As we make no and yes lists, there is something that usually makes it onto the wrong list.
On our no list, we may say, no to making mistakes. This is a mistake. Ha. See what I did there?
Instead, we should put this on our yes list, yes to being okay with making mistakes.
Looking back on our lives you, like me, probably have mistakes that we wish we could redo. But in retrospect, do we? Okay, there are a few that yes, I would like to have never made. On the other hand, many of my mistakes have changed my life for the better.
But at least none of my mistakes made adultery mandatory. This is true. A printing error left the word not out of the Bible. Given the times that poor printer lived in, when the error was discovered he paid with his life.
We don’t have to pay with our lives for the mistakes we have made.
Besides, some mistakes change the world for the better. If William Henry Perkin had not been trying to create a version of quinine in the 1800’s I would not be able to wear my favorite color of purple, in all its hues. Instead of a treatment for malaria, he ended up with a purple sludge, dipped a cloth into it and accidentally created a colorfast synthetic mauve dye. Up until then, purple was made by killing millions of shellfish which had become almost extinct by then.
Or what about the post-it-notes we all use. A mistake. Or penicillin. A mistake.
There is another side to mistakes.
Letting people know when they make one. Of course, there is an art to this, but I think we might want to practice it. Did you ever make a mistake that you wish someone had warned you about? Maybe after you made it, they said they knew it was a mistake but didn’t want to hurt your feelings by telling you? I might have avoided at least one of my mistakes if someone had told me what they knew. A momentary discomfort as opposed to a big yucky mess.
Letting people know when a mistake has been made is also valuable. Again there is an art to it, but it’s an important one to learn. And that kindness comes back around in another way. This last week I had the perfect example of how this happened to me.
It started when Del read a best seller book by a very famous author. In the back of the book was a link to something Del wanted to learn. He followed the link, bought the product, and then nothing. It became evident that no one was going to send him his product or answer his questions.
I told him that every author, at least ones that love their readers, wants to know if there is a problem in their book, so he wrote to the author. The author wrote back and tried to fix the problem for Del. But he too hit a no-response brick wall. The famous author told Del that the next version of his book would not have that link in it and thanked Del for telling him.
A few days later I got an email from a reader alerting me to a mistake in one of my books. Not a small one. A huge one. The interior of the book was not the right book. Right cover, wrong insides. How long had this been going on until someone told me? It turned out it had been months. I was devastated.
I corrected it immediately. Amazon sent an email to buyers, and hopefully, all is well. If a reader hadn’t told me…well, who knows how long it would have gone on.
What Del did came back to help me, and I couldn’t have been more grateful. Not to say I didn’t have to work through all the feelings of guilt and stupidity that wanted to stop me from writing forever. But it didn’t. What it did do is remind me to pay more attention more often. And it reminded me that mistakes are made all the time. Some good. Some bad.
It’s what we do with them that counts.
But not to fully live life because we are afraid of making a mistake, is a mistake. Be childlike, and go forward. Fall on your face. Laugh, and try again.
Everyone who supports you will understand, and they too might find the courage to leap, trip, fall, get up, and dance again. So yes to be willing to make mistakes, and yes to be willing to correct them, and yes to the art of communicating.
Besides, maybe one of our mistakes will change the world as much as our successes do, and then it won’t be a mistake after all. Imagine that!
PS
Thanks to my sister, Jamie, who takes the time to send me the editing mistakes that she catches all the time. Everyone needs a sister or a friend like her. Be one yourself. You’ll see.
PPS
If you are one of the people who purchased The 28 Day Shift To Wealth in the past year, PLEASE tell me, and I will get you the right version, or go straight to Amazon and download it from there. (It’s on your digital orders page.)
BECA LEWIS coaches, teaches, writes blogs and books, plays with art, and is addicted to reading. She lives in Ohio with her husband and has kids and grandkids scattered across the country.
