SO YOU MADE A MISTAKE...
BY DR. NURIT ISRAELI
“A man’s mistakes are his
portals of discovery.”
- James Joyce
Look back at your life: What
do you consider your biggest
mistakes? Have you found
ways to correct them? How
have these mistakes affected
your life?
What life lessons have you
extracted? What have your
mistakes taught you about
yourself? In retrospect, has
anything good resulted from
your mistakes? Any insights
you have gained the hard way?
We all try to avoid making
mistakes. The question is,
how hard do we try? Does our
apprehension interfere with
our ability to make decisions?
Do we procrastinate making
decisions for fear of making
bad ones?
A “mistake” can be defined as a
decision or an action that produces
an undesirable result, a choice
we make willingly which we later
regret. What turns a decision into
a mistake is the outcome. We conclude
that a course of action is a
mistake when we don’t like the
consequences. Though mistakes
are often not as huge as we imagine,
there is a continuum of magnitude:
there are minor mistakes,
there are bigger mistakes, and, yes,
there are major mistakes for which
we pay dearly. The magnitude of
a mistake is judged differently by
each person. Attitudes toward
mistakes are also affected by cultural
mores, societal norms, and
upbringing. Still, we cannot go
through life avoiding mistakes,
and we cannot erase our mistakes.
They are a part of the unfolding
fabric of our lives. Each decision
we make – good or bad – has consequences
and influences what is
going to happen next.
Did you ever suspect, ahead of
time, that a certain move is going
to be a mistake yet made it anyhow
and, like in a game of chess,
as soon as you acted (as soon as
your “piece” touched the “chessboard”)
– you knew? And, like in
a game of chess, your mistake held
itself against you (the “board” was
irreversibly changed), and there
was no way back? Sometimes we
just need to size up the new state
of affairs, take along our regrets
and – reminding ourselves that
there are still numerous possible
moves – proceed onward to the
next move…
Many Zen theorists and practitioners
believe that there are no
such things as mistakes. Whatever
happens is meant to happen, and
regrettable events are learning
opportunities. Through this lens,
mistakes are viewed as signposts
which can help us better
understand how we wish to live.
Richard Bach, for example, states
that: “There are no mistakes. The
events we bring upon ourselves,
no matter how unpleasant, are
necessary in order to learn what
we need to learn; whatever steps
we take, they’re necessary to
reach the places we’ve chosen
to go.”
My mother often used the
Yiddish term “rebbe gelt,” which
literally means “rabbi’s money,”
and refers to the dues one
pays for important life lessons.
Indeed, mistakes may become
the life experiences that help us
grow. In my work with patients, I
often hear deep regrets about perceived
mistakes: failed marriages,
badly chosen careers, sequences
of imperfect decisions, and a variety
of missed opportunities. Yet
all too often, as we explore the
consequences, it becomes clear
that these mistakes have helped
the mistake-makers learn a great
deal about themselves and have
become stepping stones leading
to personal growth.
We do need to accept the reality
that mistakes and missteps are an
inevitable part of life. Good people
may make bad decisions. Our
judgment, our attention, and our
knowledge are at times flawed. As
the brilliant theoretical physicist
Stephen Hawking points out:
“One of the basic rules of the
universe is that nothing is perfect.
Perfection simply doesn’t exist.”
But there are two mistake-related
problems that we need to
be aware of. Firstly, people who
do not process their mistakes
tend to repeat them. Repetition
compulsion is a psychological
phenomenon in which a person
repeats patterns of behavior, even
if these patterns have proven to be
destructive and self-defeating (for
example, persisting in pursuing
relationships that are doomed to
fail). To prevent this, it is important
to identify our mistakes,
understand how and why we made
them, and try to turn them into
learning experiences. Mistakes
point us to what needs improving,
where our vulnerabilities
lie, and what we should try to
change. Winston Churchill notes
that: “All men make mistakes,
but only wise men learn from
their mistakes.” And the Dalai
Lama advises: “When you lose,
don’t lose the lesson.”
A second problem: people
may become captives of their
mistakes (a pattern of behavior
often referred to as “escalation of
commitment,” or “commitment
bias”). Feeling that they have
invested too much to quit, or
fearful of the pain of yet another
mistake, people may choose to
leave bad enough alone and hold
on to the status quo. They stay in
the seemingly safer “comfort zone”
of the known – as unhappy as it
may make them – either hoping
that persistence will eventually
pay off, or unable to muster the
courage to change course.
Ask yourself: If you were not
afraid of making mistakes, would
you do things differently? Would
you be more daring with your life?
Your relationships? Your career?
Do your efforts to avoid mistakes
at all cost lead to missed opportunities?
The novelist Jonathan
Safran Foer reminds us: “The mistakes
I’ve made are dead to me.
But I can’t take back the things
I never did.”
Our mistakes – big and small –
are a part of the history that shapes
us and makes us who we are. Let
us own up to them, correct them if
possible, or learn to live with them
the best we can. Let us focus on
the life lessons our mistakes offer.
Let us move past them by making
them our gateways to insight, our
bridges to wiser living.
As W.S. Merwin, former US
Poet Laureate who twice won
the Pulitzer Prize, concludes in a
potent stanza of his poem “Wild
Oats”:
“I needed my mistakes
in their own order
to get me here”
22 NORTH SHORE TOWERS COURIER ¢ September 2019