How to handle Mistakes
Mistakes…who likes making these? Especially expensive ones. Or the ones that leads to regret.
But we all make mistakes, whether we admit it or not. It is part of living on this planet.
And making these should not make us feel hopeless, useless or even unforgiving towards ourselves.
Or even worse, feeling down or depressed even.
So what should we do when we have made a mistake?
How do we move on from it especially if the mistake caused us a lot of trauma or despair?
##1 Admit your mistake
When we make a mistake, admitting we are wrong is one of the hardest things to do. It takes guts to admit our errors. And humility.
Saying you are wrong, especially to another individual means you are wiser. Saying you made a mistake means you have REALISED your error.
It means you know better now. You are definitely wiser than before because you came to the realisation of it.
Think about an individual who makes a mistake and does not even know! Exactly. You saying you are sorry, spells volumes.
##2 Check what you can do to prevent it happening again
It is one thing to make a mistake and realise you have made one. It is another to do it again. And again. And again. And again.
The mistake has been done and is now archived in the past. How can you stop it happening again?
Go over what you did, or what caused the error. Can it be prevented? Are there precautions you can take? Is there anything you can do differently next time?
##3 Understand mistakes are part of greatness
The Bible recognises this. It says a righteous man falls seven times, he rises. (See Proverbs 24:16).
Obviously as we established the aim is not to keep repeating the same mistake over and over again. But if you do, is it the end of the world? No, it is not.
Because what you are to do each time you make a mistake, is to get back up.
Don’t stay there. That is what happens to a lot of people. They stay right in the hole of their mistake. They refuse to move on. They just get stuck.
No, get up again. Try again. You are definitely ahead (and wiser) than the one who never got up. Why? Because you can’t learn anything when you are down. You can only learn when you are up! Someone said
##4 Mistakes are teachers
Our mistakes are teachers. One of my teachers used to say that we should learn from our mistakes. I am sure you have said that to someone before.
Yes, we got to apply our own rules too. My teacher would say it was better to make the mistake in class than in an exam. Why? Because we would know precisely what not to do during an exam.
So stop crying over the little mistakes too. Thank God for them. Because there are some little mistakes we need to make now that will save us a whole lot of pain than having to make the big ones.
And if there are some big ones you have made? There are some big ones you will make that still save you from some even bigger ones. You catch my drift?
#5 Mistakes makes us teachers too
See how many public world renowned speakers are out there that we look up to. Listen to most of their stories.
They have something to tell that is different from my life was fabulous and I lived happily ever after. Some were in prison. Some were bankrupt. Some had marriages that failed. And so on.
Today, they tell us their rags to riches stories, and we dare to buy their books too!
Why do we listen to them? Because they have something to say. Why do they have something to say? Because they will tell you their mistakes and how we can avoid making them!
#6 Forgive yourself
You got to forgive yourself. Offer yourself the olive branch. You are alive. That means everyday offers you a new chance. Seize it. Grab it. No matter how much you have lost because of a dreadful day, remember there is hope.
Success is defined as the ability to minimise mistakes (Pastor Chris Oyakhilome PhD). Note, that statement does not say the ability to avoid mistakes. So, do not be hard on yourself while you strive for excellence. Never see mistake and failure as synonyms.
Can you share in the comments below how you handled a mistake that was not easy to deal with?
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