Many people hate making mistakes and even worse they despise admitting they have made a mistake. Making mistakes may seem to be embarrassing, a waste of time, frustrating and bad. But, like with most things in our life, there are also positive sides to making mistakes.

‘All men make mistakes, but only wise men learn from them.’ – Winston Churchill

There is so much to learn from the mistakes we make. Mistakes are opportunities for us to grow and to be closer to our goals. Here are 5 ways we can learn from our mistakes:

1. Refines Values: Have you ever made a mistake and then felt that you went against what you believe in? This feeling can help you learn more about your values and then give you the motivation to refind them and to make choices to stay true to them. Tip: Take time to evaluate your actions and see how they went against your values. Figure out what you could have done differently to be more aligned with what you believe. 
2. Learn what does not work: Many mistakes clearly teach us what does not work for a specific situation. You tried something and it failed. Tip: After learning what does not work, make sure. Instead, try something new. 
3. Improve your problem solving skills: Thomas Edison has made many inventions that solved many of our problems. But, along the way he made mistake after mistake before creating a successful invention. Each of these mistakes he allowed to improve his problem solving skills. Tip: Instead of getting upset over a mistake, brainstorm over how to find a better solution. 
4. Opportunity to learn or to discover something new: Sometimes being careless and making a mistake can help you discover a new way or something new. I use to take road trips often and if I took a wrong turn by mistake, I would take the opportunity to discover something new. Sometimes adding the wrong ingredient to a recipe can lead to a new dish. Tip: When making a mistake, ponder over what you can discover from this mistake. 
5. Mistakes sometimes lead to positive outcomes: In addition to life coaching, I also day trade in the morning before seeing clients. As a day trader, sometimes I need to click the buy and sell buttons pretty fast. Once I made the mistake and hit the Buy button instead of Sell button, so I ended up buying double! I was sweating and getting nervous. But, this mistake ended up being positive for me since the stock climbed. I sold for a bigger profit than if I would have not hit the buy button on mistake! Also, check out how this mistake made this 34 year old woman 54 million dollars richer! Tip: When you realize you made a mistake, don’t immediately be annoyed by it. Reflect over it and see if it can actually be a positive mistake. These types of mistakes teach us to not be too hard on ourselves and to be more open. 

There are many lessons that we can learn from making mistakes. After you learn your lessons it is wise to let go.  Yesterday on twitter, I hosted #InspireChat and the topic was Learning from Mistakes. I asked the following questions. Feel free to read over these questions yourself and reflect within. Then share your answers with me in the comment section or on twitter. I would love to read your thoughts. Also, use this article and your reflection to help you better view your future mistakes, because even though we would not like to make them, we know we will.

Learn from your mistakes, let them go and move forward with great wisdom. As a life coach, I have helped hundreds of people learn to make the best of their mistakes and to stop making the same mistakes again and again. If you are making the same relationship mistakes, fitness mistakes, career mistakes, and life mistakes and not learning from your mistakes, reach out to me and I can help guide you so you can move forward with your life.

Much love,
Joanne Cipressi