TupeloKenyon.com

Mistakes

Notes from Janey . . .

Hi {!name},

We all make mistakes. Or do we?

In life, we have plenty of should-have-dones, and if-I-had-only-knowns, but do we really make mistakes? No, I don’t think so.

Let me explain: A very close sister-friend of mine has had marriages that ended in nasty divorces. Obviously, this saddens her, and unfortunately, she feels unlovable and a failure because of them. We have had many conversations over the years where she bemoans the huge mistakes of marrying these men. I listen because she needs me to, but I don’t agree that they were mistakes.

I look at it like this: There are no mistakes, just hard lessons.

When our choices turn out to be less than what we wanted, it was no mistake we brought these tough experiences onto ourselves. It happened because we were meant to learn that lesson.

Make no mistake, I’m not saying that some choices don’t knock us on our butt. These are the ones that scratch the diamond who we are, but eventually, after the hurt subsides, we are polished because of them. The experience fine-tunes us, and hopefully, makes us smarter. Tall order sometimes, I know. But if we grasp the true meaning behind the raw emotions, hopefully we don’t have to repeat what isn’t for our greater good.

The harder the lesson the more we can glean from it. It may take awhile to lose the heavy emotions and gain a new perspective, but if we’re patient, there will come a time when we can grasp the enormous gift hidden inside. This is key.

But the first step is to believe we never make mistakes. Instead, we can look at it like this: Hard lessons catapult us to being the best we can be. We’re not perfect, don’t claim to be, but we’re expanding our perception to try and see the good in our choices – whatever that may be.