About Mistakes

It's been an interesting week where I've been learning some things about mistakes.

Leilani's school newsletter had an interesting article about how mistakes are not bad and shouldn't be classified as such.

The only mistakes that are bad are the ones we don't learn anything from.

If we consider mistakes to be "bad", we will not want to take risks to learn new things, because we don't want to fail.

If we see them as stepping stones for acquiring new skills - even finding out the hard way - then mistakes are actually good! Hmmm..., there was a lot more to the article and I found it most inspiring and helpful.

Now to the practical side of mistakes made this week - on Monday, I took Toffee, our dog, for a walk. Now let the reader understand that Toffee is a "beautiful blonde dog" and extremely good-natured, yet plain stupid (much to Jeremie's dismay, who still misses the clever dog he had in Tahiti).

She has never learned to obey either and when we got her at 5 1/2 years of age, there was no remedy (and we tried, let me tell you :)!)

To make a long story short, I didn't put her on her leash when we came back from the park, since I thought it's such a short walk, and she did it again - ran like a madman - or rather - maddog - after a car that came driving by, to bark at the front tyre - and this time she got hit! OUCH!

One of her back legs was obviously hurt and after waiting to see if it would heal by itself, I felt I needed to take her to the vet on Friday. She was still not standing on it.

Through my mistake of not putting her on the leash (and Rich had even told me just before to make sure I put her on that leash), I not only lost time and money I really didn't want to spend, but poor Toffee is suffering.

It's nothing too bad and I'm sure she'll be fine soon.

I am hoping that I am not the only one learning from my mistake... ! We'll see when she'll be able to go for walks again. Except I won't give her a chance anymore to run after any car! Nope! Not even for 100meters.

The other mistake happened last night when I had to clean one of my contacts 'cuz it was dirty. While I tried putting it back in, there was a phone call. The contact fell into the sink and somehow got sucked onto the sink so I couldn't get it off anymore. I figured I'd leave it there and answer the phone that Leilani was trying to pass me impatiently. I thought that I could surely get it off a little later.

Now Leilani, being the helpful person she is, tried to get it off while I was talking on the phone - and accidentally broke it. There was another painful and expensive lesson. I wasn't a happy camper at first, but quickly realized I needed to forgive her right away - she was devastated about her unintentional mistake and its costly consequence... which I made sure to let her know - bad mommy...

I don't know if you remember my ordeal from a few months ago - but it took me many weeks to get new contacts - and they weren't cheap either (I need hard ones).

So, there's been some learning going on at our house this week, as you can see. One thing I'll try to incorporate into my way of dealing with mistakes - be it my own or others' - is that they are not actually bad but merely learning experiences. This will - hopefully - help me to react a bit more relaxed when they happen.