The Nature of Mistakes

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Is it important to avoid Mistakes?

Some Mistakes Make Us Laugh

Everyone makes mistakes. Mistakes have consequences, some of which affect only yourself and some affect others.

Not all mistakes are ‘Bad’. They can lead to unexpected and exciting conclusions. Think of planning a journey and taking a wrong turn that leads you to a beautiful spot, an event, even a person that you would otherwise never have encountered. Many an invention is prompted by an initial ‘mistake’. Even Scientific discoveries can happen through some accident.

Some mistakes are simply funny. They make us laugh and supply us with a story to relate.

Growing up is a series of mistakes, a learning process. A child touches something hot and learns to assess before touching. The examples are many and I don’t need to list them here.

Progress would come to a halt if no mistakes were made and it would be a dull life if no-one got things wrong, so it would be a mistake of a sort to try to avoid them all. It’s the nature of mistakes that determine whether or not they should be avoided.

Mistakes happen for all kinds of reasons too. They can be caused by lack of knowledge or skill or incomplete understanding. Fatigue and lack of attention, clumsiness and many other factors come into play. As we go through life gaining experience and knowledge we make fewer mistakes.

The nature of mistakes that are damaging

Having said all that, some mistakes can be damaging, either to ourselves or others and if they can be avoided it would be a good thing. If we can save ourselves and others from suffering we do so.

Naturally we all wish to avoid mistakes that are damaging to others and most of these will hurt the person who made the mistake too. Conversely, if you hurt yourself, that in turn will hurt those close to you.

Some are just minor errors that can easily be corrected, they are not particularly damaging to anyone, they just waste a little time.

Sometimes you hear people speak of ‘The Worst Mistake I Ever Made’ and they identify some resounding failure that befell them. Surely that huge mistake occurred because of small mistakes that came earlier? Some fundamental error of judgement, perhaps that was present from the start?

It’s difficult to put the mistakes we make in any particular order of gravity, because a small mistake can lead us to a series of mistakes with greater damaging consequences down the line. So I would say that the first mistake to avoid is the one of failing to recognise a mistake and then failing to rectify it as far as possible.

Why this exploration into the nature of mistakes? Well, I have made many mistakes in life, not least in the area of my online endeavours.

I will look at some of the mistakes I have made on my journey to online success in coming posts. Writing about them will serve as a reminder for myself and a pointer for you. I hope looking at them closely will help both of us to avoid the damaging mistakes in future.

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