Tuesday 25 August 2015

* Oops, I did it agian!!!


Yesterday I looked in the red, blotchy face of a little girl.  She's been crying because she spilled red cool drink on her brand new party dress.  "I hate making mistakes", she lamented.  Together we tried to clean up the worst of the damage.  She did not realize it, but I identified with her statement, and I am sure so do you.  Mistakes.  We all hate making them, but it happens to all of us.  Making mistakes are really an important part of life. The only way to avoid making them, is to never do anything, and that will be the biggest mistake you will ever make!

In the School of Life, Mr. Mistake is one of  the staff members!  Every mistake we make comes with a lesson to be learned.  Sometimes we are foolish and we ignore the lesson, or we prefer not to pay attention to the lesson.  The result of this is that when the test comes our way once more, we are sure to fail it again.

 It is important to learn to ask the right questions when we have made a mistake.  Why did this happen?  What can I do to prevent this from happening again, and what can I learn from it?  What is the message behind it?  Mistakes usually go hand in hand with pain, unhappiness or discomfort.  We want to avoid facing them, and we want to rather forget them as soon as possible.  However, by denying them or forgetting about them prevents us from learning from them and growing.  It is important to forgive ourselves as well as others when we, or they, make mistakes.  Forgiving does not mean we condone them, but it means we move past them.

The important thing to remember about mistakes is that you are not defined by your mistakes, you are not your mistakes.  We so easily put people into little white or black boxes, little good or bad cubes, and think that only bad people do bad things and good people do good things.  What a fallacy!!! We are all human and therefore we all make mistakes.  Good people sometimes make bad decisions.  Character lies in how we face up to them, how we react to them.
Here is the simple ABC of Mistakes:
Admit that you've made a mistake.
Bear the responsibility for it.
Carry on, try again.

One of the biggest mistakes we can make is not forgiving others their mistakes, for what forgiveness could there then be for us?
Remember this:
Yesterday's mistakes are tomorrow's experience!


*PS Forgive me the spelling mistake in the title!!! :D

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