The Opportunity to Learn and Grow from Mistakes and “Bad Decisions”

 Mistakes! All of us make them.

 We are not always going to make the right decision in life.

        But,

        What does “a right decision”” mean anyways?

It is hard to determine what is the right decision, if there are always going to be better options, for instance, better decision to make, right?

 I’m not here to teach you how to make perfect decisions. In fact, I’m not perfect in any way, shape or form. My mistakes and the outcome of my decisions are all part of my personal growth.

 In my opinion, it is not so much about how good you are about making the right decision or avoiding the bad ones.

Instead, it is how good you can become at handling the negative outcome of your decisions.

How are you going to solve the problems? How good are you going to become at learning from your mistakes and/or bad decision?

 Often, the root of the problem is not the decisions that you make. The root of the problem is what you are focusing on.

 Instead of focusing on beating yourself up over a decision that you have already made and the negative outcome itself, you should think of what you have learned in the process. Get yourself prepare to make the necessary changes and be ready to make new and better decisions to see how you can make it work next time.

That’s how we grow!

 Focus on what you can control, and not on what you can’t.

 I like to see bad decisions more as “decisions with a negative outcome.”

Keep in mind that, when making decisions, we can never fully predict the outcome. 

 Often, it doesn’t matter how much you research information that is relevant to the decision that you must make or evaluate all the possible pros and cons, or even consulting with the best mentors in the field…

At the end, you cannot predict what might occur in the process... And what it seems to be a good decision and might end up being just a decision with a negative outcome.

 There are many things that we do not have control over, even if we think we have the perfect plan.

 Suddenly, after you have made a well-planned out decision, complications in the process that are totally out of your hands might occur.

So, now how are you going to respond? Are you going to judge yourself for every bad decision you made or, about what you could have done better to avoid such of bad outcome?

 Making decisions that have a negative outcome does not make you a loser. It makes you a courageous person for having the guts to make a decision.

 Most people are constantly afraid of making the wrong decision, and as a result they do not make a decision at all.

Often times, a wrong decision is actually better than no decision at all.

A wrong decision allows you to see and correct things in your life. It gets you closer to your purpose, it helps you create a meaningful life, and helps you appreciate what you might have been taking for granted. Sometimes we can learn more from our mistakes more than what we can learn from our accomplishments.

In fact, we accomplish more things when we decide to learn from our mistakes and to improve ourselves even under the most difficult circumstances. I would like to share the following quote of Mark Twain, that says:

"Good decisions come from experience. Experience comes from making bad decisions."

-- Mark Twain

 We never really lose when we make mistakes, but gain experience, wisdom, and teaches us to have compassion for those making the same mistakes. Most of our greatest experiences in life may have come from a decision we thought had been the wrong.

Mistakes, Bad decisions and failures are just learning opportunities and the chance to do better the next time! A mistake is only ‘negative’ if you do not learn anything from it and/or keep making the same mistake over and over again.

 In fact, at the end, a bad decision it was never a bad decision, unless you fail to learn from it.

 Your task today is to reflect on your past “mistakes” and give thanks for those mistakes!

And identify things that you have learned or gained from each mistake.