Life is imperfect. You will never get it 100% right, no matter how hard you work, how much you study, or how much you are willing to sacrifice. There will always be inconsistencies. We call them mistakes and we live our lives in limitation because we are afraid of making them. But the gifts of mistakes are the lessons of life. And make no mistake…. gifts are abundant in our lives. We just have to learn how to accept them.

How would your life be different if you chose to use the word “Next” every time something didn’t work out the way you expected?

There are no right or wrong decisions, just choices we make, and sometimes they are the wrong ones. When you choose the wrong path, or you choose the wrong action and later realize it, I have only one word for you….“NEXT!”

For years I didn’t know how to say I was wrong because if I did, I had to admit I was weak or vulnerable and that was unacceptable. When I made a mistake, instead of seeing it for what it was; simply the wrong direction taken, I saw it as weakness. But the opposite of this is true. Admitting I could be wrong, and had taken the wrong direction, was indeed a position of strength.

Life is not lived in a straight line. We zig-zag our way through it and rarely get where we want to go first time around. All skill learning is accomplished by trial and error. When you live in fear of making mistakes, you are also choosing not to live your life successfully. This is the paradox of creating the life you want. Living life successfully means embracing the failure as well as the success. I like to say we are failing our way to success.

When you go through life being excessively careful because you’re afraid of doing something wrong, you are aligning yourself with failure. When you become too conscientious about what other people think, or you are constantly trying to please people, you become too sensitive to any real or imagined insults. You invite negative feedback; you invite failure, and you get exactly what you didn’t want. But viewed in the right light, your mistakes are your guides to what’s not working and what you need to do to progress on your journey toward being your best self. If you think about it, you don’t know everything there is to know about whatever it is you are involved with. So it’s natural that you would deviate from the path from time to time.

Try to get some perspective on your mistakes. Did you really do something that bad? Has it turned your life upside down and there is absolutely no recovery from it? Was it an embarrassment and nothing more? Learn how to forgive yourself and move on. When you have that act of forgiveness for yourself, it’s amazing how quickly others will forgive you as well. Admit your mistakes. Know that we all make them and then move along. If someone is angry with you, then face it and make amends. Admit you were foolish.

We all do stupid things and regret the foot in mouth syndrome that sometimes happens. Let people know how sorry you are and that you’ve learned something valuable. People admire that in others and they will trust you again.

So, instead of telling yourself how stupid or how careless you were, or how bad you’ve been, try changing your thought patterns to “Wow! That was an interesting lesson.” Or “Hmm, next time I’ll do it differently.” If you keep running the mistake over and over in your head, beating yourself up, then you’ll constantly replay the past. These thoughts do nothing but keep you chained to behavior that doesn’t serve you any longer.

Mistakes are life’s way of teaching us lessons, and making them is essential if you are to progress and grow. Without them, we learn nothing. Failure is only an option if you choose to see it as an end. Learn to use the word ‘NEXT’ and see what happens.