Mistakes…. Maybe, Maybe Not

“Mistakes are the portals of discovery”

James Joyce

 

I think, in some instances, mistakes get a bad rap.  Sometimes, mistakes are how we learn things in life.  I am a person who doesn’t like to make mistakes and have spent a good deal of time over the years beating myself up for making them.  However, they are a commonality that all people across all walks of life worldwide share.

When training people in a workplace situation, I always try to reinforce the fact that they will make mistakes while learning the tasks of a job in an effort to stave off the self-recrimination that can prevent them from moving forward because they are hung up on the fact they did make a mistake.  Personally, for me sometimes doing something the wrong way ensures I won’t do it wrong again.

It could also be likened to telling a child not to touch something that is hot because it is not in their best interests.  You will have the child who will immediately obey and then you have the child like me.  I think the rebellious genes of my lineage give me a predisposition to question things so I would be the child who would have to find out for myself that something was indeed hot.  But by golly, I would always remember I did learn it was not in my best interest to touch hot things.  Mistake made, lesson learned.

That said; if one continues to make the same mistakes over and over again, to me, behavior races past “mistake” and arrives at “selfish intentional bad decision making with no regard for consequences”.      

Photo Credit:

DITEC

Cuddy Park, Anchorage, AK

07/29/13