Are you allowing mistakes to become habits?
Mistakes are a tricky thing because we don’t know they’re mistakes when we make them. If we knew, we wouldn’t make them—or would we?
I love words and definitions, so naturally, as this message was coming through I had to check The Cambridge Dictionary for its definition of mistake: an action, decision, or judgment that produces an unwanted or unintentional result.
It’s only after making the decision, after taking action that we see those decisions and actions as mistakes. But were they really?
And if mistakes are decisions we make that lead to consequences we don’t like then in the context of one-time offenses there’s nothing wrong with making them, is there?
You make a decision, follow-through, take the action and then discover the result sucks.
No problem.
Now you know something you didn’t know when you made the decision.
The decision gets labeled as a mistake and you (hopefully) learn from it and try again more intelligently the next time.
But what about those mistakes that we perpetually make? Are they still mistakes?
Those times we make a decision knowing that we aren’t going to like the consequences, yet we do it anyway.
We make the same mistake again.
But, it’s no longer a mistake, is it?
It’s a conscious choice to produce a result you don’t like. It’s a pattern, a habit.
And on the surface, a seemingly destructive habit.
But if you look below…
It can’t be fully destructive.
We can’t entirely dislike the consequence of it, or we wouldn’t do it again.
We never do anything that we aren’t getting some kind of benefit from.
Even our repetitive “mistakes” are giving us something.
If you want to break the pattern, find out what you’re getting, and then find a new way to get that benefit without the undesirable consequences of the “mistake”.
It’s that simple. And that challenging.
Challenging because it requires you to be radically honest with yourself—to see beyond the lies your mind will try to tell you to keep you safe.
Simple, yes.
Challenging, yes.
Doable, hell yes.
Remember, you absolutely can Love Your Life and Live Your Dreams. It all begins within.
