Ever made a mistake?

Mistakes are part of the experience of being human.  They are part of the learning of life and sometimes provide us with the greatest growth on our journey.  Mistakes can also be traps, keeping us stuck in the past, forever recalling and rehashing the experience.

What is a mistake?

The word literally means “wrong grasp” (mis = wrong; take = grasp).  A mistake is simply a decision that we took at a particular point in time that has consequences that we do not like.  At the time we made the decision, we thought it was the right one – even if we knew it wasn’t the ideal decision, we felt that it was the best under the circumstances.  A mistake is therefore not something that happens to us – it is something that we did.  It is something that we took hold of at a particular point in time.   That was the past.  The present has revealed to us some consequence of our decision that we do not like.   If we accept that a mistake was a decision, then we are now able to make another decision, to choose to do something else.   While we cannot make a decision retroactively, we are always able to choose something else.  Even better now, we have the benefit of new information that will enable us to make a decision that hopefully will have consequences more to our liking.

Unfortunately, having grasped wrongly, what we tend to do is to hold on, focusing on the experience and the emotions long gone.  When we do this, we are bringing the past with us; we are living in the past.  There is no decision nor action we can take in the past, hence the feeling of powerlessness we get when we keep focusing on our mistake.  Our real power is in the present.  It is at the point where we look at the consequence of the decision.  In the present, we can make a decision.  We can act.  We can change things.

So, today, look not at your mistakes, but at what you are now experiencing and the decisions you made that resulted in these consequences.  Here are some examples:

• In a relationship that is not working for you?  You made a decision years, months or weeks ago to be in a relationship with this person.  Forever berating yourself about choosing the wrong man/woman won’t help – that was a decision you made in the past and you cannot change it.  What you can do is make a new decision based on where you are now – not what you should have done so many weeks, months or years ago.
• Overspent on your credit card last month?  Stop berating yourself about the gorgeous handbag and matching shoes you splurged on, and focus on where you are now – the debt.  You can’t undo the debt but you can make a new decision – reduce spending this month, find another source of income, return/sell the shoes and handbag!
• An employee not performing?  You can say “I should not have hired this person” or you can make a decision from where you are now to correct the situation.  The choices are endless – coaching, retraining, placing the person in another job, firing.

Oft times we are asked to reframe our mistakes as learning experiences.  Yes, there is learning to be had, but this learning is only of value if we make a decision that will create a new experience.

Learn from “grasping wrongly” – but also make sure to let go and move forward with new choices and decisions.