You wake with a start.
Mouth dry. Heart pumping. Fingers of anxiety clutching your chest.
Something terrible happened. Your mind is filled with relentless negative thoughts that can’t be calmed.
You made a mistake!!!
At least that’s what used to happen to me in the past when I’d made some humongous mistake. I’d be totally mortified with negative thoughts running rampant through my mind.
But not this day. This day I made a mistake. A really big, horrible, needed to be fixed as soon as possible mistake. And yes, it took my breath away for a minute. I might even have cursed a little, but that was it.
I’d hit a rough patch. But if I’ve learned anything over the years about mistakes, it’s that there’s no point in dwelling on a missed opportunity or worry about what I wished I done. No point in beating myself up and making myself miserable. That just doesn’t work.
So if you’ve had a rough day, or week or month here’s a few important things to know when you’ve made a mistakes. Things that I hope will help you put them into perspective, move on and come out stronger than ever.
1.Even monkeys fall from trees
And they’re designed to climb. So if they fall, they pick themselves up, climb back onto the next branch and away they go.
So when you fall, or fail, and you will…pick yourself up, brush yourself off and keep moving forward. You’ll get another chance to get it right tomorrow. And no matter how many mistakes you’ve made or how slow your progress seems, you’re a lot farther ahead that those who aren’t trying. Or who gave up the first time they fell.
You’re designed to make mistakes. It’s how you learn. As a baby you learned to walk by falling down. If you hadn’t fallen down and picked yourself up you’d never walk. As adults it’s all about being willing to accept mistakes as part of our human growth experience.
2.Become a professional
There truly are only a handful of mistakes in our life that have disastrous and permanent consequences.
As for the rest, even if it takes you a while to learn something, you’re building strength and resilience and a come-back power that will stand you in good stead in the future.
I have learned all kinds of things from my many mistakes. The one thing I’ve never learned is to how to stop making them! So I learned to become a professional mistake fixer instead. Mistakes don’t define you. How you deal with them does.
3.Keep your eyes on the prize
It’s easy to get caught up in the why’s and wherefore’s of mistakes. Don’t fall for this. Try a little mental imagery to keep you out of the negative thoughts that want to take you down the rabbit hole of regret.
See yourself doing something different next time. See yourself with a different outcome, all the while feeling that you’re reducing the chances of making the same mistake. This mental rehearsal sends a message to your brain that will put you on the right path next time a similar situation arises. Keep your eyes on the prize. You can do it with a little practice.
4.Being wrong sometimes better than being right?
Never feel badly about making mistakes. We often learn more by being wrong than we do by being right.
Life is one giant experiment. And you have a right to your mistakes. As Andy Rooney said there’s a 50-50-90 rule: anytime you have a 50-50 chance of getting something right, there’s a 90% probability you’ll get it wrong. So smile at all the silly mistakes you’ve made that got you to where you are today. The facts are always changing and mistakes aren’t permanent. Success is closer than you think.
[Tweet “Things will turn out best for those who make the best out of the way things turn out”]
5.There is life after mistakes
Intellectually you know that whatever the mistake, the sun will rise tomorrow. You will have a new day and a fresh start.
I’ve had opportunities to make most of the mistakes possible and found ways to recover from them and so can you. Once you choose to see that there is life after a mistake you gain a confidence that you’ll never lose.
Life got a whole lot easier once I accepted that I was flawed. We all are. We’ve made mistakes. And will continue to make mistakes. We’ve just got to take a good long look at ourselves and choose an attitude that helps more than it hurts, my lovelies.
Now go and make some awesome mistakes, make fantastic mistakes, make huge and dazzling mistakes. Break the mold of mistake making and make the world a more fascinating place for you being in it.
Encourage one another.
Love Elle
xox
12 Comments
I appreciate how you are encouraging such deep acceptance in this article, Elle. I like this reminder in particular: “Never feel badly about making mistakes. We often learn more by being wrong than we do by being right.”
Hi Sandra…as always I appreciate your kind words. 🙂
I love your analogy about the monkeys falling! I’ll remember that next time I fall.
Hi Deborah…thanks for letting me know you enjoyed it. 🙂
I enjoyed that your point #5 very much! There is certainly life after mistakes! It took me many years to let go of my fear of making mistakes and I’d like to continue to grow, in spite of them.
Hi Evelyn…it’s easy to get so caught up in our mistakes as they occur, but I wonder how many of them we remember as the years go by? So I’m all for forging ahead, making mistakes and as you say, continue to grow anyway. 🙂
Very helpful info, Elle. I’ve come a long way, but I STILL really dislike making mistakes. I reassure myself by reminding myself that mistakes are part of success. I love the saying that “even monkeys fall from trees.” I’m going to remember that one.
Hi Debbie…our minds are so programmed that it’s tough to feel differently about mistakes. Honestly, I think the best we can do is when we start sinking into that dark place of rotten feelings to remind ourselves of all the greats in life who used their mistakes as tools for greater success. 🙂
Hi Elle, accepting mistakes is sometimes hard to do and it makes us feel so guilty from within. But it is also true that mistakes committed makes us better persons. Thanks for sharing a great perspective here. 🙂
You make a great point Noah. As someone who now accepts I haven’t learned how to stop making mistakes I decided I’d better learn how to manage them, accept them as something positive in my life and believe something wonderful will come out of them. 🙂
Thank you Elle for such a lovely write up. Today was not meant for me and I have spent the whole day brooding over and over the same thing. I wished the earth could open and swallow me up. Deep inside of me I knew it was not the end of the world and mistakes like this do happen. But worse is when the other person keeps setting expectations that mistakes are not expected from experienced people. This I feel is wrong. Just like there is no end to learning, there is no end to making mistakes too. One definitely needs to remember to learn from their mistakes and not repeat and also be careful to avoid. But this doesn’t mean that one is not expected to make mistakes at all. And I truly believe that monkeys also fall off trees. Your article gave me that hope and that belief that mistakes do happen. And I am not ashamed to accept my mistakes. Thank you Elle!
Hi Padmashree, mistakes definitely happen. We all make them. We are imperfect human beings. The thing to do is to acknowledge them and apologise where necessary and let them go. We cannot keep re-infecting ourselves with the mistakes of the past or we will always carry the past into our future. Have a little compassion for yourself my dear and let the past go.