The Magic of Mistakes

“The extraordinary potential behind cultivating the art of making a mistake and gaining wisdom from it.”

This article is about the magic that can be found in making mistakes. It is inspired by Robert Kiyosaki, author of the bestselling Rich Dad Poor Dad series, and his first-hand experience on making a mistake and gaining wisdom from it, rather than choosing to avoid them.

Whether we like it or not, we make mistakes. A reliable sign of making one is usually the experience of some form of upset or discomfort. Most of the people I know, including myself, grew up thinking that mistakes were damaging and should be avoided at all costs. In school, for instance, we would tend to correlate errors with low intelligence and failure. Basically, the more we make, the less capable we are.

For others, however, mistakes are opportunities to learn something new. The “magic” part of the mistake, referred to in the title, is reflected by the learning tied in with it. Instead of being taught how to avoid them, some cultivate the art of turning a mistake into an opportunity to gain wisdom. This is what Robert Kiyosaki observed through his mentor: that he could welcome mistakes as opportunities, and be even better afterwards.

Although mistakes are seldom pleasant experiences and the temptation to spend most of life trying to avoid them at all costs is strong, past slip-ups can truly be considered as gifts in relation to our present experiences. If they appear to be beyond our control, we do have a final say in how we choose to perceive them, and therefore experience them. Even if the actual making of the mistake may be unintentional, what we do thereafter does not have to be.

The temptation of denial, blame and justification: becoming conscious of our reactions
It’s not necessarily easy to learn from mistakes at first. Before we can learn from our errors, we need to become conscious of how we are reacting to them. The good news is that, mostly, all this takes is honesty.

In the table below is a cast of little voices that describes different reactions we may have to some of life’s setbacks.

This initial reaction, if sustained, gets us absolutely nowhere. In fact, it maintains us in a state of discomfort, anger and general negativity. These reactions often stem from not knowing how to cope with the situation, rather than acting in bad faith, so there’s really no point in beating ourselves up either. The good news is that once we start to recognise these states, we can move beyond them very quickly, nipping tricky situations, ongoing feuds and unnecessary confusion in the bud.

After the initial step, the “honesty step”, of realising that we’ve made a mistake and that there may well be a voice or two at play, it’s time to make a choice.

Our choice: letting the voices take over or claiming responsibility
Although it’s often tempting to let one of these voices take over, we do have a choice. What we choose to do next is entirely up to us, yet it makes a fundamental difference in our lives and the lives of others:

• We can sit with one of the above reactions and believe we are right.
• Or we can allow the responsible us to take control of our thinking and ask ourselves what priceless lesson we can learn from the mistake. And therefore not have to experience it again.

A conscious choice to learn and open up new worlds
If we accept to recognise the voices, seeing them for what they really are, and then choose to remain lucid during these events as we “take the higher road”, we then know that opening up to mistakes and seeing them in a different light opens up new worlds to us. We shift from a subconscious reaction to a conscious choice to gain wisdom from any situation. We can experience these new worlds professionally, in relationships, financially, with our health, and so on.

If we consider that mistakes are an opportunity to learn something new, something we did not know before, rather than clinging on to or avoiding a bad experience, our horizons can expand greatly. Robert Kiyosaki’s mentor suggests the image of learning to ride a bicycle to reinforce the idea of the magic found inside of mistakes:

“Just remember the frustration you went through as you struggled to learn how to ride a bicycle. All your friends are riding, but all you are doing is climbing on your bike and immediately falling off. You make mistake after mistake. Then, suddenly, you stop falling off, you begin to pedal, the bike begins rolling, and then like magic, a whole new world opens up to you. That is the magic found in mistakes.”

The more we make mistakes and take time to learn from them, the less we shy away from them. Better yet, the more magic we have in our lives, therefore avoiding the biggest mistake of all...

The biggest mistake of all
Those of us who perceive mistakes negatively, have a tendency to make one, but then fail to find the lessons in them. That is why we see so many people making the same mistakes over and over again, having never realised how they could learn from them.

Worse, we can end up avoiding making mistakes altogether, which is the biggest mistake of all. If a person says “what I learned is that I’ll never do this again,” then they probably haven’t learned much. As Robert’s mentor says, “too many people live in a diminishing world because they continue to say “I’ll never do that again,” instead of saying “I’m glad that happened, because I learned this or that from that experience.”

We don’t necessarily have much apparent power over the situation or the people involved, but we can, if we choose to, have absolute power in relation to our perception of life, and therefore ourselves. This doesn’t mean denying the pain or regret we might experience, since those feelings are part of the process. It also doesn’t mean denying other people’s involvement in the situation. What it means is having the final say on how you will personally go through the experience, and what you will come out of it with.  As Robert Kiyosaki’s mentor says:

“To be upset or hold a grudge against another person is like being upset with your bicycle because you fell off once or twice while trying to learn something new.”

Of course, we can significantly benefit from what others have already learnt from their mistakes, too. In fact, this is a sure way of avoiding a considerable amount of them, as long as we remain open to our own experience of life, we don’t seek refuge entirely in that of others, and we remain open to fact that it’s still ok if we make some of our own. The point is not to seek out a mistake for the sake of it, but rather to develop an ability to live with one –if and when it occurs—and therefore remain open to life. Robert Kiyosaki underlines the dynamics of either expanding our physical horizons or diminishing them: “Instead of being afraid of failing, I know that making mistakes is the way we were all designed to learn. If we fail to make mistakes, or make them and do not learn from them, the magic goes out of life. Life goes backward and gets smaller, instead of more expansive and filled with magic." Not only does the potential behind how we choose to relate to a mistake open up new worlds, it ultimately makes us happier.

Making mistakes ultimately makes us happier
Robert Kiyosaki observed this about his mentor: “each time he made a mistake, instead of being depressed, he often seemed happier, wiser, more determined, and even richer from the experience. He would say to his son and me, mistakes are how we learn. Every time I make a mistake, I always learn something about myself, I learn something new, and I often meet new people I would never have otherwise met.”

At the end of the day, mistakes are going to happen. It’s our choice as to how we’re going to experience them. If we remember to recognise the Blamer, the Denier, the Justifier, the Quitter and/or the Liar, and take the opportunity to see them for what they are, we can claim back our responsibility and influence over the situation. We can learn, and actually experience greater happiness.

To help you along this path, here are five questions you can ponder if you wish to find out more about your relationship to mistakes:

1. Which voice has a tendency to crop up most often in your head? (Be honest)

• Liar
• Blamer
• Justifier
• Quitter
• Denier

 2. When considering a mistake from the past, what is good about this situation that you may not be seeing?

3. If you are upset with someone else or yourself, what lesson can you learn and be grateful for, because you were courageous enough to take a risk and maybe learn something?

4. What are your attitudes about risk, making mistakes, and learning?

5. What are the attitudes of the people around you about risk, making mistakes, and learning?

Further reading:

http://www.richdad.com/

Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki

Rich Dad’s Guide to Investing: what the rich invest in, that the poor and middle class do not! by Robert Kiyosaki

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