Tag Archives: overcoming mistakes

Life’s Best Teachers

Learning From Mistakes Of Life

everyone makes mistakes
Mistakes help you learn.

Life is continually teaching each of us lessons. We need to pay attention to the daily events we experience, our reactions to them, and even others’ experiences in our lives to learn something on any given day.  One of the things that I have noticed about myself and everyone I know is that we don’t like to make mistakes. When we do, we beat ourselves up for them for days, years, and sometimes, for the rest of our lives.  It makes you wonder why we are so afraid to make mistakes.  Are we born perfect knowing everything? Aren’t mistakes an inevitable part of growing and developing as a human being?  If you show me someone who has never made a mistake, I will show you someone who has never tried.  It makes me wonder why we are so afraid to make mistakes as a society.  When you look at our educational system, it is designed to celebrate the achievements of a select few, while the majority of students, who may be the most creative thinkers and eventually the people who would change the world, are held up and discouraged by this unrealistic expectation of our society to conform.  Be perfect, or you are a failure.  Why are we so afraid to fail?

Everyone Does it; what Are they Learning From Mistakes?

mistakes
Even Lincoln had a few hiccups before finding success.

We are afraid of mistakes because we have an unrealistic idea that successful people don’t make them, ever.  When you look into history, you see the accomplishments of our great leaders. You imagine that they never made any mistakes.  Throughout his life, Abraham Lincoln failed miserably at almost everything he tried until he became president. Lincoln’s brilliance was that he didn’t let his previous failures stop him from continuing to try.  He wouldn’t have been the wise and talented leader he became if it wasn’t for the experience of those mistakes he made in his life.  Lincoln was not perfect; he was the ideal leader for that time in history.  Today the media would not allow Lincoln to become President because his mistakes would be broadcast as an indictment of his competence rather than an example of his character and perseverance.

Learning From Mistakes Doesn’t Equal Weakness

Another reason we fear learning from mistakes because they allow others to see our weaknesses.  Most

we all make mistakes
Whiteout can’t cover up some mistakes.

When you make a mistake, you feel like the whole world is watching, even though there may only be a few people aware of your misstep.  We equate these mistakes with being less of a person rather than just a natural part of the learning process.  If you never made a mistake, you have never tried anything new, and if you have never felt angry, upset, and embarrassed about a mistake, then you have never lived.  It is not a weakness to try. The ability to fail, evaluate why it happened, make adjustments, and try anew should be the backbone of any great educational system.  That learning process can carry over into every aspect of your life.  You will never really learn if you don’t look honestly at your mistakes and take the lessons you will give yourself. Learning from mistakes is a talent.

Mistakes in Controlled Situations

One of the many reasons that extracurricular activities are so vitally important to society is that they provide a safe place to make mistakes and quickly learn lessons about how to

buckner mistake
Even a big mistake in sports will teach lessons.

Overcome them.  When you play on a sports team, you will make mistakes during a game. It happens you miss a shot, you give up a goal, you get beaten by a player with more excellent skill, but these mistakes each provide you with a learning opportunity, and it is your choice to participate or not.  Sports can teach you to persevere, be unselfish, identify your weaknesses, and work to overcome them.  If embraced and identified, the ability to follow the learning process in a natural workshop will allow all participants to grow.  Even if you get cut from a team after a tryout, valuable lessons are gleaned.  You can quit the sport forever or identify your weaknesses, work to improve them and try again.  You may not make the team, but if you follow the process of trying, failing, identifying weaknesses, working to improve, and then trying again, you are well on your way to success.  This skill can be applied to any aspect of your life.

Living  Your Life vs. Running Out the Clock

As we grow older, many people start believing that they are immune from making mistakes.  The experience will help guide you, and wisdom will help you avoid simple mistakes, but if you make no mistakes, you have stopped trying to learn and have decided to run out of the clock.  When you have a seemingly good lead in basketball, trying to run out the clock is common practice.  Once the clock expires and you are ahead, you win the game.  Teams stop trying to create offense and score new baskets as they are satisfied with their accomplishments and running away the time.  Many people adopt this philosophy in their lives.  They plan out their lives on a plan, high school, college, career, family, retirement, followed inevitably by death.  At some point during this process, you will hit a run-out clock situation, waiting for retirement or death. People seem satisfied and never make mistakes again.  Not knowing something can be scary because if there is something that you don’t know, then what else don’t you know? That can inspire some people but scare the ever-loving crap out of someone else.  Learning and experiencing new things is preferable to running out of the clock.  Try something. If you make a mistake, evaluate why it didn’t work, make adjustments, then try again.  This is the learning process that can lead you to ultimate success. Doing nothing and running the clock will lead you to retirement or death.  Good luck. Time to start learning from mistakes and not being afraid of what might happen.

Life is a Learning Process

Life, as I see it, is a learning process, and mistakes and failure have been given to you as a gift to help you find where you have weaknesses or shortcomings, make adjustments, and achieve success in whatever sphere you want to achieve success in.  Mistakes should not be something you fear, like a monster. They should be embraced, evaluated, learned from, and then discarded into the memory of your experience.  Failure is never final until you stop trying. Hug your mistakes and value the part they play in your learning process. Taking the time to learn from mistakes is a significant part.

“You make mistakes. Mistakes don’t make you.” Maxwell Maltz

“When someone does something wrong, don’t forget everything they did right.” Anonymous

“When you make a mistake, there are only three things you should ever do about it: admit it, learn from it, and don’t repeat it.” Paul Bear Bryant

“Mistakes can turn you into something better than you were before.” Anonymous

“Remember that life’s greatest lessons are usually learned at the worst times and from the worst mistakes.” Anonymous

“Don’t mention a person’s past mistakes when trying to change. That’s like throwing rocks at them while they are struggling to climb a mountain.” Anonymous

“Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes.” Oscar Wilde

Sorry

Sorry- feeling distressed, especially through sympathy with someone else’s misfortune.

sorry
In the game we played as kids, some never learn the value of the word sorry.

Life is a continual path of choices. Each person will make many choices every day, from when to get up in the morning to what they eat that day.  As we move along that path, there will be opportunities to do good things or bad things. To choose to be kind and considerate of others or to make decisions with our own self-interest at heart. All people are going to make decisions they are not proud of at some point. It is part of being human.  Recognizing the wrong you perceive is difficult, but we all have the power to make it right. Say, “I’m sorry.”  This is the first step in making things right for you.  It all starts with a conscious awareness of the things you have done and do which actually cause harm to others.  Your thoughts will reveal your emotions about the things you have done, the words you have or have not used because of them, and the actions you have or have not taken.  I’m sorry is an important place to start when building understanding.

Sorry About My Pride

Pride is a feeling we all have, and it can be a positive thing, but sometimes we let it get in the way.  There are people out there with such fragile egos Im sorrythat admitting they made even the tiniest of mistakes is a threat to their whole identity.  Don’t be one of these people.  It is your ego, or your false self, speaking these words.  Never be too proud to say you are sorry.

Good people make bad choices all the time. That is a part of the process of life called learning.  Be conscious of your choices and the way they affect other people.  Seeing that your decision hurts someone else isn’t an indictment of you and your character. It is a recognition of humanity in someone else.  I’m sorry is a way to state express your understanding of the pain in another person.  You see them, understand them, and will try to help them.  It is a simple matter of putting someone else’s well-being ahead of your own.  It costs nothing, so don’t be too proud to use this phrase.

How Can I Make It Right

Along with the honest sentiment of being sorry for your choice or action, the question should be; How can I make it right?  For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction, and we learn this from physics. It is true in other Sorryparts of life too.  Hopefully, when you have hurt someone or made a poor choice, there is a way to make it right. Even the worst of behaviors can be atoned for in some way.  It starts by taking responsibility for yourself and your behavior and working toward doing what is right.

Most often, the thing to do is to stop doing the thing that is hurting someone else. That is the moment of choice because either you will put someone else ahead of yourself or are not.  I’m sorry it loses its power if clearly, you are not sorry enough to change your behavior. If you are the source of someone’s misfortune, then show your contrition by stopping that behavior. Stop making the same mistake over and over again. Use them to discover how to live a better life.

Sorry Doesn’t Fix Everything.

Simply saying that you are sorry doesn’t fix everything, and even bargaining a manner to make things right might not do the trick. Having feelings about remorse in the way you treated someone is the first step in your humanity.  And who says it is your job to fix everything.  We can do the only thing to try to become a little bit better a person than we were yesterday. To leave a little more joy in the world and less anger and pain.  To understand where you were wrong, the mistakes you made, intentional or unintentional, and sorry for them.  You can’t control the reactions of others, and who is to say what their emotional state is?  You are responsible for your actions and the footprint that leaves in the world.  This mark begins by being more conscious of your thoughts, emotions, words, and actions today and taking responsibility for feeling and saying you are sorry when you are wrong.

“If we have made an error, done a wrong, been unjust to another or ourselves, or, like the Pharisee, passed by some opportunity for good, we should have the courage to face our mistake squarely, to call it boldly by its right name, to acknowledge it frankly and to put in no flimsy alibis of an excuse to protect an anemic self-esteem.” – William George Jordan.

“An apology is a good way to have the last word.”-Unknown

“Forgiveness does not change the past, but it does enlarge the future.”-Paul Boese