MISTAKES ARE OPPORTUNITIES FOR LEARNING

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An except from an email sent me by a friend ... "Instead, he learned that mistakes were just opportunities for learning something new, which is, after all, what scientific experiments are all about. Even if the experiment "doesn't work," we usually learn something valuable from it. Make mistakes, you learn from them . . . . but never repeat mistakes . . . ." (Unquote)

It's been spoken and written lots of times before. So have I written too. That can't be said often enough. Because it's going to be there until we agree to learn or care to listen.

What life guarantees is an ample measure of life questions - lessons - discovery - challenge - mystery - search - problems - tests, as a rule. And to these we are asked to put in no less than our courageous involvement and commitment. As Mom told me long ago... "Life does not send us answers but rather sends us questions and challenges to attach answers to."

However if we so fear or dread the difficulty pain or discomfort that learning entails, then we probably won't be doing much in our lives as we would be simply coasting along in mediocrity. And dreams will simply remain dreams. We should try to shake away that fear, go ahead and step out into the unknown. So what if we should make mistakes. That's okay too. Nothing can kill us but our own thoughts. Everybody makes mistakes - great men and women in history may have bungled their jobs in some and probably felt miserable about it. But they didn't let it stop them. Instead they kept on at their tasks, bungled some more perhaps, and yet kept on until at last their concerted efforts met with success. Now we enjoy the fruits of their hard work and making our lives easy.

We can do the same. It's just in looking at mistakes the way they saw it to be --- that mistakes are opportunities for learning. Knowledge, growth, progress, maturity, and learning are always paid for by and with our mistakes.