Don’t Learn from your Mistakes


"Don’t Learn from your Mistakes" may seem contrary to what you have learned, but it is true; here's what I mean by that. 

Successful people don’t learn from their mistakes; they learn from their successes.

Think about it for a moment and you'll agree. Read that last sentence again. 

You may have heard the several variations on what Edison said about having made 1,000 or 10,000 (depending on what version you hear) mistakes when he finally invented the light bulb. His answer was that he didn’t make the 1,000 or 10,000 mistakes, he simply found 1,000 or 10,000 ways that didn’t work! This tells me that Edison did not learn from his mistakes but that he “looked at things differently” and learned from his successes. 

Johnny Cash said it a different way: “Remember that you build on failure. You use it as a stepping stone. Close the door on the past. You don’t try to forget the mistakes, but you don’t dwell on it. You don’t let it have any of your energy, or any of your time, or any or your space”.

Today dwell on your past successes (not your mistakes) and know that if you succeeded in one area, no matter how small, in the past, that you can succeed in something, no matter how big, today. 

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