Learn from your mistakes. You’ve probably heard this many times before and it’s very good advice. What about the times when you’re not making mistakes or you’re not aware of any but, as we know, there are always things to learn? Sometimes mistakes don’t show up until we decide there’s been a failure.
At this point, you can look back to identify the mistakes and learn from them. But what about when you’re in the middle of things and all appears to be going well? Perhaps your business is running fairly successfully, your career is progressing steadily or your home life seems stable and settled. You may not be making any obvious mistakes, but there are probably many things you could learn to improve or seek to become excellent at doing.
So, where do you start? You need to be aware of any potential mistakes you could be making and for this, you need to be open to learning. When you’re open to learning, you may well prevent future mistakes by nipping them in the bud. Be open to clues and messages around you; listen to what others are saying, read more and listen to your intuition. Then, instead of immediately jumping to the conclusion that this isn’t relevant to you, or telling yourself that you already do something as well as you can, look for ways of improving and how this message can be relevant to you. We can learn a lot from others’ mistakes, their thoughts, their ideas and actions to shorten the learning curve for ourselves. There are opportunities galore around us and we need to be open to receiving them and willing to act upon them.
I experienced a rather bizarre incident in a shop recently when I was asked out on a date. Because I was curious about his approach I continued to speak to him about it. He admitted that he’d decided that ‘if you don’t ask, you don’t get’. Later that day, I got the message and noticed that there were a couple of things I wasn’t asking for. Now I could choose to do something about it. Had I been making mistakes? Possibly, but if I was, they weren’t obvious to me at the time and probably wouldn’t have shown up as mistakes until much later. By being open to the messages, I had an opportunity to learn before they became mistakes.
I invite you to start practising being open to more clues and messages, especially ones that could shorten your learning curve or correct potential mistakes. Instead of justifying any of it to yourself, just open up and ask, “What, if anything, can I learn from this?” Listen to your responses and choose what to do about them.
Learn not only from your mistakes, but from what other people do and who they’re being.
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Wendy Hearn works with business owners, professionals and executives to discover and unlock their own inspiration, to effortlessly take the actions required to have the success they desire. To receive Wendy’s free newsletter, send an email to: newsletter@wendyhearn.par32.com http://www.Business-Personal-Coaching.com Copyright 2003, Wendy Hearn. All rights reserved.
