Learn from your mistakes

What mistakes have you made lately?  I made a few.  Sometimes they are small and sometimes they are big ones – you know the ones that had you going down a path for months or even years before you learned that you had to turn back.  Those hurt.  Time invested, wrong expectations shattered, and wasted resources.

But that’s what life is if we are getting better.  We learn from our mistakes.  Of course, it’s always better to learn from someone else’s mistakes; it’s cheaper and faster and doesn’t hurt much.  That’s why we read and observe. 

When you see someone who made a big mistake, ask about it if you can.  What were they thinking in the beginning?  Why did they do it?  What information did they have and not have?

“All in the dark we grope along, and if we go amiss, 

We learn at least which path is wrong, and there is gain in this.” – Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Learning suddenly

“Pain is knowledge rushing in to fill a void at great speed.” – Jerry Seinfeld

This statement wasn’t part of Jerry’s stand up routine.  He was serious.

When we have a knowledge gap or poor expectations of what will happen, it hurts when we find out suddenly.

Fear is not the enemy

We all are afraid.  This is what holds us back from being our best selves and doing what we are capable of.  

“Fear is not the enemy.  Waiting for fear to go away, is.” – Marie Forleo

It’s not whether you have fear or not; it’s whether you are letting it stop you or not.

Use your head.  Feel the fear.  Do it anyway.

What should I do now?

Your goals determine what is a right and wrong use of your time.  They determine what is useful and not useful.

Should I be doing this or that?  It depends on your goals.

Get clarity on your goals, and don’t have conflicting ones.

The right amount of anxiety

“There is a Golden Mean of anxiety.  Too little, and it fails to perceive the threat.  Too much and it becomes paralyzing.”  -Dr. Mardy

Do you have too much anxiety, or too little?

No return

Today will come once. 

There is no going back. 

No second chances.

Maturing into a better you

I’m 56 now.  Sometimes a situation comes up and I know the old me would have said or acted or even felt a given way.  Then I recall how that went when I did, and I decide not to deal with it that way again. 

I elevate my response.

I am getting better.  

Interference

You want X.  

Your goal is X.

What is interfering with you accomplishing your goal?  

Honestly, is it in you, or outside of you? 

What if you took your foot off the brake and removed it?

How?  When?

"Earned"

Earned – the only true reward.

You are an emotional computer

Years ago I read a book called “The Strangest Secret” by Earl Nightingale.  He explained the “strangest secret” was that we become what we think about most of the time.  He wasn’t the first to discover or even describe this idea.  It’s in the Bible and many other places.  “As we thinketh, so shall we become.”  

It’s true.  In fact that is how we learn.  We go to school or read a book and we are presented with information and ideas, and we believe them.  If we study to be an engineer, we will begin to think like an engineer and find ourselves doing what engineers do, because we have paid attention to that subject for a lot of our time.

Over these last 11 years, I have talked a lot about what we pay attention to on Think Daily.  It’s important to understand how we work, so we can create our best life on purpose.

What if you spent a lot of time at a place where people you were there to listen to or people you respected peppered you with ideas of how society ought to be?  What if you watched a given news station that gave you what opinions you ought to have – every day.  What if they told you how society was unjust in a given way and gave examples over and over again?

We become what we think about.  And we think about what we put into our cameras and microphones (eyes and ears).  Most of us are running someone else’s program and we’ve become the product – consumers…voters…

Understanding what is happening here is the first step to taking charge of your own programming.  If you do take charge of what you do and do not pay attention to, you can become anything you want.  You create your own experience on this earth.

God gave you the hardware.  The software you run is up to you.