Mistakes, They Happen, We all Make them

This is one of those areas where everyone on the outside looks perfect. Especially with the influx of social media, people usually only share the great wins. Or if you watch the news, most of the news only glorifies the 2 polar opposites, the worst thing that can happen or the best. Rarely do you see someone post a message about how they screwed up until they have lived through it, remediated it and turned around. In general, we have to be ok with making mistakes. The only bad mistake is one that you do not learn from.

Most people will look at my life, my family, my house, my career…and think this is someone that has done well. But underneath all of that are a host of mistakes that no one really knew about. I’m ok with those mistakes. I do not glorify them but I use them to tell my story, how I learned from them, what I learned from them and how I changed to make sure it didn’t happen again.

Here are some keys too dealing with your mistakes that I hope will help you move on, grow and improve.

1. Recognize them for what they are or were.

This is critical, but I don’t want you to get hung up on it. Just know that it was a mistake. This will help you take the next steps to build from it. I don’t want you to just throw dirt on it though, I want you to look at it, see it for what it is and make note of it.

2. Give yourself grace!

None of us are perfect, there is only one that has every lived a perfect life, Jesus Christ. Remember, God gave us grace. He allows us to carry on and sin against him, but he gives us grace. He says that it is ok, don’t continue in it but it is ok. Grace is simply a way of telling ourselves I still love you. No matter what mistakes you have made, they do not define you, so allow yourself some grace once you recognize it.

3. Learn from it.

Now that you recognized it and gave yourself grace, it is time to look and course correct, figure out what you did wrong and make sure it doesn’t happen again. This is where the learning comes in. I can tell you about the jobs I took for the wrong reasons or the floors I installed completely wrong… When I teach my financial classes, I talk about the 401k loan I took out, or reducing my investments so we could buy a camper… Yup, I’ve made them, I learned from them and I will not do them again. It is time to move on, recognize what I did previously was wrong and move on from it.

As you look at the mistakes you made, it is important to figure out what you learned from them. This will help that mistake to become part of your growth and help you to give yourself the grace when you make a mistake in the future.

Remember you are not your mistakes, but the mistakes that you learn from will make you a better person every day.

What mistakes have you made? What did you learn from them? Sharing your mistakes may help someone give themselves grace for their mistakes.