You might think that you have to do some incredibly challenging things to make your life significantly better, but you can make great strides just by greatly reducing the number of mistakes you make.
A successful life isn’t as much work as most of us believe!
You’ll make fewer mistakes if you can avoid repeating the same ones over and over. Repeating your mistakes is like sailing against a never-ending wind! It makes life tough.
Follow these tips to learn how to avoid repeating your mistakes:
1. Consider the impact your biggest mistakes have had on your life. Think back. If you could just change 2-3 choices you made, your life could have been much different. Even just one mistake can be life-altering if it’s significant enough. A few of these mistakes might include:
- Marrying someone who wasn’t right for you
- Having another beer before hitting the road
- Texting while driving home one night
- Losing your temper and winding up in jail or permanently destroying a relationship
- Cheating on your spouse
- Quitting a job before having another one lined up
- Choosing a college or major that wasn’t beneficial
- Quitting school
2. Identify the mistakes you make repeatedly. It’s not just the big mistakes you might make once a decade that matter. It’s also the repeated mistakes that you might not even realize. Identify these mistakes. Here are a few examples:
- Dating a type of man or woman that is wrong for you
- Overspending
- Undersaving
- Being late to work
- Eating too much
- Being unreliable
- Procrastinating
- Assuming the worst
3. Before making a decision, consider the long-term implications. Many, if not most, poor decisions are the result of only considering the short-term consequences.
- Eating the yummy dessert, buying the pair of expensive shoes you don’t really need, and avoiding stressful but important activities are all examples of things that are enjoyable in the short-term, but destructive in the long-term.
- Consider how your decision will impact you in a week, month, year, or longer before making up your mind.
4. Allow your emotions to have their say, but then rely on your intellect. Your emotions aren’t a good tool for making a wise final decision. Your emotions are important, but they lack wisdom and a long-term perspective.
- Your emotions can, however, tell you that an important decision has to be made. Make it intelligently.
5. Evaluate each day. You make mistakes each day. Identify them and eliminate them.
- To accomplish this, sit down each evening and list all the mistakes you made that day. Once you’ve done that, identify a more effective way to handle the situation the next time it occurs.
6. Consistently improve. To become the most effective version of yourself, it’s not enough to just eliminate your mistakes. Learn from each day and become a better version of yourself.
- If you can become a little wiser each day and use that wisdom, life becomes an easy game to play.
- So, avoid just addressing your mistakes and address your mediocrity too. Address the things you do at a satisfactory level but could do even better.
Reducing your mistakes can be the easiest way to drastically enhance your life. Each time you repeat a mistake, it’s like taking a step backwards.
The efforts you make to improve your life are largely undone by the mistakes you make. These repeated mistakes make life harder than it has to be.
Examine your life, find the consistent mistakes, and promise yourself you won’t do them again. That’s a great first step toward taking control of your life!