How We Can Truly Learn From Our Mistakes
Don't fall completely apart when you fail. Instead, build yourself a new story.
Failure can be devastating. Failure can literally make you want to fall into pieces. One of the hardest things to do is invest your heart and your soul into something that you are working on and watch it fall apart in front of your eyes. But that's part of the game. This article is about something much more minor but just as critical to your future success.
Mistakes.
The ability to make mistakes and learn from those mistakes is one of the most crucial elements in being able to become a success. While mistakes are not as bad as complete failures, they allow us to course correct without watching everything fall apart. If you can learn from your mistakes and what they are trying to teach you, you can get back on the path you were meant to be on without being knocked off completely.
While you can learn a whole lot from seeing things work you usually are going to learn the most from seeing things not work. Take Edison for example. Edison tried to invent the light bulb over 1,000 times and never succeeded. When he was asked what he learned from failing so much, he simply replied that he had found over a thousand ways not to make a light bulb. That's called learning from your mistakes.
What truly mattered though was the undeniable fact that he didn't let his mistakes discourage him. He knew better than anyone that it was all part of the journey and at the end he would be surrounded in light. He eventually was.
We all mess up from time to time, that's inevitable. We are going to have moments where we fail to be ourselves and who we are capable of being. We are going to be "outside of ourselves" sometimes. That's fine and it's a completely natural part of life. The only thing to avoid is to turn these mistakes into our failures as a person. Then, when you become a failure, things get really hard to recover from.
So how can you avoid this?
Own it. Own your mistakes. This is when we truly learn. This is when we grow. It's one of the hardest things in the world to take a good hard look at yourself in the mirror and say, "I have done something wrong and I'm going to fix it. I have let myself down." But as hard as that is our owning up to mistakes is probably one of the most powerful things we possess.
By taking full responsibility for your life, you're going to be able to live the life you were meant to live - guilt free.
Be the best person you can be. Own your path.
Failure can be devastating. Failure can literally make you want to fall into pieces. One of the hardest things to do is invest your heart and your soul into something that you are working on and watch it fall apart in front of your eyes. But that's part of the game. This article is about something much more minor but just as critical to your future success.
Mistakes.
The ability to make mistakes and learn from those mistakes is one of the most crucial elements in being able to become a success. While mistakes are not as bad as complete failures, they allow us to course correct without watching everything fall apart. If you can learn from your mistakes and what they are trying to teach you, you can get back on the path you were meant to be on without being knocked off completely.
While you can learn a whole lot from seeing things work you usually are going to learn the most from seeing things not work. Take Edison for example. Edison tried to invent the light bulb over 1,000 times and never succeeded. When he was asked what he learned from failing so much, he simply replied that he had found over a thousand ways not to make a light bulb. That's called learning from your mistakes.
What truly mattered though was the undeniable fact that he didn't let his mistakes discourage him. He knew better than anyone that it was all part of the journey and at the end he would be surrounded in light. He eventually was.
We all mess up from time to time, that's inevitable. We are going to have moments where we fail to be ourselves and who we are capable of being. We are going to be "outside of ourselves" sometimes. That's fine and it's a completely natural part of life. The only thing to avoid is to turn these mistakes into our failures as a person. Then, when you become a failure, things get really hard to recover from.
So how can you avoid this?
Own it. Own your mistakes. This is when we truly learn. This is when we grow. It's one of the hardest things in the world to take a good hard look at yourself in the mirror and say, "I have done something wrong and I'm going to fix it. I have let myself down." But as hard as that is our owning up to mistakes is probably one of the most powerful things we possess.
By taking full responsibility for your life, you're going to be able to live the life you were meant to live - guilt free.
Be the best person you can be. Own your path.
About the Author:
Time to live your dream. Visit Evan Sanders' site The Words Of Encouragement, and dive into these Moving On Quotes to start the healing process.