Is There Such A Thing As a Mistake

“There are no mistakes, only lessons. Growth is a process of trial and error” –Robin Sharma

Have you ever thought about what constitutes a mistake?  Is there such a thing as a mistake? We have often heard the expression “we are human and we make mistakes”, but is this true?  Or, is this one of those conditioned beliefs that we just accept as true? Believing we make “mistakes” serves many who embrace the socially conditioned way of being…as we have been taught by our society and some religions to believe that we are inherently bad/flawed and that we are better people if we condemn our behavior with guilt and shame.

Could it be that when we look at our life with our human limited perception of time… we often feel as though we made a “mistake.” What if all decisions, choices, and actions have to be the right ones no matter how things turn out?  Is it possible that our “mistakes” are really just life’s lessons, leading us to greater freedom, self-knowledge and our unique evolutionary purpose if we so chose to see it that way? Could our mistakes be “gifts” designed to help in our personal growth?

We would have to be able to see into the future far beyond what we are capable of to determine whether it was a mistake or not.  At what point in the future do we decide?…good or bad choice…a “mistake?”

A “mistake”, to me, implies that we have made a choice that is not in our highest and best interest and there is a result that feels stressful and very damaging to our self-confidence/self-worth.  In fact, it can feel disastrous to what we truly desired to create, and we assume we acted in error. Always when we make what we label a “mistake” there are difficult lessons to follow, and often heaps of self-judgement and blame.  Is this helpful to our sense of well-being and trust in our ability to make decisions? I don’t think so.

We may decide at some point that an action we took was a mistake and then a few years later with an expanded conscious awareness of the lessons we have learned, we realize that our ‘mistake” was the best thing that could have happened to us. Although our perceived “mistake” can be very painful, doors opened and new opportunities presented themselves.  Evolution happened. Life does not allow us to remain stagnant, change is inevitable, scary as hell and a necessary part of our expansion.

Many times we are just not conscious of what we may be creating through our “mistakes”, life gets crazy sometimes.  However, I believe what we can do is to make our best effort to feel in our gut what is right for us, follow our instincts, and develop over time the faith and trust that we know what we are doing.. even if it feels like we have made a “mistake”.  I don’t believe we can know or really understand how our life is unfolding. Life is a journey of mystery and I believe we just have to accept that we don’t have all the answers, nor should we.

We are far better off accepting and learning from life rather than judging and beating ourselves up for the “mistakes” we have made.  I dearly love you….RJ