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inspiration

Life = Mistakes

Are you being too hard on yourself because of mistakes you have made?

If you are going to be defined by your mistakes, let it be to the extent that you have learned the valuable lessons from them, discarded the rest, and are now better off because of them.

O. N. Rowe

At birth we are a blank slate, with our only ‘experience’ being a total reliance on our Mother while in the womb. We learn to rely on our Mom for nourishment, and develop trust.

As we grow older we learn based on our experiences and our observations of the world around us. Some of our experiences teach us what works or doesn’t work, what causes pleasure or pain, what helps us to grow or what keeps us back. Through it all, we make mistakes – sometimes lots. The lessons we learn help to inform how we behave when facing similar situations in future. When we make mistakes, the experience helps us to change our behaviour.

Unfortunately we are sometimes our worst critic, and a mistake is blown up far greater than it deserves. When that happens we become paralyzed by the fear of repeating our mistake. The old adage ‘once bitten, twice shy’ captures the psychological struggle we generally engage in after some of our mistakes. On one hand, experience can help to assure future successes; on the other hand, a mistake can shatter our confidence.

It might be that others around us also compound this by always seeking to ‘rub in’ our mistakes, instead of providing encouragement to get up on the horse again and to continue fighting. Don’t let the nay-sayers thwart your enthusiasm, nor keep you from trying again.

Regardless of how we respond to our mistakes, we are better off when we see them for what they really are: experience. When we do that, the lessons learned can be of such value that we will recognize that a mistake can be a terrible thing to waste.

What’s the biggest mistake you have ever made? What is the biggest lesson that you learned from a past experience? If answered truthfully, you might just find that they are related.

When put into their rightful place, mistakes serve as important sources of learning.