7 life mistakes--and what to learn from them

First, a quick note on what constitutes a “mistake.”

There are those who say that mistakes are mistakes–which means that you done wrong, it is what it is. Period.

Then there’s the camp that says there is no such thing as a mistake–that every experience in life is a learning opportunity, yadda yadda yadda.

In service to transparency–I tend to fall into the latter camp. Mistakes are learning experiences, and in the end, I have no regrets. I dig the gifts that have come from the “mistakes” I’ve made.

But let’s also remember–the choices we make have an impact on our lives and the lives of others. It strikes me as a bit too smug, a tad too shiny and glib, to brightly proclaim, “Why, there’s no such thing as a mistake!” and leave it at that without considering the impact of our behavior. To do that and that alone would be to excuse ourselves from self-reflection.

My top seven “Life Mistakes”–and what to learn from them:

1.) Staying in any relationship past its expiration date. You know what I’m talking about–when everything in you senses that this is O-V-E-R, and the weeks (or, ahem, months) of girding your loins to end it are just time wasted trying to avoid the “breakup feelings” that you know you’re going to feel, anyway. Doubly true for the time I stayed with this guy.

2.) Keeping anything at all past its expiration date. Same logic as above, and I’ve done this more than once. For instance, I once dumped $1k into an old car that everyone, including my father, was telling me to get rid of. Did the car last? Of course not. Just as with relationships, you can’t resuscitate something that is dying–you can only keep putting time or money into it. Release things sooner when they clearly aren’t working.

3.) Trying to work for myself without having enough money, experience, or collaborative networks–thinking “If you build it, they will come.” Note: What I learned from that experience was not that I should always have a plan, but rather–how to fail, and fail better, and fail better, until I wasn’t failing any longer. It’s a harder road, but it taught a shit-ton of self-sufficiency and really honed my tenacity for picking myself back up, not to mention it being behind the massive success of The Coaching Blueprint, which helps people to circumvent as many of those mistakes as possible.

4.) Repeating gossip about other people–even if it’s not a slam. I once repeated gossip I’d heard, not from the perspective of agreeing with what I’d heard, but from the perspective of, “Isn’t it shitty that so-and-so said such-and-such about our friend, Nice Person?” Somehow, it got back to Nice Person that I had been the one saying “such-and-such” when in fact I’d only been repeating the “such-and-such” and disagreeing with it. The fallout from that experience? Brutal. So, just don’t repeat gossip. Then it can’t spread.

5.) Not telling that “social web guru” what I really thought of her condescending attitude, and asking her to either make right or send me a refund. Lesson learned? Not speaking up in times like these will make you feel like a sucker. As Brene Brown says, “Choose discomfort over resentment.”

6.) Giving people the silent treatment rather than having a conversation. This is another one I cringe at. Apparently, the thirteen-year-old in me didn’t quite get over herself until I was in my latter twenties and decided to grow up and actually talk to people when I was upset. Lesson learned? Self-righteousness and passive-aggressiveness is painful.

7.) Losing my temper when the situation didn’t warrant it. What have I learned from that anger? A lot about how to work with it and have compassion for myself, as well as importance of taking responsibility. It’s also simultaneously vulnerable and powerful to own up to it.

I have more interest in the question of how we learn from mistakes, how we course-correct, and what the mistakes contribute to our lives.

I can see how some of the mistakes on this list had more impact because they were repeated several times–we continue to make the same mistake, over and over, hoping that it’ll turn out differently the next time, that life will justify our old pattern rather than giving us the message that we need to take responsibility for our lives and be the stewards of change.

Are there any places where I do that? Where I make the same choice, again and again, and it’s clearly not serving me?

Fear might be running the game at those times, but there’s always the big bold possibility of practicing courage. That’s how you see what’s on the other side of the mistake–by feeling stuck and pissed and sad and worried and alone, and choosing to walk through the fire, anyway.

P.S. I’ll be there, right beside you. Let’s be beautifully, imperfectly human–together.