Learning From Your Mistakes

What’s the biggest mistake you regret making?

What does it take to pull yourself out of the shadows of a past mistake? To forget the whole painful experience?

The answer actually lies in a choice between letting mistakes define you as a person and letting them control your actions which may lead to you making more of them or learning from them.

Obviously, we all need to learn from our mistakes at some point. Let’s face it, we can never be improved versions of ourselves if we continue to dwell in past errors.

But to learn from mistakes is a process that takes time, but you can make it work at the very least when you go through the motions:

Acknowledge your failures

Admitting failure is the first step you need to take. However, the hardest part about learning from your failures is admitting they were yours in the first place. The biggest difficulty that comes out of this is taking responsibility for your messes.

It takes a lot on your part to simply say, “I failed.” It can feel daunting, scary, and most times it requires plenty of bravery to actually really mean it. The best thing about this is that admitting your failures is like lifting a heavy burden and finding the courage to move forward.

Think back to what went wrong

Now that you’ve had the will to admit your stumbles, it’s time to trace your steps and find out just where exactly in your life did you fall.

Ask yourself, “where did it all go wrong?” It’s not an easy question to ask as it requires a lot of mental backtracking.

Additionally, you should also ask yourself how that incident should have turned out better. You could think of a scenario where you took different steps to that last dance that went bad and also what you learned out of it.

Adapt

Adapting doesn’t mean simply taking the bare minimum of experience from your failures and then calling it a day.

It also means that you’ve taken something out of those failures and added something to yourself so it will never trip you up. Basically, it’s a matter of making it harder for you to stumble again.

You could also write down a list of reasons of why you shouldn’t make the same mistakes like, “I don’t want to be in debt twice in a row”, or, “I can’t fail in the same class again”, in order to give yourself a daily reminder of how important it is to improve and grow as a person.

Move on

Finally, the most important step to take in order to learn from your mistakes is to dust off your shoulders and continue walking.

The biggest mistake that we make from our failures is failing to move on from them. Dwelling on your losses will only generate more defeats than victories.

Your mistakes can be difficult to face, let alone learn from.

But failing to learn from them will only lead to more failures in the future. So, as a challenge for yourself, start rising up from your mistakes. They will never define you.