Lessons from Mistakes

It is another season once again. A season of holidays, a season of travels, a season of quality time with family, a season of being busy generally, a season of giving and taking orders.

A huge shout out to all the crafts people and service providers who are working through the nights to ensure that their customers' expectations are met as best as possible. I can imagine that the busiest of them this period would be those making clothes and those in the kitchen...and I am sure you have seen plenty of finished products flying from one end of the city to the other as people are scrambling to meet up with those orders.

When a designer carves out a wear, he has not just delivered a piece, the designer has made himself or herself better by delivering the job. Similarly, when a baker makes cakes, the baker has not just delivered a piece, the baker has made himself or herself better by doing so. However, getting better does not come without its own cost. There are certainly going to be mistakes.

Cutting the fabric from the wrong end, or sewing up two wrong ends of the fabric. The designer may even push the needle through his/her own skin in error. Over-salting of the dough, or not getting the right balance of sugar and butter, or not adding enough milk into the mix. The baker may even get burnt unwillingly from handling hot utensils, or unavoidably when he/she goes too close to the oven to examine what's inside.

The byproduct of doing something is that we get better at doing that thing over time. Every subsequent attempt at that same thing sharpens the skills and makes the process easier and the product better. But even after the process becomes easier, the mistakes never stop coming, we just learn not to make old ones, and learn to better manage the new ones.

I remember in early primary years, we were made only to write with pencils so that we could easily erase the errors that we constantly made. Then as time went on, we upgraded to writing in ink. It didn't mean that we had stopped making mistakes, it just meant we could better handle the pressures of writing and could better manage the mistakes..but the mistakes still happened.

Mistakes will always happen. Mistakes are a fundamental part of life. It is the most valuable source of our lessons...whether they are ours or others. Learning how not to do something or to do something better is how we get better as individuals and as a people.

So as you draw the curtains on your 2024, whether it has been fulfilling or otherwise, add every experience to the "lessons" column...so that when you look back at them from 2025, you don't see them as mistakes, but as learning opportunities and use them as ingredients to make the journey ahead smoother.

I am sure you know that life isn't always going to go your way. Things will not always happen when you want them to. Your focus should be not always be on the end point, but the process of getting to the endpoint. Learn to make lessons out of your mistakes!