If you're like me, you've made plenty of mistakes. I think we could get stuck
beating ourselves up for that or forgive ourselves for those past mistakes, how is
it done?
I enjoy movies and I learn a lot of principles from movies. One of the
favorite ones has been Meet the Robinsons, this is a Disney animated
feature that features a family that gets to engage in some time-travel and so
they get to meet some of their ancestors for example or people who are coming in
the future and so it's really fascinating that way but there's a scene
in the movie where they're meeting around a family dinner table and one of
the characters in the movie has invented this peanut butter and jelly gun,
if you've seen that the show, you'll remember this particular scene. The thing
goes berserk and it just starts squirt and peanut butter and jelly all over the
place and it's a mess and as the scene starts to calm down, everybody's just
kind of silent and looking around and then they erupt into applause as they
start to cheer and they say, "Oh, this is awesome, this is a great mistake." And then
one of the characters comments, "You can learn a lot from your mistakes." Successes,
not so much. That really stuck with me because I think it's a key to
understanding how we can forgive ourselves. First of all, how about we
acknowledge the truth and the truth is we are human and that means we're going
to make mistakes, it's part of the deal, welcome to earth.
We are going to make mistakes. Wouldn't we fear that, we actually
stopped ourselves or cut ourselves off from some of the success that's
available to us. I'm thinking of the way that some very successful people have
framed this so that we can understand it better. One that comes to mind is Robert
Kiyosaki, he is the author of Rich Dad, Poor Dad and the whole Rich Dad series,
he's probably one of the most prolific writers on personal finance of our time
and he pointed out, he said, "If you want to succeed, start failing faster."
Interesting.. John Maxwell, a great leadership writer and trainer and
speaker has a book titled Failing Forward. There it is again.
One of my friends, Brett Harvard, he is the author of The 5 Laws That
Determine All Of Life's Outcomes and Brett called one of these laws
the law of frequency. He's talking about the same thing. If you want to succeed,
start failing faster. As you avoid mistakes, you actually impede or put a
barrier up in front of your success. So failure is part of the deal. I've
interviewed probably hundreds of successful people and authors and
trainers and speakers who all understand the same concept and it is so enormously
consistent in my experience that they all frame a failure as part of a
success process. That's interesting. So acknowledging that we are human,
accepting that we will make mistakes and then starting to frame those mistakes as
something that actually contributes to our own success, that is going to put us
in position to be more forgiving and tolerant of ourselves. I was talking to
my wife about this very topic and Vicki works at an elementary school in our
neighborhood where one of their themes has been FAIL and that's an acronym.
First Attempt In Learning. First attempt in learning, FAIL. What if every failure
were simply that, it's our first attempt in learning.
What if you knew, what if you knew for sure that it was going to take you five
attempts to get to whatever success is for you. Five attempts. How soon do you
want to hit the first one and then the second one and then the third one?
You see what I'm saying? So we just put it into a sequence that is actually part of
our success journey and that allows us to be a little more compassionate and
tolerant with ourselves when we actually make those mistakes. I'm also kind of
going back to my roots here. When I was in high school, I used to play in the
band, I was one of the band kids. Played the trumpet in the high school band at
Wasatch High School in Hebrew Utah and I remember a band leader we had, Mr. Pitt,
who used to have a philosophy that if you're going to make a mistake, make a
good one. You just let it rip because if you're
holding back, if you're being tentative, you're less likely to actually learn it
and get it down. He said, if you're going to make a mistake, make a doozy.
We want to be able to hear that across town. You really want to nail it if
you're going to make a mistake. That was an interesting philosophy and
it took a little bit of courage for us as high school kids in the band to
actually allow ourselves to step up and perform it that kind of a level so that
we could actually learn the material but that means we're going to make
a whole lot of mistakes too. If you're going to make a mistake, make a good one.
Now let's go to forgiveness for just a minute. As we reframe what mistakes are
all about, can you forgive yourself for making mistakes? In fact, can you go to
the Meet the Robinsons level here and congratulate yourself for making some
mistakes? Because it means that you're venturing, it means that you're
stretching, it means that you're willing to step up and do something that has
some risk but also has some potential benefits that are amazing. Forgiveness is
something that we sometimes work on and we think
as applying to other people, we're going to forgive them, right? For something that
they've done to us or a mistake that they've made. Why is it that we can be so
tolerant and patient and forgiving with everyone except for one where we are
harsh and demanding and unforgiving right here at home.
Something wrong with that reasoning. I think it's a good idea to be forgiving
to all, not just others, there's a big difference between all and others.
Problem is, we all have just enough destructive pride going on that we tend
to treat one person differently than we treat all of the other ones,
that's prideful, that's like claiming that I'm a special case. Think about that
for a minute, if I believe that I'm a special case then I get to hold myself
to a different standard than anyone and everyone else, it's goofy, it's prideful,
and it's not accurate except that you're part of a human family and that this
human family that we all are part of is perfectly designed with strengths and
weaknesses, we all have them. So realizing that we're not a special case and
reframing how we think about failure and mistakes are two things that could be
very very powerful in helping to forgive ourselves so that we can move forward
and have a more joyful experience.
I am so excited for you to be in that elite
group of people who understand that mistakes are just part of success.
Glad you're here at Live On Purpose TV.