I Made A Mistake

Disclaimer: This post is not about a particular person or event, unless specifically stated. It is about a general observation of society. Please only apply it to yourself as it applies to a general audience. It is about all of us.

When I was in high school, I was part of a youth leadership group at my church. The very first lesson we were taught was learning how to say. “I made a mistake,” along with the importance of being able to say that.

People make mistakes. Often. It’s what we’re good at. The only thing that we can be perfect at is being imperfectly human. With all the thousands of choices we face every single day, its no wonder that sometimes we screw up and make the wrong choice, say the wrong thing, take the wrong turn.

We all make mistakes. There’s just no way around it.

Not one of us is perfect; no, not one!

There are two responses that we can have when we make a mistake:

 1.  We can cover it up, hide it, pretend it never happened, be crippled by it

or

2. We can admit it, learn from it, grow from it, be freed from it.

 

Too many people seem to take the first route. They don’t want to deal with the consequences of their mistake so they hide it. Some may even try to blame others. Maybe try to bully those who call them out on it into silence. Threaten them with lawsuits, or go so far as to actually sue them.

In trying to hide one mistake, these people are making another mistake, while their first mistake continues to compound, becoming larger like a snowball rolling down a hill, gathering speed and mass until it explodes upon impact with a sturdy tree at the bottom of the hill.

When these people are confronted with the mistake they made, they deny it. There’s no way they did it. They’re perfect after all. Is there any proof they did it? Pictures? Video? Witnesses? Victims? If there are it’ll all be explained away.

For people who respond this way, the mistake they made becomes a way of life for them.

Then there are the people who when confronted with the fact that they made a mistake, accept it, learn from it and move on. Their lives are better for it. They aren’t trapped in trying to hide it.

The snowball stops growing. They don’t have anything to hide, even though they may have consequences of their mistake. My daughter made a mistake this week. We had six days away from soccer and she chose to spend the majority of those days laying on a couch reading. It was a safe mistake to make so I didn’t step in and try to fix it.

At the end of those six days she had to go back to soccer training in hundred plus degree temperatures. She had a hard time that day. When I picked her up after practice, the first words out of her mouth were. “I screwed up. I shouldn’t have just laid around. That was dumb.” I agreed with her and asked her what she could do different in the future. She came up with a bunch of different ideas for staying in shape away from the soccer field.

I want to be like her. I want to be able to seen when I’ve made a mistake, learn from it and do better in the future.

I don’t want to be trapped in a lie of perfection and denying that I ever mess up.

I am only perfect at one thing.

I am perfect at being an imperfect human, and that’s something I can learn from.