Learning From Mistakes – How To Get Over Them With Ease
Want to begin learning from mistakes? Here’s how to get over them quickly so you can move on and make this year better than the last.
Let’s chat about learning from mistakes.
Want to know how to learn from your mistakes so that this year is better than the last?If the answer is YES, let me start by asking you a question:
Put your hand up if you agree that every year we make a boatload of mistakes (sometimes over and over again).
Now imagine if you could actually learn from those mistakes and avoid repeating them.
This post is all about learning from your mistakes and applying the knowledge you gain each year to the next one.
So rather than repeating the same mistakes or ignoring any red flags, you are instead calibrating this knowledge and using it to your advantage.
Yeah!
That is absolutely how you want to be entering the New Year!
For the record it’s not just your mistakes that you want to learn from.
This bucket of new knowledge also includes all the things you tried that didn’t work, and all the things you witnessed other people attempting to do that didn’t go in their favor either.
The cool thing is even if things didn’t always go your way this year, chances are plenty of things DID work out, helped you move forward in life and propelled you down the right path.
And that’s the way it should be.
I mean, what’s the point of failing if you don’t learn from it?
What’s the point of making a mistake if you go on to repeat it the next week?
What’s the point of persisting with a habit that you know isn’t helping you in any way?
Since you’re learning so much each year, why not put it to good use?
It only makes sense to grow and learn from these lessons but the sad truth is many of us don’t change our behaviors very much from year to year.
We get stuck in a rut and think “woe is me”.
Why not commit to making this year different?
Here’s how you can apply the lessons of the past to the future:
LEARNING FROM MISTAKES
TIP # 1 – Take a few days to review the last year.
I personally think this is so important.
I am obsessed with journaling and use this time to study my growth and journey in life.
Ask yourself: What did you learn this year, both positive and negative?
What mistakes did you make?
What were your biggest wins?
Do you see a pattern to any of your mistakes?
Can you see that many of your challenges are caused by committing the same mistakes year after year?
Now, consider your friends and family.
What challenges did they face? What were their successes?
What can you learn from them?
Take the best and the worst from your past and learn from them.
Make use of that information to enhance your life.
LEARNING FROM MISTAKES
TIP # 2 – Find alternatives to your least effective actions.
Do you even know what your least effective actions are?
If not, it’s time to find out and write them down.
Maybe you procrastinate too much or consistently show up to work late.
Maybe you’re disorganized or constantly fail to stand up for yourself?
What are the changes you want to make in the coming year?
LEARN FROM YOUR MISTAKES
TIP # 3 – Identify those behaviors that support your success.
Be warned: you will have behaviors that not only support you but behaviors that don’t.
Work out which are the ones that support your success.
Perhaps you dropped your late night eating habit this year and consequently lost 25 pounds.
That is a behavior that you would obviously want to repeat.
Or maybe you set your alarm half an hour earlier every day and that led to you coming consistently early to work.
Note these things down!
LEARNING FROM MISTAKES
TIP # 4 – Create new habits.
Take a look again at your least effective behaviors.
You want to nip those in the bud!
The way to do this is by choosing habits that will counteract your less-effective behaviors and ensure your positive behaviors occur more frequently.
Here are some examples of how you can learn from your mistakes:
Procrastination:
If you are a chronic procrastinator then you need to take immediate action when you know something needs to be done.
Remind yourself of the pain that procrastination has caused you in the past and imagine how amazing it will feel to complete the task.
Just get it done!
The secret to getting ahead is just getting started.
You really are what you DO, not what you SAY you will do.
Constantly late to work:
A new more effective strategy may be to place your alarm on the other side of the room so you’re forced to get out of bed.
Or choose your clothes the night before or commit to leaving the house in plenty of time.
Repairing a relationship:
If you need to work on your relationship, spend 15 minutes each day doing something nice for your spouse.
Write a list of all the things you love about them.
Or go to marriage counselling or aim to have a date night once a week.
Just do something!
Lose 15 lbs:
A simple plan could be to make healthy food choices and working out three times each week.
LEARNING FROM MISTAKES
TIP # 5 Monitor yourself.
If you’re not careful and forget to monitor your progress there’s a chance you may quietly slip back into your old patterns of behavior.
It sometimes happens very subtly and slowly so it catches you unaware.
Yes change is challenging, and you can expect to face a lot of internal resistance.
But keep your eye on the trophy!
Avoid being too hard on yourself when you slip up.
Just vow to redouble your efforts going forward!
LEARNING FROM MISTAKES
TIP # 6 – Celebrate your successes.
When you apply what you’ve learned from last year in the New Year, you can expect great things to happen.
And when they happen I want you to celebrate!
Appreciate these changes moving forward and be proud of yourself.
This is the best way to ensure good things keep happening – by reinforcing your behavior by feeling good about yourself.
Sure you will face some crappy times on occasion but I encourage you learn from these challenges and strive to move beyond them.
If you don’t like something change it and if you can’t change it, change your attitude.
Remember: Your past is the key to your future.
Take what you’ve learned in the past and leverage that experience going forward.
No one can go back in time to change what has happened.
So work on your present and gift yourself with a wonderful future.
The New Year is the perfect time to say goodbye to the old and hello to the new.
LEARNING FROM MISTAKES
We really are the authors of our own destinies.
You can see challenges as either as a curse which you suffer from or as a blessing which you make good use of moving forward.
What the New Year brings to you really does depend a great deal on what YOU bring to the New Year.
In the end, the New Year is like a new chapter in your book and guess what? It is waiting to be written by you.
You can have the best year of your life, but not if you fail to learn from your past experiences.
Your results have lessons to teach.
Are you paying attention?
Great, then let’s get to work…
Much love,
Frances Vidakovic xxx
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I’m Frances Vidakovic – a mindset & action coach for quietly ambitious women who want to stop overthinking and finally take aligned action. I help women achieve their goals and follow through on what matters, without sacrificing their sanity or soul.