The Power of Mistakes

Wow, it’s been a long time between drinks since my last post, almost coming up on month! Sorry for the lack of writing, but for the past few months I have felt that if I put pen to paper, to make it count. On with it 🙂

The Power of Mistakes

I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life and every time I make them it hurts, and it never gets any better. Mistakes are bad though right? Wrong, mistakes are good.

We have grown up in a society that only permits us being right, that we are somehow failures for being wrong or not being ‘good enough’. Sadly it is a mindset that is a byproduct of our environment.

As a young man, making mistakes is considered as unmanly and we as man should always be right, can you remember your father ever putting on a manly front in the die hard belief (or pure stubbornness) that he was right. He was afraid to make mistakes.

See your ego paints a vivid image of yourself and how it perceives itself and it will try so very hard to never put you in a place where this image is challenged. It doesn’t like it. So subconsciously most of us will never ever get to the point of pushing ourselves, or completely expressing ourselves for fear of having our image challenged, or worse yet, never going that extra distance, so we don’t make a mistake!

Learning comes from making your biggest errors, being wrong and making the wrong judgements. I’ve done this over and over and over again in my life but it’s what makes me grow as a person and as a man. You are your greatest teacher in life, and it’s only once you trust yourself in knowing this and look back at the mistakes you make will you turn your mistakes into gifts of learning.

We are only human and bound to making the same decisions from the same mentalities, and it is not until we step away and “see ourself, seeing ourselves” that we can view things objectively. Have you made a mistake lately? Good, think about it. Is it something you can fix? Something you can repair? Someone you can talk to and heal your relationship with them? Learn from it.

Embrace your mistakes and go for it, don’t be afraid to look like an idiot. You may be wrong, you may be right but it’s not until you ‘burn the bridges’ and go for broke will you ever find out. Constantly remind yourself, think back and look to the future, look at my Aldous Huxley quote below.

Enjoy being wrong almost as much as you enjoy being right. It’s hard and it takes a bigger man to admit and embrace how wrong he is. It is not woven in the fabric of how society says we are supposed to be as men, but it is wrong.

Go against the grain, be wrong, hurt a little and make mistakes.

Be well.

The Shining Man

Embrace Yourself.

I’m reading a book right now called Prometheus Rising, and it was recommended by Devon White in his Human Operating System Operators Program. The book is based on Timothy Leary‘s Eight models of consciousness, which basically explains that human beings are imprinted with eight stages of development. It might be a little bit whacky for some of you guys, but take it as you will.

If you’ve ever read Aldous Huxley‘s “Brave New World” you would have a basic understanding of Prometheus Rising. Without getting into the technicalities and the specifics of this book, I’ll say that one of the main messages I got out of Prometheus Rising that I could directly apply to my life was to appreciate your individuality.

There really is something quite remarkable about human beings, and without getting into anything new-agey I’ll say that really each and every one of us is so individual, so unique and that we are all really beautiful.

Obviously the way that you have been brought up has had a huge influence in your life, but I guess it is all arbitrary really isn’t it? You could’ve been born into wealth or poverty, been brought up as an athlete or had parents that nurtured your creative side or had parents that enforced your studious side. It doesn’t matter. Whether you’ve had what you believe to be a good or bad upbringing doesn’t matter. Or does it?

In Prometheus Rising and in Brave New World, the idea of perfection is toyed with. We were all born perfect and beautiful and along the way we were moulded and adapted to forces around us. Again without getting to heavily into semantics, if you took a family with two children and one child was brought up during a stressful time when both parents were still getting to grips with parenthood. They were both really hating and temperamental and didn’t give that child the proper care and attention he or she deserved. That child would obviously grow up with some sort of inferiority or acceptance complex. Take the second child that was brought up when both parents were far more mature and accepting and showered this child with love and acceptance and gave it everything. Not because they liked this child more, but because they were more experienced. The second child would grow up accepting itself more.

I’m getting a little bit away from my point here, but I’ll be talking more about Prometheus Rising later on.

I just wanted to say how important it is to embrace your individuality, that what makes you you. There is no one out there on this Earth like you, no one that thinks exactly like you or makes the decisions that you make. Our whole lives we have grown up in a society that tells us not to be different, to fit into the mould, to fit into the expectations of society and of others. Why?

The reason for this is because of control, and I’m not talking about some stupid conspiracy theory, what I mean is that society needs people like this so that it can function correctly. So that there are people to do the jobs that people don’t want to do so that the world ticks over correctly. This ties in with Ayn Rand‘s The Fountainhead, where the main character Howard Roark is battling a world of conformity and a world of altruism.

Well if you are reading this than you obviously don’t fit into that, and good for you because the future belongs to you, belongs to us, belongs to those of us who want to get our hands dirty, willing to feel pain or confront ourselves. Take a look in the mirror and look at yourself in the eye. Tell yourself that you accept yourself exactly the way that you are and smile and feel the love you have for yourself.

Cultivate that love. Be different and be proud of it. Be proud of who you are, where you have been and where you are going. There are people like you out there, and I am one of them. If I’ve gone anywhere near close to have you thinking about this and applying it to your life than great, keep reading what I post and go back through the archives because we have a beautiful journey ahead of us. If not, then thanks for stopping by 🙂

Take this exercise from Wilson’s book and try it for the day and see how it goes. I did and it really is quite a fun and interesting exercise 🙂

Try living a whole week with the thought, “Everybody likes me and tries to help me achieve all of my goals.”

Try living forever with the metaprogram, “Everything works out more perfectly than I plan it.”

The Shining Man.