by Shane Parrish, Farnam Street
āForgetting your mistakes is a terrible error if you are trying to improve your cognitionā¦ Why not celebrate stupidities!ā ā Charlie Munger
āIf anyone can refute me ā show me Iām making a mistake or looking at things from the wrong perspective ā Iāll gladly change. Itās the truth Iām after and the truth never harmed anyone. What harms us is to persist in self-deceit and ignoranceā ā Marcus Aurelius in Meditations
Sometimes we lose our way.
We make mistakes. We focus on the wrong things. We pursue goals at all costs. We teeter on ethical and moral cliffs. We get too far down a slippery slope. We steal. We cheat. We lie. We deceive others. We deceive ourselves. We donāt open ourselves up to our friends. We see crime or fraud and donāt speak out.
You can be a good person and still exercise poor judgment.
In these moments weāre not the friend others deserve, the partner others choose, the child our parents raised, the exemplar we wish to be, nor the person weāre capable of being.
It can happen to the best of us. Weāre human. We all make mistakes.
Just because weāve lost our way doesnāt mean that we are lost forever. In the end, itās not the failures that define us so much as how we respond.
Many of us get steered off course at some point in our lives, but what really counts is the choices that follow those mistakes. A teen who gets in trouble with the law, for example, can accept responsibility for his actions, change his behaviour, and go on to lead the nation, or he can see only failure and tumble into a vicious cycle of committing ever-larger crimes.
Itās not that you stumble, itās that you get back up. Itās not that you did something wrong but that you realize whatās happening and change. Itās not that you messed up as a friend or lover, itās that you see ways you can be better. Having the wrong priorities is bad enough, but realizing that and refusing to change is worse. Itās not that you never took the time to smell the roses and admire the sunset, itās that once you realize this you take the time to notice.
Mistakes are bad, no doubt, but not learning from them is worse. The key to learning from mistakes is to admit them without excuses or defensiveness, rub your nose in them a little, and make the changes you need to make to grow going forward. If you canāt admit your mistakes, you wonāt grow.
Copyright Ā©Ā Farnam Street
