If you are like other people, it is very likely that you have made myriad of mistakes in your life. There is nothing wrong in making mistakes for as long as you keep learning from them. Because mistakes are nothing, but signposts showing you that you have taken the wrong turn and that you must come back to the starting position and choose a different direction.
In today’s society, mistakes are not seen in a positive light, but rather as an indication of your sloppiness, maybe awkawardness or even inability to think properly before taking action. Or even worse, that you cannot or you do not want to foresee things ahead, thus you purposely allow things to enfold without your structured input. This is of course oversimplified stereotype that can be heard everywhere, in which people describe their perception of what it means to make mistakes. However, what no one really pays attention to is incredible prowess that comes with observing and studying steps that have led to making those mistakes. In so doing, you can learn tons of new things, which perhaps you haven’t had the chance to notice before.
Another characteristic that epitomises failures or trials and denials is the fact that you proactively seek to learn something new by willingly experimenting through means of having little or no knowledge of what you must do next. As a consequence, you are deemed to make mistakes, because you are venturing into unknown and the only way to map the unknown is to “guess” your way through it. In so doing, you are creating your own process of experimental learning, which will help you constantly expand your horizons. This process can be extremely emotionally demanding and requires greater levels of mental strength to allow you to correctly decode valuable lessons hidden in every mistake.
Due to high emotional charge that follows mistake laden experience, majority of people tend to develop high resistance approach to making mistakes. Because, they cannot either tolerate emotional strains or they fear criticism or worse – disapproval from others. Regardless of emotional response – it is universally unacceptable to make mistakes, which in some ways prevent people to practically learn from making those mistakes.
What is your instinctive reaction when you make a mistake? Do you sit down calmly and analyse what went wrong? Do you take time to dissect what you could have done differently or do you simply blame circumstances and maybe other people? If you take time to calmly analyse steps that have led you to creation of that unsuccessful venture, what is the common thread that links this mistake to similar mistakes in the past? Did you take same or similar actions in those cases and if so, how did all that make you feel then and now? What is the difference, if any? Also, did you learn anything new right now that you can take for the future, so not to repeat those same mistakes again?
This is the strategy of taking full responsibility for your actions. However, if you take personal evasion strategy and consciously choose not to accept responsibility, but instead choose to blame circumstances and other people – what new can you learn by doing so? In my experience thus far, every time I applied this strategy, I’ve learnt that I cannot control anything that happens outside of myself. So blaming circumstances and other people is completely futile, because I should take the ownership and learn from the experience.
Naturally, everyone is different and so, you may need to do a lot of soul searching in order to fully understand, as to what specifically you must do to learn from your mistakes. The main reason is that if you don’t accept responsibility for your actions, it is very likely you will keep repeating those same mistakes again. In those cases, you will need to find the way to cope with numerous emotions that occur in moments of self paralysis, when you keep repeating same mistakes over and over again.
The main reason is that those emotions are never pleasant and motivating. In majority of cases, they are unpleasant and they lead you to even higher levels of stress. Particularly, if you haven’t learnt anything from previous mistakes and you keep repeating them. The pain that stays with you from the first moment only gets amplified further with repeated experiences of the same. So the solution is to accept responsibility for your actions and then carefully analyse steps you have taken, so you can minimise repetition of those same outcomes in the future. You will be able to do this by being able to effectively control your emotional outbursts and then carefully observe your prevailing thoughts and emotions. The next step is to determine your congruence levels by comparing outside events with your thoughts and emotions. What is the difference? When you start to apply this simple test – you will then quickly understand as to how congruent you are.
However, every time you refuse responsibility for your actions, you rob yourself of freedom to experience new things. Because your self imposed constraint will dramatically limit your learning potential, hence your ability to experience new things through by simple negation of the process of experimental learning. Albert Einstein once said: “a person who never made a mistake, never tried anything new”.
Why so many people still shy away from taking risks and learn from these experiences? I guess, it all comes down to the fact that most of us are hardwired to learn from books, curriculums taught in schools, colleges, universities and other forms of education. In which case, we are all trained to be robotic, prescriptive and predictable, so that we can all be measured and controlled by existing norms and behavioural standards. But let’s face it – is this the best way to learn? The answer depends on who you ask, but nobody can deny the fact that true knowledge comes from direct experience in dealing with something, whilst academic/theoretical knowledge is simply information, unless of course it is actively used in real life situations.
In order to explain this better – let’s use the example of car driving. In order to learn to drive, you must take driving lessons and learn practically everything related to driving the car. On the other hand, you can read as much literature about car driving as you wish, but unless you sit in the car and drive it, you will never be able to drive the car. Every person who has ever gone through this process knows how he/she felt, whilst learning to drive. Because almost all of us don’t like to make mistakes and even less to be told what to do, behave etc in order to avoid criticism, judgement or even ridicule.
So, if we look at the aforementioned example, no matter what you do in life, you will be judged and handled in some way. So if this is the case, why not get some flair and decide to be experimental? At the end of the day, what have you got to lose? Every successful person has gone through number of obstacles and difficult situations, before he/she has finally struck the gold. Judgement in any form has temporary debilitating influence, but you shouldn’t allow it to stop you from making mistakes for as long as you learn from these mistakes. Because, when you adopt the principle of trial and denial, you will develop an incredible skill to accept failure, as the stepping stone towards acquisition of knowledge. The pain of making mistakes doesn’t last long, but the pleasure of achieving your dreams lasts forever.
Let’s quickly summarise what was said above. There are two motivating or demotivating factors (depending on how you look at them) that can influence your perception of what it means to make a mistake. They are evasion strategy and full acceptance. We have already discussed evasion strategy and what it does for you and so we shall not dwell further about it. However, let’s dig dipper into the acceptance strategy, because it has many important layers to it.
In the moment when you experience the pain of repeated situation, the usual response from majority of people is to analyse external factors that have contributed to that pain. This is very important part in order to become aware of steps that have led to you making a mistake. However, we must now go even deeper and look into what has driven you to act in that way, because everything in this reality is made of two things: cause and effect.
Emotional pain comes from focusing on effect (outcomes) rather than understanding and dealing with the cause (emotional states). This is the way in which we are programmed to react and as such it is not easy to control it first hand, because you must become aware of your specific thoughts and emotions that have led you to act in the way you did. Naturally, this is never easy to do, because of our obsession with external world and we almost never take time to pause and reflect, as to what is going on from within and how our internal world reflects our external experiences. This is the game changer in many respects, because our perception of external world in many cases depend on how we feel from within and in return the feedback from outside usually confirms what we already feel. Let’s explain this notion a little further. Let’s assume you feel sad about something and your thoughts will reflect your sadness by focusing your attention on finding things that will justify existence of your thoughts and emotions.
If you do nothing and you allow this state to go unchallenged, soon enough you will find a situation that will strikingly resemble your thoughts/emotions and the whole thing will escalate to the next level. Because your thoughts are triggers for wide variety of emotional expressions and so you must always start by becoming more sensitive on what you think and why. In so doing, you must always carefully observe your thoughts and whether they correctly reflect your external experiences. If not, you will be in danger to experience things that you do not want to experience and so you must at all times stay vigilant about what permeates in your mind and why. The latter is slightly easier to define, because your why’s must align with your emotions and whether your emotions align with your external reality. When you learn to intercept your thoughts and then decode genuinity of your emotions (their interpretation of your external environment) you will master the technique of being in NOW, hence in control of your experiences.
These are basic steps in creation of your heightened levels of self awareness, which in time will help you mentally correct negative thoughts and emotions that have caused you to make unnecessary mistakes. Once you get the grip over your thoughts and emotions, you will then have enough sobriety to properly evaluate various other outcomes open to you. It is only at this point you will be able to analyse your true needs and why you are constantly experiencing the same outcomes. Because with effective experimentation of your hidden thoughts and emotions, you will learn about possible behavioural patterns that usually follow in these or similar types of situations. When you reach this level of sobriety, you will then be able to grasp lessons, which so far you haven’t grasped yet, hence you keep experiencing similar situations over and over again. Naturally, when you finally “cross that bridge”, you will change your thought process and other motivational factors, which altogether will lead you into a different direction.
Also, if you’re not a natural risk taker, but you wish to become free and more adventurous, you should seek people that share similar ambitions to yours, but have different skills, so you can all work together as a team and cover each other’s weaknesses. This will give you strength, motivation and additional energy to carry on regardless of initial results. Because together you will not only support each other, but you will effectively analyse your group/individual progress and decide about next steps. In this way, you will slowly build your self esteem, which will help you become more inquisitive, adventurous and self assuring. Of course, there are no guarantees that you will ever hit the jackpot in first attempts, but at least you will be aiming with a greater confidence and knowledge to deal with all types of obstacles that might come your way. It is only at this point that you will start learning from your mistakes and will use them as your guides toward your final destination.
The best experiences in life are always hidden at the very ends of your comfort zone and therefore, you must learn to accept temporary pain in order to achieve long term pleasure that comes with achievement of your goals. If you start something with a negative outlook and weak self belief, it is highly likely that you will never accept mistakes, as your learning guides. It is for that reason that you must become more self trusting and confident and constantly keep stretching your existing levels of pain. Because it is through this moving target that you will be able to experience the beauty of life and what you can truly achieve, when you fully use all your mental capabilities.
This is one of many skills that you will acquire through systematic application of exercises and strategies taught in our programme. If you wish to learn more, please visit our website www.energy-savvy.com for more information. In particular, we would recommend you try our 20 weeks energy and mental healing programme “The Hour of Power”, in which we will teach you various energy generation exercises, mind reframing techniques and routines. Alternatively, you may wish to contact us via email on: info@energy-savvy.com and we’ll be more than happy to assist you in any way we can.
