Wisdom for Success
.
.
BECOMING WISE ABOUT MISTAKES
.
Foresight – Perspective – Insight
“Foresight is not about predicting the future, it’s about minimizing surprise.” (Karl Schroeder)
Don’t be surprised if and when you make mistakes.
“You shouldn’t expect to fail, but you should plan for failure. The fastest way to get back on track is to know what to do when you’re off it.” (James Clear)
Don’t allow mistakes to throw you off-balance or shut you down.
“The real trick in life is to turn hindsight into foresight that reveals insight.” (Robin S. Sharma)
Learn, and then avoid making the same mistake again.
.
MISTAKES HAPPEN
.
The dictionary defines a mistake as “an action or judgment that is misguided or wrong;” and it describes synonyms as: error, fault, inaccuracy, omission, blunder or miscalculation.
To no one’s surprise – we all make mistakes.
“Mistakes are a fact of life. It is the response to error that counts.” (Nikki Giovanni)
“Mistakes are a part of being human. Appreciate your mistakes for what they are: precious life lessons that can only be learned the hard way.” (Al Franken)
“You will make mistakes, everyone does, but that’s why pencils have erasers.” (Amy Hughes)
“The hardest part about being an entrepreneur is that you will fail ten times for every success.” (Adam Horwitz)
“As you begin to take action toward the fulfillment of your goals and dreams, you must realize that not every action will be perfect. Not every action will produce the desired result. Not every action will work. Making mistakes, getting it almost right, and experimenting to see what happens are all part of the process of eventually getting it right.” (Jack Canfield)
“What do you first do when you learn to swim? You make mistakes, do you not? And what happens? You make other mistakes, and when you have made all the mistakes you possibly can without drowning – and some of them many times over – what do you find? That you can swim? Well – life is just the same as learning to swim! Do not be afraid of making mistakes, for there is no other way of learning how to live! (Alfred Adler)
.
MISTAKES AND WISDOM
.
“To make no mistake is not in the power of man; but from their errors and mistakes the wise and good learn wisdom for the future.” (Plutarch)
“All men make mistakes, but a good man yields when he knows his course is wrong, and repairs the evil. The only crime is pride.” (Sophocles)
“All men make mistakes, but only wise men learn from their mistakes.” (Winston Churchill)
“A man should never be ashamed to own he has been in the wrong, which is but saying…that he is wiser today than he was yesterday.” (Alexander Pope)
“You cannot teach a child to take care of himself unless you will let him take care of himself. He will make mistakes, and out of these mistakes will come his wisdom.” (Henry Ward Beecher)
“The road to wisdom? Well, it’s plain and simple to express: Err and err again but less and less and less.” (Piet Hein)
.
LEARNING FROM YOUR MISTAKES
.
“The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing.” (Henry Ford)
“A man who has committed a mistake and doesn’t correct it, is committing another mistake.” (Confucius)
“There’s a bit of hidden magic in every mistake. The magic is called learning.” (Robert Kiyosaki)
“Never be afraid to fail. Be afraid of not learning from mistakes.” (W. Brett Wilson)
“An error doesn’t become a mistake until you refuse to correct it.” (Orlando Batista)
“The mistake is not being wrong. The mistake is staying wrong.” (John Hill)
“It was one thing to make a mistake; it was another thing to keep making it.” (Jodi Picoult)
“The first mistake is never the one that ruins you. It is the spiral of repeated mistakes that follows. Missing once is an accident. Missing twice is the start of a new habit.” (James Clear)
“A mistake should be your teacher, not your attacker. A mistake is a lesson, not a loss. It is a temporary, necessary detour, not a dead end.” (Anonymous)
“And a step backward, after making a wrong turn, is a step in the right direction.” (Kurt Vonnegut Jr.)
“An architect’s most useful tools are an eraser at the drafting board, and a wrecking bar at the site.” (Frank Lloyd Wright)
‘
LEARNING FROM THE MISTAKES OF OTHERS
.
“From the errors of others, a wise man corrects his own.” (Publilius Syrus)
“Better be wise by the misfortunes of others than by your own.” (Aesop)
“Don’t read success stories, you will only get a message. Read failure stories, you will get some ideas to get success.” (Abdul Kalam)
“Fools say that they learn by experience. I prefer to profit by others experience.” (Otto von Bismarck)
“Some of us learn from other people’s mistakes; the rest of us have to be the other people.” (Zig Ziglar)
.
OWNING UP TO YOUR MISTAKES
.
“No persons are more frequently wrong than those who will not admit they are wrong.” (François de La Rochefoucauld)
“A man must be big enough to admit his mistakes, smart enough to profit from them, and strong enough to correct them.” (John C. Maxwell)
“The strength of character and emotional intelligence to face your failures and learn from them are at the core of success.” (Robert Kiyosaki)
“More people would learn from their mistakes if they weren’t so busy denying them.” (J. Harold Smith)
“Wisdom stems from personal accountability. We all make mistakes; own them … learn from them. Don’t throw away the lesson by blaming others.” (Steve Maraboli)
.
MISTAKES AS OPPORTUNITIES
.
“Being wrong isn’t a bad thing like they teach you in school. It is an opportunity to learn something.” (Richard Feynman)
“Take chances, make mistakes. That’s how you grow.” (Mary Tyler Moore)
“Sometimes your mistakes are your biggest virtues. You learn so much from the mistakes. Those things that you think are the worst thing that’s happening to you can somehow turn around and be the greatest opportunity.” (Nicole Kidman)
“I have learned to not let a bad race or failure bring me down, and always walking away with something positive and learning from mistakes so I can be better or stronger next time.” (Erin Hamlin)
“Your mistakes aren’t learning experiences…if you aren’t learning from them.” (Loren Weisman)
.
LEARNING FROM MISTAKES CONTRIBUTES TO SUCCESS
.
“A mistake is simply the price they pay to achieve success. Mistakes are the stepping stones to success.” (John C. Maxwell)
“The successful man will profit from his mistakes and try again in a different way.” (Dale Carnegie)
“Science, my lad, is made up of mistakes, but they are mistakes which it is useful to make, because they lead little by little to the truth.” (Jules Verne)
“You will make some mistakes but, if you learn from those mistakes, those mistakes will become wisdom and wisdom is essential to becoming wealthy.” (Robert Kiyosaki)
“Our most profitable lessons are learned from failure, not success.” (Frank Davidson)
“It’s too bad failures don’t give seminars. Wouldn’t that be valuable? If you meet a guy who has messed up his life for forty years, you’ve just got to say, ‘John, if I bring my journal and promise to take good notes, would you spend a day with me?'” (Jim Rohn)
“I have learned throughout my life as a composer chiefly through my mistakes and pursuits of false assumptions, not by my exposure to founts of wisdom and knowledge.” (Igor Stravinsky)
“Mistakes and errors are the discipline through which we advance.” (William Ellery Channing)
“So go ahead and make mistakes. Make all you can. Because that’s where you will find success. On the far side of failure.” (Thomas J. Watson, Sr.)
“Failure is a prerequisite for great success. If you want to succeed faster, double your rate of failure.” (Brian Tracy)
“Some of the best lessons we ever learn are learned from past mistakes. The error of the past is the wisdom and success of the future.” (Dale Turner)
.
ON THE POSITIVE SIDE – MAKING MISTAKES MEANS YOU’RE TRYING
.
“Mistakes are a sign of trying, and it is always better to try and fail than to fail to try.” (Robert Washington)
“A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.” (George Bernard Shaw)
“No matter how many mistakes you make or how slow you progress, you are still way ahead of everyone who isn’t trying.” (Tony Robbins)
“If you’re not failing, you’re not trying anything.” (Woody Allen)
“I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes. Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You’re doing things you’ve never done before, and more importantly, you’re Doing Something.” (Neil Gaiman)
.
THE FEAR OF MAKING MISTAKES
.
“The greatest mistake you can make in life is to continually be afraid you will make one.” (Elbert Hubbard).
“Do not fear mistakes. You will know failure. Continue to reach out.” (Benjamin Franklin)
“In school we learn that mistakes are bad, and we are punished for making them. Yet, if you look at the way humans are designed to learn, we learn by making mistakes. We learn to walk by falling down. If we never fell down, we would never walk.” (Robert Kiyosaki)
“I believe that our society’s mistake-phobia is crippling, a problem that begins in most elementary schools, where we learn to learn what we are taught rather than to form our own goals and to figure out how to achieve them. We are fed with facts and tested and those who make the fewest mistakes are considered to be the smart ones, so we learn that it is embarrassing to not know and to make mistakes. Our education system spends virtually no time on how to learn from mistakes, yet this is crucial to real learning.” (Ray Dalio)
“By seeking and blundering we learn.” (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe).
.
FORGIVE YOUR MISTAKES
.
“There is a fine balance between honoring the past and losing yourself in it. For example, you can acknowledge and learn from mistakes you made, and then move on and refocus on the now. It is called forgiving yourself.” (Eckhart Tolle)
“Mistakes are to be learned from. What successful people never do is punish themselves by reliving their mistakes over and over again by thinking of them.” (Gwen Stapleton)
“Your capacity to learn from your mistakes and move on will be key to your ultimate success and achievement.” (Amy E. Dean)
“I used to give myself an incredibly hard time inside my own head. If I made a mistake it wasn’t just a question of noting and adjusting. No. My mind would be off; criticizing, prophesying doom and failure and generally beating myself up.” (Jenny Clift)
“Every time you make a mistake, don’t bring up everything that’s wrong with yourself; tell yourself that you’re paying the price for growth and that you will learn to do better next time. Every positive thing you can say to yourself will help.” (John C. Maxwell)
“There is no sense in punishing your future for the mistakes of your past. Forgive yourself, grow from it, and then let it go.” (Melanie Koulouris)
“Your mistake does not define who you are…you are your possibilities.” (Oprah Winfrey)
.
.
end