Mistakes

I  used to think that as I matured I would make fewer mistakes. I thought, "I'm going to get better at this, because I made a lot of mistakes in the beginning." I believed that there would come a day when I wouldn't make very many mistakes, because I would be better.

What I learned, however, was that as I matured I would continue making mistakes, but I would learn more quickly from them. Maturity helps us become better leaders because it helps us learn from our mistakes.

As we mature we become more self-confident. As we become more self-confident, we're willing to admit things that we would not admit if we had lower self-image. We become strong enough to admit mistakes -- and learn from them. We become bolder because we know that even if we make a mistake, we are moving ahead.

As we mature we realize that mistakes are not usually fatal. Mistakes weren't as big a deal as I thought. In fact, not only are mistakes not usually fatal, they actually have the opposite affect in that they can show us the right way of doing it. As Henry Ford put it, "Even a mistake may turn out to be the one thing necessary to a worthwhile achievement."

As we mature we find that we make the same mistakes unless we learn from them. The question isn't "How many mistakes have you made?" but "How many of the same mistakes have you made?" One secret to success is to not repeat the same mistakes. The person interested in success has to learn to view failure as a healthy, inevitable part of the process of getting to the top.

As we mature we understand that mistakes are unavoidable. Can you think back to the times you tried to avoid mistakes? You know what I'm saying: "I'll just be careful. I won't make any mistakes here." After a while you learn to risk because you know the mistakes are unavoidable. You can't get around them, and in fact, with the proper perspective, you don't want to. You embrace mistakes as a way of learning. You don't try to fail, but accept that you will sometimes.

As we mature we see that even successful people make mistakes. Remember when you realized that the people you admired make mistakes, too? Old Rough and Ready, Teddy Roosevelt, knew that those who become successful do so with many mistakes, not only a few. In fact, it was the unsuccessful that only made a few mistakes. Roosevelt reminded us that: "The man who makes no mistakes does not usually make anything." Successful people usually have a string of failures in their past -- that they used as a platform to further success.

Above all, as we mature we gain proper perspective on mistakes -- and on life.