A story that ends with it was a mistake
Answers
I will be the first to admit it, I hate making mistakes. My mother always told me “hate” was a very strong word. Well I really hate making mistakes. Why are mistakes such a big deal?
I am sure there are a variety of reasons, but for me it wasn’t the mistake itself that I hated, it was the feeling that followed that mistake. Does my distain for making mistakes come more from my inability to proactively deal with certain feelings such as shame, embarrassment, frustration and maybe even fear?
Feelings are very powerful and they can leave us floating on cloud nine with joy or paralyzed with fear. Can I control my feelings? I used to think I could. That is much like me saying I will never make another mistake again. Not going to happen.
Feelings are biological. Everyone experiences them in some form or fashion. In fact by age five we have the emotional ability to experience all of our feelings even though we are unable to name and understand them at that age.
Of course I would much rather experience joy, hope and gratitude as compared to sadness, frustration and envy but that’s not how the real world works. Feelings and mistakes happen. The beauty is I have the power to choose the behavior that follows my feeling much like I have the opportunity to learn from my mistakes.
The more we understand our feelings the more we can tap into the mental/emotional data they are sending. Feelings are really what make us human. They play a huge roll in how we act and the decisions we make. The sooner I realized feelings are not good or bad they just are and are a vital source of information was the moment I started realizing I could actually reduce the number of mistakes I made on a daily basis.
Is it a mistake to be mad? I don’t think so. The mistake comes when we allow the feeling of mad to negatively impact our behavior choice. The mistake would be displaying out of control road rage when someone cuts you off. We can’t control that the person pulled out in front of us but we can choose what we do with the feeling of mad.
Do I always anticipate my mistakes? Yes and no. Sometimes a feeling can come on so strong and so suddenly that we don’t allow our emotional and thinking brains to work together. We just react even though deep down we know most likely our behavior is going to get us into trouble or end up in a mistake. This is very common for children and adolescents since their thinking brain (pre-frontal cortex) is not fully developed. Their decisions are based more on emotions and the desire for pleasure and rewards as opposed to a fully adult brain that integrates the thinking and emotional brain (amygdala). Did I make more mistakes as a kid? Yep! Am I done making mistakes … doubt it but I can choose to learn from my past mistakes and hopefully not repeat them.
Remember feelings and mistakes go hand in hand. The more we learn how to recognize and understand and learn from them the more productive our outcomes will be.
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