What do you do when things don’t go to plan. Well if you’re like most people, you’ll probably try to look for an explanation. This is a normal human thing that we do but it actually may not always be that helpful.
This is a hardwired survival instinct. When things go wrong we look for patterns, explanations as to why things didn’t work out. We feel if we can identify that pattern in the future we’ll be able to avoid those things from happening again.
Whilst it is good to learn from your mistakes, if you want to learn from your mistakes you must first establish whether or not what you’re doing really is a mistake to begin with! It has been said that a cat that sits on a hot stove once will never sit on a hot stove again, but it will never sit on a cold stove again either. We must be sure that we’re learning the right lessons.
Trust me when I say that I speak from experience. I used to be the worst offender of trying to figure out a reason why things happen. Whether it be a failure in business, the end of a valued friendship or the loss of a job. I’m a very logical person, and I used to ALWAYS fall into the trap of thinking that I could figure out why things weren’t working and if I could figure out WHY then I would be able to fix it.
What I’ve learned though is that sometimes things just happen, either for no apparent reason or sometimes people will never actually tell you the reason. But as humans, our hardwired survival instinct subconsciously insists on finding one. The trap with this is that in our search for the “reason” why things don’t work we may miss-identify a completely random occurrence as being the “reason”. So we’ll base our future actions on things that were never an issue to begin with.
What I’ve learned is that there is power in just being able to LET GO! If you can identify a mistake, then learn from it. But if you can’t find a reason why things are, don’t try to invent one! Just let go and move on.
In order to improve our situation in life, we must first improve our observational skills. So many people are held prisoner to the ideas that they have as to why things don’t work whilst being oblivious to the very things that are going on around them. When things don’t work out, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re doing anything wrong. So if you’re looking to find what you did wrong, when in reality you did nothing wrong, you’re going to be looking for a very long time and ultimately never find what you’re looking for. Or even worse, you’ll mistakenly identify the wrong reason and spend your life trying to avoid something that was never a problem in the first place.
What if instead, you did this. If you can’t find a problem, just accept the fact that there may well not even be a problem. So instead of trying to find what went wrong, focus instead on all the things that went RIGHT!
Think about the experiences that you’ve had in life where things haven’t quite worked out. Ask yourself the question, how did you react? Were there obvious lessons that you could learn or did you fall into the trap of “finding” things that weren’t there just so you could tell yourself that you figured out what went wrong.
Now I want you to ask yourself this question. How might things have been different if you had of just assumed (unless you have proof positive that there was a mistake that you can learn from) that YOU had in fact done nothing wrong and instead of giving up or avoiding this situation, what if you had of just powered on.
Now assuming that you’ve done nothing wrong, make a list of all the things that you in fact did RIGHT! All the ways in which YOU excelled, the ways that YOU were your highest self.
What was it about YOU that made things work as well as they did for as long as they did?
What is it about YOU that people really appreciate?
What unique skills and abilities do YOU possess that enable YOU to be able to succeed in a way that no one else could?
Write your answers in the comments below...