“A mistake isn’t a mistake unless
it can’t be put right.”
~ Sophie Kinsella
And when you can’t “put right” a mistake you’ve made, it’s
simply because it was a bad decision that life won’t allow you to forget…
Forgetting will leave the door open for you to make the same mistake again,
inevitably.
Can you look back and pin-point every defining moment that
shaped your life’s trajectory? Can you recognize the actions (or the decisions)
you've made, placed you in the position you’re in today? While what felt right may have actually ended up
being right, undoubtedly there were wrong turns -wrong decisions were made...
Every day you are given an opportunity to make decisions
that will impact your tomorrow, and those opportunities will show how wise your
decision making process is… Give it some thought, because while the end result
of your decisions won’t always be what you wanted, you will not always be able
to recover from them. Again, not everything
can be attributed to “making a mistake”… not everything will be set right by
taking responsibility and saying, “I’m sorry.”
To live life is to grow, learn, and better ourselves through
experiences. New experiences in life are never explored grounds; they require
you to be cautious, thoughtful and wary of “the outcome” but at the same time, welcoming
of the potential lesson.
Life is a scary place that can only be made safe by the way
we make decisions and the paths we set for ourselves.
Life will allow you to move forward from mistakes. Life, as
I said, will help you grow from your mistakes when you courageously stand,
admit, understand and learn from them BUT also trust that life won’t be
forgiving when you refuse to receive the lessons you set yourself to learn
from…
So last night, The
Hubby and I got into one of those never ending debates we so passionately get into (some of our
best momentsJ),
that 1 hour later, all we could do (again) was to agree to disagree. This is
what I said to him, “Baby, I am going to
give you 2 scenarios and I want you to tell me if you agree with my
interpretation of the two, or just tell me your perspective, and if it’s
different than mine”… Here’s the scenario…
What if our son came home from school and said:
“Daddy, I had a math
test today and I know I am going to get an F on it because I totally studied
the wrong part of the syllabus and
couldn’t answer any of the questions… I’m so mad at myself!”
OR, he comes home and says:
“Daddy I had a math
test today and I got an F because I didn’t study and got caught cheating.”
Better yet, I went on to say:
“2 friends plan a
hunting trip. While manipulating his riffle, one of them loses his balance and
the rifle goes off, killing his friend… OR, “What if the same two friends
were have having issues in their relationship (due to one’s jealousy and
resentment for the other), to the point that the ‘friend” starts planning on
how he can get rid of him. He plans a hunting trip where he puts his plan in
action and kills his friend…”
Were they mistakes or
bad decisions?”
And this started the debate J…
Easily, you can guess that the hubby viewed both opposite
scenarios as mistakes that you can learn from but for me it was crystal clear
that even though the results are 1 and the same, they are 2 very different scenarios
and not comparable…
For me, a mistake is something you did without intention. It’s
the result of a decision you’ve made, as you were put in a position to make a choice.
Options are presented and to the best of your ability, you’ll try to make what
you feel is the right decision.
Mistakes are situations that you find yourself in, that generate an outcome you
had no control of. You had no proclivity in the said action that caused an
undesired result and because you are not your mistakes, you can learn, grow and
bounce back from that… Society will accept and know the authenticity of your admission
of a mistake.
On the other end, a bad decision is while a decision was
made intentionally, often without regard for the consequence. It is when you
decide to ride that fine line between what’s right and what’s wrong. It would
be a deliberate act, committed with the full knowledge that doing so was not
only against the rules, but against what (as people with built in moral codes)
we know to be right. You decide to take chances when knowing what the right
thing to do is, when you’ve already lived prior consequences originating from
the same action deemed wrong…
When ill feelings are used in your decision making process, or
when the complete knowledge of the harm your actions could result in is
evident, or when knowing right from wrong, you still chose to do wrong… You can
no longer label it as a mistake… Life won’t allow it!
So the most important lesson in all of mistake making is that
every one of us makes mistakes, every day of our lives. It is to trust that
while mistakes are inevitable, if you can learn from it, no matter what happens,
you’ll be able to get value from it and apply it to the betterment of you.
“Mistake” is an appeasing word in our growth process…let’s
not use it in vain and try to hide behind it…
And you? What is your point of view? What's your take on this?
RosieSandz
