What mistakes are you making? (1)

‘Words of the wise...should be heard...’ Ecclesiastes 9:17 NKJV

It’s a mistake not to ask yourself, ‘What mistakes am I making?’ One leader writes: ‘I gave little thought to what might go wrong. I assumed that the ‘right way’ would be mistake-free. I did not acknowledge mistakes I made to myself, or others. I was not learning from my mistakes. If I wanted to become a better leader, I would have to stop making the mistake of not asking what mistake I was making.’ It’s not the number of mistakes you make; it’s how often you keep making the same mistake. If you want to turn your mistakes to your advantage: (1) Admit your mistakes. Why don’t we? Pride: we’ve an image to uphold. Insecurity: our self-worth is based on our performance. Stubbornness: we’d rather flog a dead horse than bury it and get a new one. Here’s a news flash: People already know about your mistakes. When you admit them they’re not surprised, they’re relieved. They say, ‘Phew! He knows. Now we can quit pretending!’ (2) Accept mistakes as the price of progress. Learn to view failure as a healthy, inevitable part of succeeding. Nothing’s perfect in life-including you! So get used to it. (3) Insist on learning from your mistakes. When you try to avoid failure at all costs, you never learn, and you end up repeating the same mistakes over and over. Those who are willing to learn from their failures don’t have to keep repeating them. Author William Saroyan observed, ‘We get very little wisdom from success…’ Learn from science. In science, mistakes always precede the discovery of truth.