People who struggle on their quest for success, frequently repeat the same mistakes over and over. How many times do you keep repeating the same "oops"?
You can easily correct the habit of repeating mistakes by forming a new habit. Develop a weekly habit of reflecting on your mistakes. You can devise better alternatives for the next time it happens.
Just as a chain is limited by the strength of its weakest link, your success is limited by the quality of your worst decisions. The power oflearning from your mistakes will to experiencing a more successful life.
Use this acronym, from my book The Journey to ME, to embrace your mistakes and turn them into a great learning tool.
Many Important Steps Taken Acquiring Knowledge, Experience and Solutions™
Try these 6 steps to benefit from your mistakes:
- Set aside some time once a week.Have a specific time each week that you use to look back and examine your week. Schedule it into your week just like anything else of high importance.
- I like to use spiral notebook or composition books to journal my weekly reflections. (You can stock up on these during Back to School sales)
- Look back at all the important events from your week. Consider every important interaction and decision you made during the week.
- Reflect on your interactions with your family and the decisions you made related to them. How did you handle your kids? Did you have positive interactions with your partner?
- Think about your financial decisions. Include your spending and how you managed with paying your bills. Investing decisions can be included, too.
- What happened at work? How was your presentation? Did you hire or fire someone? Are you feuding with someone? Were you ever late for work? Did your boss yell at you?
- Examine your health. Did you eat nutritiously this week? Did you sleep well? Did you get enough exercise?
- Include anything else that seems important. Contemplate everything that’s important to you, including anything that involves your friends and neighbors.
- Ask yourself where could I improve and do better. Where did you make mistakes? Go back over your entire week and consider how each situation could have been managed more effectively.
- It’s similar to asking yourself what you would do if you could go back in time and live that experience all over again.
- Odds are that you’ll have the opportunity to experience a similar situation in the future. Most of our lives are filled with routines and habits. There’s not a lot of novelty from week to week.
- Where do you see trends in your behavior? We’re all prone to making similar mistakes again and again. Even in completely different situations, we tend to make the same sorts of mistakes.
- Are you assuming too much? Are you too impatient? Are you inconsiderate? Are you acting without getting enough information? Are you ignoring your family?
- If you can correct a trend in your decision-making, you can eliminate a lot of future errors.
- Visualize yourself handling the situation in a more effective manner. Try to find solutions to challenging situations. Then, see yourself in the same situation, only this time you’ll take a new approach. Visualize things working out well.
- This step is super powerful, so make a point to do it. A few minutes can really make a huge difference.
- Think about what you did well, too! Recognize those things and resolve to continue responding in the same way to those situations. Keep the good stuff and change the bad.
The habit of weekly reflection helps me so much to stay on track and make course correction and recognize when things aren’t working.
Your success in life will be enhanced by leaps and bounds if you simply take the time to eliminate repeating your mistakes. Each week, you’ll become more and more effective as you make fewer and fewer mistakes. Success isn’t all about doing spectacular things. It also includes learning from spectacular blunders and not repeat them.
Avoid making the same mistake twice. Recognize your shortcomings each week and remove them from your life.
Stay Unstoppable,
P.S.
You too can realize your dreams. All you need to do is discover your true inner ME… Your Magical Essence that makes you unique. Your innerME is meant to shine, meant to sparkle and achieve great things. Begin your journey of discovering how to unlock your dreams with the book The Journey to ME: Empowering You to Live a Life of Unstoppable Success.
