place the blame on the players and team’s inability to score. It’s just how it goes.

Well here is where we stop talking about the mistakes and errors made by referees, coaches, and players and we talk about the mistakes and errors that we all make. There is no question that the mistakes and errors made over the weekend in the Championship Games will create new opportunities for more replay capabilities and rules changes. And the same should hold true for us, shouldn’t it?

I mean, when we screw up, make a mistake, make a bad decision or error in judgment, doesn’t that create an opportunity for us to make changes in our own lives for the better as well.

The answer is obviously yes, isn’t it? And if we are going to make those changes and create new opportunities for ourselves, it must start with owning our mistakes and errors. What I am talking about here is accountability, personal accountability.

You see, just like fans who end up on the losing side of a bad call or game, there are some people who will look at everyone else and point the finger of blame everywhere else when things go wrong in their own life. There are a lot of tips and techniques that people can use to learn how to create new opportunities that are born out of mistakes and mishaps, but believe it or not, what happens many times is that people who make mistakes look for a trick of some kind, or magic way out of the problem. Well here’s the trick and the magic: taking ownership and having personal accountability.

Even if by chance, our misfortune or loss came at the hands of someone or something else, out of each and every mistake, error, and failure we can find new opportunities. As many have said before, “It’s not what happens to us in this world that matters, it’s how we handle what happens to us that matters.”

Mistakes were made in both games, mistakes have happened in all of our lives, and mistakes and errors will continue to happen in life because we are human. So, we can choose to react or overreact, or we can choose to respond and look for ways that we can learn from our mistakes and create opportunities for changes, changes for the better.

How about you? Are you still caught up in the mistakes and bad calls that have happened in your life, or have you figured out how to create opportunities out of those very same mistakes? I would love to hear your story at gotonorton@gmail.com, and when we take ownership and personal accountability to create opportunities from our mistakes and errors, it really will be a better than good week.

Michael Norton is a resident of Castle Rock, the president of the Zig Ziglar Corporate Training Solutions Team, a strategic consultant and a business and personal coach.