In this Months Ezine...

Most of you know I host a couple of Live Interactive Podcasts. The Flagship is the Focus Society of Overachievers, going stong since October 2006, twice a week. My good friend Pat Ritrosky, and I also do a Talk Show focusing on Direct Mail Marketing Success.

                                                                                                                         
  I just saw this wonderful Post by Brian Kim.

It is very well stated......as Joe Schroeder says so well in his CD's

"Don't worry How to get it going, Just Get it Going" 

 

Why the quotes around mistakes?  Because you know just as well as I do that theyre not really mistakes.  They just look like them at first glance.  They are in fact signals that guide you to the hidden opportunities that lie within.  If you're making these mistakes, you are on the right path.  You are moving toward the inevitable achievement of your dreams.

One of the biggest traps that people fall into when they want to pursue their dreams is that they go on an information binge.  They seek to devour as much information as possible to avoid making mistakes in the future.  Now don not get me wrong, it's certainly prudent to do some research beforehand, but the trap that comes with going on an information binge is, besides the fact that you don not take action, is that you try to learn all you can to avoid every single mistake in the future and by doing that, you deprive yourself of the many opportunities that can actually help you to achieve your dream.

I know it sounds like an oxymoron.  How can avoiding mistakes actually harm you?

It is because you do not see where you NEED to make progress on.  Mistakes give us feedback on where we need to shift our focus on and we don't get that if we constantly go on an information binge.

Mistakes give feedback on WHAT needs to be fixed. 

Information will NEVER remove all the mistakes. 

The only way you are going to get that feedback is if you make mistakes and mistakes can only be made when action is taken. 

Those mistakes will provide you the information you NEED to get what you want.  In other words, it will point out where you are deficient in and give you the opportunity to strengthen it.  If you look at it that way, you are actually saving time because you now know what needs to be worked on and what does not.  The thing is you can not get that feedback if you sit there and read all day.  The experiences we gather from actually doing an activity rather than reading about it are different as night and day. 

The only thing I can do is pound the fact that you WILL make these mistakes and they are FOR you, not against you.  As ludicrous as it sounds, it is right.  You willl find once you take action, all of that knowledge you read may not apply.  Some of what you read might be more important so you start to refine the information, toss what you don not need and focus on what i is working.  Making mistakes are those adjustments you make while you sail toward your destination.

You will also find that each mistake you make builds off one another.  Each mistake you say?  Yes.  Each mistake.  Let me clear up any confusion that might be occurring in the minds of readers right now.  You WILL definitely make mistakes during your journey.  It will happen. Make no doubt about it.  But they are for YOUR benefit.  Most of us can not really see how each mistake builds off one another, but it does.  Again, it's not a tit for tat or 1 for 1 exchange. You slowly get an exponential amount of growth from each mistake you make and learn from.  

We can always learn something from each mistake that propels us to the next level.  Each mistake builds off one another. That it is a very important concept to understand.  In that way, you actually become grateful for it.  Each mistake we make turns into an opportunity to become better and as we progress, we make better and better mistakes that create better and better opportunities.  It is a great cycle and you develop something that a lot of people do not have; an appreciation for these mistakes.

Each mistake also has the potential to take us on a tangent that we never would have taken had we not made that mistake, and more often that not, it is those exact tangents that take us closer to the achievement of our dreams.  None of us have the foresight to project and see how each these tangents take us closer to the achievement of our dreams.  We can only see how those tangents have helped us when we look back.  We can try to guess, but it is very hard to do it in that moment. 

All we can do is look at the present moment and learn from it to move forward and slowly build off our foundation of Mistakes.  Look at any interview of a successful person and you will see them grin when asked the question of if they made any mistakes. Often you will find they'll slap their forehead and go on a spiel of how many stupid things they did, but that each one helped them immensely and built off one another to get them to where they are today.

When we experience these mistakes, we really learn.  They tend to stay with us longer.  How many of us have heard advice all the time on not to engage in certain activities but how many people go ahead and do it anyways and then truly experience the pain of making that mistake?  There is something about the experience of making a mistake that gets seared in our brain so that we really learn from it. 

Making mistakes also is a very humbling experience.  It makes us realize we do not know all there is to know so we reach out for help.  In that sense, we really learn as well because we are forced to go outside ourselves and more often that not, the information we learn from seeking help outside ourselves in turn helps us to achieve our goals.