This Week’s Message: Mistake By Ellie Lingner Mistake vt. 1. to understand or perceive wrongly: interpret or judge incorrectly (mistake someone’s motives) 2. to take (someone or something) to be another; recognize or identify incorrectly (to mistake one twin for the other) vi. to make a mistake n. 1. a fault in understanding, perception, interpretation, etc. 2. an idea, answer, act, etc. that is wrong: error. Because we live in a society that seems to condemn mistakes, we begin to overestimate them. Early in life, making a mistake becomes a big deal. We try not to make a mistake at home in order to gain approval. We try not to make a mistake at school so that our grades will be good. We try not to make a social mistake so we will be accepted and admired by our peers. Some of us spend our lifetimes worrying about mistakes and take no actions for fear of taking the wrong one. What a sad waste! The real question is…how do we learn in life if not from our mistakes? We certainly don’t learn from anyone else’s. We see mistakes made all around us and often do the exact same thing. We don’t necessarily learn from people preaching at us about how to avoid a mistake. More often than not we turn a deaf ear to that conversation. There are huge mistakes, mostly in judgment and of commission, for which society punishes us and we punish ourselves—life altering mistakes like marrying the wrong person, accepting a bribe or running a red light and causing a fatal crash. We pay for those mistakes in a really big way and perhaps more importantly—other people are forced to pay for our mistake. And there are inconsequential mistakes that mean next to nothing in the scheme of life. We make a left turn when we should have turned right and either get lost or must rectify the mistake. We get off an elevator on the wrong floor. We don’t add up the figures in the checkbook correctly. We can catch it in time or bounce a check, but life certainly goes on. Yet we are born making mistakes and we continue until the day we die. No one can avoid them. The question still remains: what do we do with our mistakes? Do we pay for them and go on with our lives? Do we let them destroy us? Do we use what we have learned to turn a mistake into a positive? That, my friend, is the ultimate decision…your question. Week’s Quotes: “The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one.” Elbert Hubbard, The Note Book (1927). “The man who achieves makes many mistakes, but he never makes the biggest mistake of all—doing nothing.” Benjamin Franklin, (1706-1790), American statesman, scientist, philosopher, printer, writer and inventor. “A man must be big enough to admit his mistakes, smart enough to profit from them, and strong enough to correct them.” John C. Maxwell. “The most valuable thing you can make is a mistake—you can’t learn anything from being perfect.” Adam Osborne, (1939-2003), American entrepreneur. “Mistakes are the usual bridge between inexperience and wisdom.” Phyllis Theroux. “Success does not consist in never making mistakes, but in never making the same one a second time.” George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), Irish literary critic, playwright and essayist. “Your mistake does not define who you are…you are your possibilities.” Oprah Winfrey, (b. 1954), American television personality, actress and producer. “There are no mistakes or failures, only lessons.” Denis Waitley. (b. 1933), American motivational speaker and author of self-help books. “If you own up to your mistakes, you don’t suffer as much. But that’s a tough lesson to learn.” Lee Iacocca, Talking Straight (1988), with Sonny Kleinfeld. “Every great mistake has a halfway moment, a split second when it can be recalled and perhaps remedied.” Pearl S. Buck, What America Means to Me (1943). “Any man can make mistakes, but only an idiot persists in his error.” Cicero, Philippics (44-43 B.C.). “Love truth, but pardon error.” Voltaire, Sept Discours en Vers sur L’Homme (1738). “A man should never be ashamed to own he has been in the wrong, which is but saying, in other words, that he is wiser today than he was yesterday.” Jonathan Swift, Thoughts on Various Subjects (1711).
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