Getting in the Game

This week's Pleasure Point was about not being afraid to make mistakes. Rather than being ashamed of wrong turns, we can look at them as a sign that we are living our lives, full on. A perfect example of this is Thomas Edison's quote:

"I make more mistakes than anyone else I know,

and, sooner or later, I patent most of them!"

If Tom had quit after his first few "failures", we might still be reading at night by candlelight. Instead, he learned from his experiments and even though it wasn't the results he hoped for, something else came from it.

Google is full of quotes about mistakes (one site had almost 900 of them!):

“I have learned all kinds of things from my many mistakes.

The one thing I never learn is to stop making them.”

Joe Abercrombie

“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 T. Kiyosaki

“Don't confuse poor decision-making with destiny. Own your mistakes. It’s ok; we all make them. Learn from them so they can empower you!”

Steve Maraboli

These are just a few, all with the common thread of finding out something we didn't know. In fact, often discovering things that were completely unexpected.

Around eight years ago I decided that I was going to finally move out of New England

because I didn't like three or four months out of the year, namely winter. Even though my "gut" was telling me to rent a condo on the beach in Florida, I was seduced by an adorable house with a pool which I bought. To this day I view this as the biggest blunder I've ever made, however I do not regret it. It was not fun and it took me two years to get myself out of the situation, but I learned so many things and even now, I continue to have insights. A few "ah-ha's" were:

I didn't know how much I love the northeast, nor did I understand how interestingly different we are in other parts of the country.
I never knew how quickly the jungle takes over in tropical climates!
I made the decision to buy the house for reasons that were not true to my desires -- in fact, I let my head overrule my heart. That does not work for me.

The point is, even though I had a slip-up, I took action after complaining about the snow and cold of Boston for many years. I could have continued to bitch and moan and stayed stuck, but I didn't and that opened up all kinds of new paths. As Jung said: “Mistakes are, after all, the foundations of truth, and if a [woman] does not know what a thing is, it is at least an increase in knowledge if [s]he knows what it is not. ”

So, go ahead and explore. Take chances. Try on new experiences because

“The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one.” (E. Hubbard)