Do not let your mistakes stop you from achieving your goals.
Why would you want to hinder the progress of your goals? Because of a mistake? Everyone makes mistakes and sometimes, it really does happen.
Stephen Hawking said, “one of the basic rules of the universe is that nothing is perfect. Perfection simply doesn’t exist…Without imperfection, neither you nor I would exist”.
While everybody dreams about being perfect and end up questioning their little imperfections, for a second there, you can decide to look at the brighter picture. We learn from our mistakes right. In Mandy Hales’ book, the Single Woman, she pens that “sometimes a mistake can end up being the best decision you ever make”.
What are mistakes? According to the vocabulary dictionary, a mistake is an error, a slip-up, or something that was done incorrectly.
Mistakes are the regretful decisions we make and actions we take. It could be money or time wasted, bad attitude, missed job opportunities, friends lost, people you hurt, incomplete education, lack of focus, and many more.
They are regretful because, in the end, it could cause loss, pain, trauma, struggle, and many terrible things. But through all of these painful experiences, there is still a vast opportunity to learn, grow and achieve your goals.
Mistakes and their end result, regret, have a way of impeding our growth and stopping us from achieving goals. This is because most people have chosen to dwell on their past mistakes.
Mistakes help us learn.
When we sail through the whole chaos and confusion, insights and wisdom essential for our emotional, psychological, and spiritual growth are borne.
Mistakes teach us lots of things and we may not even notice these things because our hearts and minds have been locked. Noticing and admitting mistakes can open our minds to the knowledge of what we truly want to be, do and live for.
Ken Poirot noted that “wisdom comes from making mistakes, having the courage to face them, and making adjustments to move forward based upon the knowledge acquired through those experiences”
Mistakes are the driving force of our lives. Try enquiring from few persons and you’ll realize the situations responsible for their growth in life whether emotionally, mentally, financially, or academically fall under a series of mistakes.
While trying to achieve our goals and become successful, we may make mistakes, they just happen inevitably. Nobody is perfect, not even your political or spiritual leaders. Many people get carried away by the deception portrayed on social media.
So, you try to avoid mistakes, see them as negative, and choose to never make them without knowing that they can actually help improve your life.
“if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You are doing things you have never done before, and more importantly, you are doing something” – Neil Gaiman
This article is not for those willing to make mistakes but rather for those who made mistakes at some point in their lives and has since allowed it to take charge of their life.
It could be that since we portray mistakes as one of the bases for learning and improving, most people will embrace MISTAKES as a natural and productive opportunity.
Instead of letting your mistake stop you from achieving your goals and living your life fulfilled, there are many ways you can use mistakes to your own advantage. By learning from your mistakes, you can face your fears and become courageous, gain clarity on what your purpose is, who, and what you want to be in life.
Mistakes can also help us explore other alternatives, solutions, and approaches, can make us more compassionate, boost our integrity and also instill in us a teachable spirit.
But all of these will really not be achievable if we keep dwelling on past mistakes and handling the present mistakes improperly. If we choose to keep quiet, rest, and refuse to learn from our mistakes, we will never get to where we are going.
To live your dreams and achieve your goals, you need to get over your mistakes and handle them properly.
How to get over your mistakes
“remember, making mistakes is part of the process. The key to success is to make mistakes quickly, and recover quickly, and keep forging forward”- Kevin J. Donaldson
There is always an improvement when we change our routines, notice the missteps and discover new paths to achieve our goals. Mistakes like we said, are inevitable and can enable our success.
For instance, if you followed steps, strategies, and paths to achieve a particular goal and ended up failing, you made a mistake.
When strategizing, you’ll avoid those loopholes, redirect your path, recreate steps and you might just end up winning. You know why? Because you accepted and handled your mistake properly.
The following are ways in which you can best handle your mistakes, learn from them and improve your life
- Acknowledge and Accept the Mistake: you cannot accept what you have not done or deny what has happened. Firstly, you have to admit that you have made a mistake. Instead of finding faults, laying blames, and denying that it never happened, you have to accept it. Refusing to accept your wrong will only delay improvement and as such cause you more pain.
Owning up to your mistakes may be a difficult thing to do, calm down, take a deep breath and recognize your mistakes.
- Analyze Your Mistake: analyzing your mistakes would help you avoid whatever led to them. This particular strategy can help you identify the cause of your mistakes, and also help find ways to avoid a reoccurrence.
Ask yourself questions like what really went wrong? Why it went wrong? When it went wrong?
Whatever answer you give yourself should be very honest and really thought about
- Reframe the Mistake: instead of viewing your mistake as negative, start seeing it from the brighter side. Be more positive about your mistakes and think about all the things you can learn from them.
When you analyze your mistake, you’d know how to properly react to them and the next right step to take. This will help you reframe the mistake and see it as an opportunity to learn, be more courageous, resilient, and knowledgeable.
After accepting your mistakes, analyze them and reframe them. Think of how to reflect on the ways you can recreate steps and restrategize.
- Practice Lessons Learnt: this is the step that pushes you back to the point where it all crashed. This step is essential and needs thorough and careful reflection. After reframing your mistakes and outlining the lessons learned, you have to practice them. This step is a necessity.
Practicing what you have learned will require commitment, skills, resources, and knowledge – and all of this is necessary for effective learning.
This step is important as it will change and improve your habits. And also, carry out this step with proper care and do so gradually. Rushing to fix things will only lead you to make further mistakes. Discover errors or missteps and ensure you find appropriate tools to sort them out.
- Monitor Your Progress: Do not be in a rush after practicing the lessons learned from your previous mistake. It will take a lot of practice before finding out what can successfully prevent you from repeating past errors.
So take time and be patient when it comes to checking the rate of your mistakes, and finding appropriate solutions.
Final thoughts
Everyone dreads mistakes. Mistakes teach us to improve and learn, become stronger and also make wiser decisions.
Instead of dwelling on past mistakes, follow the 5 steps above.
They include acknowledging and accepting your mistake, analyzing these mistakes, reframing the mistakes, practicing what you have learned, and monitoring your progress.
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