Mistakes are an excellent form of instruction

Ashley Mwanza

IT IS an age old cliché that people learn from their faults and failings. However, these faults and failings must be pointed out for them to know they are there in the first place. When you make a mistake it is good to be upfront and honest with yourself, denial causes you to repeat the same mistake deceiving yourself to believe it will have a different outcome. Thus more emotional baggage and consequences taunt your trail.

Don't dwell on mistakes, but shake the dust off your feet and move on by avoiding anything that will take you down that path again. Sometimes mistakes can open up a new part of you. Identify what drove you to make that mistake and address it and make the needed changes.

You can only learn from a mistake after you admit you’ve made it. As soon as you start blaming other people (or the universe itself) you distance yourself from any possible lesson. But if you courageously stand up and honestly say “This is my mistake and I am responsible” the possibilities for learning will move towards you. Admission of a mistake, even if only privately to yourself, makes learning possible by moving the focus away from blame assignment and towards understanding. Wise people admit their mistakes easily. They know progress accelerates when they do

Mistakes are an excellent form of instruction. Unfortunately, once corrected, errors are usually forgotten, especially by the people who make them. We don’t like to dwell on our failures. That’s natural, but it also hampers our ability to avoid repeating errors. We need to embrace our errors and understand that they are the keys to more accurate work. Errors breed accuracy, if handled properly.

William George Jordan wrote The Crown of Individuality in 1909. Below are some powerful excerpts on the wrong and the right attitude we should have towards our past mistakes.

There are only two classes of people who never make mistakes; they are the dead and the unborn. Mistakes are the growing pains of wisdom. Without them there would be no growth, no progress, no conquest.

Life is time given to us to learn how to live. Some people like to wander in the cemetery of their past errors, to reread the old epitaphs, and to spend hours in mourning over the grave of a wrong. This new mistake does not antidote the old one. The remorse that paralyzes hope, corrodes purpose, and deadens energy is not moral health. It is selfish and cowardly surrender to the dominance of the past. It is lost motion in morals.

Musing over the dreams of youth, the golden hopes that have not blossomed into deeds is a dangerous mental dissipation. It adds weights, not wings, to purpose. “It might have been” is the lullaby of regret people use to suppress courage. Let us never accept mistakes as final. In the end, right living and right doing must triumph.

As we progress in life, we will continue to make mistakes. The key here is to step back and learn. Whatever lessons you gain from mistakes will be invaluable because you will not make the same mistakes. Lessons learnt stay learnt. Everyone makes mistakes. Nobody’s perfect. But the people who will come out ahead are the ones that learn from their mistakes and take that knowledge and use it the next time. Be wise.

"Flops are part of life’s menu. Everyone makes mistakes. High achievers learn by their mistakes. By doing that, an error becomes the raw material out of which future successes are forged. Failure is not a crime. Failure to learn from failure is."