Don’t Cling To A Mistake

graphic © eminentlyquotable.com

“Don’t cling to a mistake just because you spent a lot of time making it.”

Mistakes, we all make them but human beings haven’t really developed an attitude of accepting and learning from them. Often times, mistakes paralyze us from taking healthy risks, leaving us stuck and dissatisfied when they are supposed to show ways that could turn us into better, wiser individuals. As the saying goes, “It’s better to make a thousand mistakes than to have one single regret.” One reason why we tend to cling on mistakes-either miniscule or large-scale-is because we sometimes forget our humanness. Embracing one’s humanness is an important step to accepting one’s flaws and inherent tendencies to screw up. And as humans, we also have the ability to dig up the gems of lessons hidden under the mud of our mistakes.

Success happens when we lose all that unnecessary baggage of regret and frustration, and just start anew. John Maxwell, author of “Failing Forward: Turning Mistakes into Stepping Stones for Success,” says that “the difference between average people and achieving people is their perception of and response to failure.” Take a cue from inventors who, instead of giving up after a series of failed attempts, make another mistake, and another, until the solution eventually emerges from all that relentless attempts.

Don’t be disillusioned by the glossy images of successful people in magazine covers; success doesn’t happen without gut-wrenching failures and mistakes. We see highly successful people in their best appearance, not when they’re working in the late night hours, trying to learn from their mistakes.