New Reminders: Mistakes

There are many good quotes about mistakes.  My favorite is, “Embrace your mistakes (unless you dated them).”  Sometimes we do embrace our mistakes at our own peril, because it is hard to let them go.  As my next favorite quote put it: “You can pick up your mistakes and carry them like a burden; or you can set then down and use then as a steppingstone to greatness.”

As an elementary school art teacher, I kept a tight lid on erasers.  I noticed, early on in my carrier, that children are often frustrated when what they visualized putting on paper did not materialize, they often used erasers to wipe out what they had drawn and would try, try again until they made holes in their paper with an eraser.  I encouraged them instead, to “Try to make the mistake work for you!”  In other words, try to use the mistake to go in a new direction.  Make it inspire you to do something you might not have otherwise thought of doing.  I realize now that I was giving pretty good advice for much of life.  We can’t make all of our mistakes work for us, but we can take what we learned from each of our mistakes and apply it in a new situation.  If you start to build a doghouse and you run out of the scrap lumber you were using, you might discover that a metal roof can work even better than wood.

There are many kinds of mistakes, and Samuel Levinson said, “You have to learn from the mistakes of others.  You can’t possibly live long enough to make them all yourself.”

Oprah Winfrey said, “Your mistakes do not define you…you are your possibilities.”  The sooner we let go of most mistakes and use what we learned from them, the more creative we can be in finding the right path going forward.  Taking an entirely new direction is scary, and our mistakes have made us hesitant, because we don’t want to repeat them.  The best way to move forward is to put mistakes in the rearview mirror.  We have to continue to take chances.  Mary Tylor Moore put it this way.” Pain nourishes your courage.  You have to fail in order to practice being brave.”

And I like what the Bible says in Proverbs 28:13, “A person who refuses to admit his mistakes can never be successful.  But if that person confesses and forsakes those mistakes, another chance is given.” In other words, he gets a fresh start.  “Rejoice not over me, O my enemy; when I fall, I shall rise; when I sit in darkness, the Lord will be a light to me.” Micah 7:8