Imagine my surprise when I found this little puppy on the interwebs:
Yes, Mistake Island is a real place! It’s off the coast of Maine and while I’ve never visited firsthand, I’ve certainly been to the figurative Mistake Island basically every weekend for the past three years…
Anyways…
Now that we’re full-steam ahead in this global lockdown, I’m hearing a lot of folks vent about their mistakes:
- “I didn’t prepare myself for this kind of situation!”
- “I should have listened to you when you told me to do XYZ!”
- “I SHOULD NEVER HAVE BIRTHED THESE LITTLE MONSTERS CALLED CHILDREN!”
(Just kidding about that last one. Maybe.)
Lately I’ve been fascinated with how people perceive mistakes. Basketball legend Michael Jordan comes to mind right now (there’s a documentary on him that just came out) and he said:
“I’ve never lost a game in my life. I just ran out of time.”
It’s a great perspective but with one caveat:
No matter your mistakes, you haven’t run out of time yet.
You’re still here, you’re still alive, and you’re still reading this. My message for you today: don’t beat yourself up over mistakes.
You haven’t lost, and unlike a basketball game that has a finite clock –– you haven’t run out of time yet.
