Not Everything Can Be A Mistake...Life won't allow it.

“A mistake isn’t a mistake unless it can’t be put right.”

~ Sophie Kinsella

And when you can’t “put right” a mistake you’ve made, it’s simply because it was a bad decision that life won’t allow you to forget… Forgetting will leave the door open for you to make the same mistake again, inevitably. 

Can you look back and pin-point every defining moment that shaped your life’s trajectory? Can you recognize the actions (or the decisions) you've made, placed you in the position you’re in today? While what felt right may have actually ended up being right, undoubtedly there were wrong turns -wrong decisions were made...

Every day you are given an opportunity to make decisions that will impact your tomorrow, and those opportunities will show how wise your decision making process is… Give it some thought, because while the end result of your decisions won’t always be what you wanted, you will not always be able to recover from them. Again, not everything can be attributed to “making a mistake”… not everything will be set right by taking responsibility and saying, “I’m sorry.”

To live life is to grow, learn, and better ourselves through experiences. New experiences in life are never explored grounds; they require you to be cautious, thoughtful and wary of “the outcome” but at the same time, welcoming of the potential lesson. 

Life is a scary place that can only be made safe by the way we make decisions and the paths we set for ourselves.

Life will allow you to move forward from mistakes. Life, as I said, will help you grow from your mistakes when you courageously stand, admit, understand and learn from them BUT also trust that life won’t be forgiving when you refuse to receive the lessons you set yourself to learn from…

So last night, The Hubby and I got into one of those never ending debates we so passionately get into (some of our best moments☺), that 1 hour later, all we could do (again) was to agree to disagree. This is what I said to him, “Baby, I am going to give you 2 scenarios and I want you to tell me if you agree with my interpretation of the two, or just tell me your perspective, and if it’s different than mine”… Here’s the scenario… 

What if our son came home from school and said:

“Daddy, I had a math test today and I know I am going to get an F on it because I totally studied the wrong part of the syllabus and couldn’t answer any of the questions… I’m so mad at myself!” 

OR, he comes home and says: 

“Daddy I had a math test today and I got an F because I didn’t study and got caught cheating.”

Better yet, I went on to say:

“2 friends plan a hunting trip. While manipulating his riffle, one of them loses his balance and the rifle goes off, killing his friend… OR, “What if the same two friends were have having issues in their relationship (due to one’s jealousy and resentment for the other), to the point that the ‘friend” starts planning on how he can get rid of him. He plans a hunting trip where he puts his plan in action and kills his friend…” 

Were they mistakes or bad decisions?”

And this started the debate ☺…

Easily, you can guess that the hubby viewed both opposite scenarios as mistakes that you can learn from but for me it was crystal clear that even though the results are 1 and the same, they are 2 very different scenarios and not comparable…

For me, a mistake is something you did without intention. It’s the result of a decision you’ve made, as you were put in a position to make a choice. Options are presented and to the best of your ability, you’ll try to make what you feel is the right decision. Mistakes are situations that you find yourself in, that generate an outcome you had no control of. You had no proclivity in the said action that caused an undesired result and because you are not your mistakes, you can learn, grow and bounce back from that… Society will accept and know the authenticity of your admission of a mistake.

On the other end, a bad decision is while a decision was made intentionally, often without regard for the consequence. It is when you decide to ride that fine line between what’s right and what’s wrong. It would be a deliberate act, committed with the full knowledge that doing so was not only against the rules, but against what (as people with built in moral codes) we know to be right. You decide to take chances when knowing what the right thing to do is, when you’ve already lived prior consequences originating from the same action deemed wrong… 

When ill feelings are used in your decision making process, or when the complete knowledge of the harm your actions could result in is evident, or when knowing right from wrong, you still chose to do wrong… You can no longer label it as a mistake… Life won’t allow it!

So the most important lesson in all of mistake making is that every one of us makes mistakes, every day of our lives. It is to trust that while mistakes are inevitable, if you can learn from it, no matter what happens, you’ll be able to get value from it and apply it to the betterment of you.

“Mistake” is an appeasing word in our growth process…let’s not use it in vain and try to hide behind it…

What is your point of view?

Remember that I Love You, Smooches