Why You Should be Happy That You Make Mistakes
Posted: Tuesday, October 05, 2010
by Tony Hall
T H I Marketing
I love books and included in my small collection is the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations. This is a tremendous volume and the thousands of quotations by well-known figures throughout history are a great source of inspiration and motivation. Amongst them are listed over 500 proverbs -some well-known, some not.
All of these sayings have been around for many years and have been used as inspiration for all sorts of people in various situations. So if you recognize that you too can motivate yourself by reading them and acting upon what you learn, you can use them as an aid to reaching your goals.
One of the proverbs in the collection states,
"If you don't make mistakes you don't make anything"
Every day you will make mistakes, even if it's only little things like letting a door slam shut, spilling a drink, or tripping on the stair. They are all things you get a little annoyed about, probably utter a few choice words, but then move on and forget about them.
But you should understand too that if you are in a situation in any area of your life about which you are dissatisfied then it is usually in some way down to a mistake you have made. But most of our mistakes are simply a matter of making the wrong choice and to arrive at the current point in your life is the result of the choices you have made.
Now you may say I didn't choose to get into debt, or I didn't choose to get into an abusive relationship. Quite rightly so, but although you may not have made a conscious choice it is the result of a series of choices, sometimes made subconsciously as a result of the way others have influenced you.
Obviously as a child you did the things you were told to do by your parents and teachers. Hopefully they loved and cared for you and so guided you in the right way. But you may find yourself in a job or career as a result of their influence that you now wish you were not. That could be because they made a mistake in pushing you in a particular direction or you made a mistake in accepting it. Other people make mistakes too and learning to accept it is a vital part of your own development. Living your life by blaming others for your situation will get you nowhere. Accept a mistake has been made and move on.
About the only thing over which you have had no choice is your genes and the biological conditions you have inherited. You can't change them but you can choose how to react to them.
Making mistakes is not a problem and the point of the proverb is to understand that it is natural. Those people that you know by their achievements have only succeeded by making mistakes along the way. But they learned from them, made the necessary adjustments, and moved on towards their goal.
If you know clearly what you want from your life, have set goals accordingly, and are working towards them then you are doing right. But you will only truly succeed if you accept that at some point you are going to make some mistakes. You will make the wrong choices, sometimes because you will do things that you think you ought, only to realize later that you really should have done something else. That's fine. Just be sure to make a new choice, learn from your mistake, and move on.
Remember too that other people will make mistakes that will affect you. Sometimes they will appear to have acted in a deliberate or malicious way. But they will have done so by making a choice - conscious or not - that is wrong. It may be hard to accept that when someone does you harm that they have only made a bad choice, but by understanding it is so and choosing to accept it you will benefit greatly. The philosophy of "forgive and forget" really is the right one.
So continue on your journey to the life you want. If you find yourself doing things you don't really want do then recognize that you may have made a mistake. Examine what you have done to reach that point and see what you could have done differently. Understand where you made mistakes and learn from them so that you can move forward.
Congratulate yourself on your mistakes and the fact that you can see them. Because you know that those that never make mistakes never make anything.
This article was written by Tony Hall who runs his own business dedicated to helping individuals develop their personal and business skills. You can learn more about how to develop your own life skills and get your complimentary copy of "The Process of Success" by signing up for his weekly newsletter at:
http://www.selfimprovementskills.com/newsletter.html
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Top-level comments on this article: (1 total)I love your proverb, Tony, and I totally agree with it. I enjoyed your article, thanks!
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