Can Mistakes Make Us Wiser?
It was a Sunday evening. I was at my Uncle’s place, having one of those wonderfully unplanned conversations that seem to happen only when nobody is looking at the clock. His friend Brad walked in. Brad had once been a professional poker player. A very good one. He had reached the final table at some pretty serious tournaments, which naturally made me curious. So I asked him: “How did you manage to stay at the top of your game for so long?” Brad was a man of few words. After a thoughtful moment he said: “Bob, I made plenty of mistakes. The difference was what I did after them.” Then he explained something I have never forgotten. He always asked himself: What did I learn? Then, he acknowledged the lesson, worked out what he should have done, was grateful for the lesson and then made a conscious decision not to repeat that particular mistake. Over time, he told me, the mistakes became fewer. And his game got better. That stayed with me. Because perhaps we don't always learn from our mistakes simply because we experienced them. Sometimes we need to name the lesson. Our minds are constantly looking for patterns. If something happens repeatedly and we never stop to understand it, we can accidentally turn an experience into a habit. But when we pause and say: “That didn't work.” “That hurt someone.” “I shouldn't have said that.” “Next time, I want to handle this differently.” We give the experience a different meaning, that the mistake then becomes information. And perhaps that is one of the quiet jobs of our subconscious mind: taking the things we repeatedly experience and helping turn them into familiar patterns. Which got me thinking about relationships. Maybe you've had the same argument with someone you love more than once, or you've walked away from a conversation thinking, why did I say that? Or most certainly you have been too quick to judge, too slow to apologise, or simply too busy to notice what someone was trying to tell you. We all do it. The important thing may not be that we made the mistake. It may be what we concluded from it. Because if we never finish the story, we may find ourselves living the same chapter again. Possibly, missing out on the gift hidden inside every mistake, the chance to make the next version of ourselves a little wiser. And if you think about it, that is rather encouraging. You don't have to erase yesterday. You just have to learn what yesterday was trying to teach you. Are there any mistakes in your life that you are ready to turn into wisdom? Until tomorrow, Bob.
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