Use Stumbling Blocks as Stepping Stones and Learn from Mistakes

Lets talk now about using stumbling blocks as stepping stones to success. Now, everyone makes mistakes and the busier you are, the more mistakes you will make. This is the law of life. The only question is how well and how effectively do you deal with the inevitable ups and downs of life? This is the great question. Now, there are two ways to look at the world. The benevolent worldview or the malevolent worldview. People with a malevolent or negative worldview take a victim stance, seeing life as a continuous succession of problems and a process of unfairness and oppression, both for themselves and others. They don't expect a lot and they don't get very much. When things go wrong, they shrug their shoulders and passively accept that this is the way life is and there isn't anything they can do to make it better. This is the negative or malevolent worldview. On the other hand, people with a benevolent or positive worldview see the world around them as filled with opportunities and possibilities. They believe that everything that happens is part of a great process designed to make them ultimately successful, happy. They approach their lives, their work and their relationships with optimism and cheerfulness and a general attitude of positive expectations. They expect a lot, and they are seldom disappointed. When you develop the skill of learning from your mistakes, you become the kind of person who welcomes obstacles and setbacks as opportunities, as springboards to flex your mental muscles and move ahead. You look at problems as rungs on the ladder of success that you grab onto as you pull your way higher. Two of the most common ways to deal with mistakes are invariably fatal to high achievement. The first common but misguided way to handle a mistake is the failure to accept it when it occurs. According to statistics, 70% of all decisions we make will be wrong in the fullness of time. And that's just an average. This means that some people will fail more than 70% of the time and some people will fail less. Now, it's hard to believe that most of the decisions we make could turn out to be wrong in some way. In fact, if this is the case, how can our society continue to function at all with a 70% failure rate? Well, the fact is that our society aren't fit families, our companies and our relationships continue to survive and thrive because intelligent people tend to cut their losses and minimize their mistakes when they make them. It's only when people refuse to accept that they have made a bad choice or bad decision and prolong the consequences by sticking to that bad choice or bad decision that mistakes become extremely expensive and hurtful. They stay in a bad job, they stay in a bad investment, they stay in a bad relationship, and it just gets worse and worse until they finally cut their losses and walk away. Now, the second common approach that people take with regard to their mistakes, one that hurts innumerable lives and careers, is the failure to use your mistakes to better yourself and to improve the quality of your mind and your thinking. Learning from your mistakes is an essential skill that enables you to develop the resilience to be a master of change rather than a victim of change. The person who recognizes that he or she has made a mistake and changes direction the fastest is the one who will win. In an age of increasing information technology and competition, one of my favorite lines is a Turkish proverb. It says, no matter how long you have been going down the wrong road, turn back. And what it means is the person who turns back, the first is actually the person who is making forward progress the fastest. By remaining fast on your feet, you will be able to outplay and out position your competition. You will become a creator of circumstances rather than than a creature of circumstances. You will take your own destiny into your own hands.