"A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing." -- George Bernard Shaw
For some reason this morning I was overwhelmed with the realization that I had messed up portions of my life. I wasn't depressed by any means, just reflectively realistic. Thank goodness I have the gift of balanced reasoning which clicked in with the thought that I wasn't alone. After all everyone messes up, don't they? To err is human, is it not?
Simple fact…you’re going to mess up, make mistakes, hurt others and get hurt. Big slip ups, little ones, ones you can fix and others you can’t.
Then, of course, you will not mess up if you do not do anything and I really think that there are some people who go through life doing very little for that very reason -- the fear that they might mess up. In spite of that type of paranoia, mistakes are inevitable; simply a part of trial-and-error existence.
And what if you do mess up or make a wrong choice? Rare is the opening salvo that ends up a homerun. Life is a constant stream of best guesses and course corrections. And, that’s okay. It’s the way it is supposed to be. Because, it is in the process of figuring out how to correct a course and recover that our greatest moments, our rawest emotions, our deepest humanity, our triumphs and relationships rise to the surface and define who we are.
Fact is, most successes are preceded by a series of mistakes. Some one said recently that mistakes are just signposts that you are one more action closer to success, but you’ve got to CHOOSE to see it that way. Because if you see mistakes and failures only as something to be avoided at all costs, you will end up shutting down and withdrawing for most of your life -- accomplishing very little. I call it being creatively paralyzed out of a fear of making the wrong choice. And that to me is a fate far worse than failure.
Certainly, we do learn (or should learn) from our mistakes and in the end that makes us better people.
We do a lot of learning in our lifetime, don't we? I enjoy having company on mornings like this.
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Oh, by the way...I hope you enjoyed meeting my new associate, Veronica. We're having a lot of fun working together.
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