Mistakes are something that we all make. I hope that is a given. The distinction that I made today is the way in which I have in the past mistakenly put the cause of the mistake down to a lack of adequate planning. Let me explain.
If we can accept for a moment that we have made a plan, perhaps a general plan of action, then taken action on it and made a mistake you would assume that the reasonable conclusion would be that we didn’t make an adequate enough plan… Certainly not. That is exactly the distinction. I have up until today not recognized that it is simply a matter of fact that we can’t know exactly everything before we start and so mistakes are bound to happen.
Because mistakes are bound to happen does that mean we should simply do nothing. Of course not. And likewise should we beat ourselves up if we make a minor recoverable error? Certainly not. Yet I do, fairly consistently, sigh at my lack of ability essentially stabbing myself emotionally for the stupid little things we all do sometimes and even worse I then took that logic and applied it to that I didn’t adequately plan. Foolhardy because those little jabs at my self-esteem made me less likely to try things and made me feel bad and stupid when it is really just the law of averages at work.
The law of averages everyone should know. It is the bell curve that defines most measurable phenomena. You may or may not know that your height or your weight have an average and a standard deviation just like anything which is measured, but I digress. The point I’m trying to make is that even if we plan down to the nth detail every possible outcome, we still cannot be completely certain that we, in the heat of taking action, might not make a mistake. And if we do, then we shouldn’t see it as a failure of our planning, simply put it down to the law of averages, pick yourself up and get on with it.
