A Joyous Perspective on Making Mistakes: Life's Down Payments

 

Have you ever found yourself walking away from a situation, relieved to be free?

If so, you've probably experienced the realization that remaining in that place, even if it were a self-made hole, would cost you more than walking away from it. You found yourself sighing with relief over your narrow escape, even while painfully aware of the dollars spent, sweat used, and tears that had to fall. These moments are what some call "Life's tuition." It's the cost we pay for a lesson learned, hopefully, learned sooner versus later. Unfortunately, sometimes it comes later, and the price might be higher. But even in those times, the lesson is only sweeter.

What if we looked at all of our missteps and errors this way?

What if, instead of seeing ourselves as losing money, time, or reputation, we saw ourselves as paying for experience? What if the point of life was not never to make a wrong decision but to learn how to handle it afterward? To truly reap or harvest from all that we sow?

We are accustomed to believing that the only good outcome is a profitable return on any investment in our lives. But how can this be the whole story? Perhaps a few hasty, costly bad decisions early in life can be just the ticket to more mature caution and restraint later. 

There is only one way to know how it feels to make an impulsive decision: To pay for one.

It's interesting that we accept, as a matter of course, that most formal education costs money. There is little learning that is respected that does not come with an expensive piece of paper validating our completion. We hardly expect that obtaining any worthwhile knowledge will be given to us free of charge. Even the school of hard knocks has its price. But when learning how to be effective in the world, we somehow think we should know it all before we begin. We come down pretty hard on ourselves when we make a mistake or a bad decision. I wonder if we might find these things easier to bear if we considered regrets as down payments on wisdom? I bet it's a rare person who was told this by any of their ancestors. 

Of course, going to class does not always mean you get a degree.

Making mistakes doesn't always mean a person is learning something. Some folks have a need to pay life's tuition recklessly, taking nothing but electives and appearing to not understand why the same old challenges keep happening over and over. They meet their failures with a shrug instead of a pang. They cry out for justice instead of taking responsibility. They find the culprit on the outside instead of the adversary on the inside. Their lack of curiosity and minimal self-awareness ensure they will have one year's experience twenty times instead of twenty years of experience. Let's face it, seeing your part in the decision is a hump that can seem daunting. Excepting guilt without sinking into shame is hard. So what can we do to get to graduation?

The trick is to feel bad enough not to repeat the mistake, but...

Not so bad that you feel hopeless about yourself and your ability to do better next time. When things don't go as you'd hoped, it is a good idea o stop for a moment and ask yourself what you have learned and what you paid to learn it. If you learn from the most painful experiences, they can create a roadmap to more competent living.

Oftentimes, the experiences you regret the most, the ones that are full of sorrow or embarrassment, are also the ones that bring you closer to a new and deeper understanding of yourself and the world around you. This kind of knowledge hits you with a special force that some call an 'ah ha' moment. It snaps you back into focus, diminishing illusion, fantasy, and distortion. As painful as it is, this kind of realization is always worth the price of admission. The tuition is Ivy League scale, but so are the self-growth and functional response tools that come with it. People come to therapy looking for this kind of information and experience, trying to figure out why they are making repeated mistakes in the business of living and how to find a more effective method.

And it always exists in their own life story. 

Their educational journey, if you will.

So the next time you make a real doozy of a bad decision, especially one that costs you something dear, consider it an educational experience. You may feel like you are doing a doctoral dissertation for dumb mistakes, but remember, a good Ph.D. is a finished one. Assess yourself after things go awry, and earn a good grade for what you learn from it. 

Then the tuition will seem like a bargain.