Mistakes Are Your Friend

Life Is One Continuous Mistake

When we’re in the grip of fear, it’s difficult to act, we’re so frightened of making mistakes. However, there’s nothing wrong with making mistakes. Mistakes are your friend. You can’t get up if you don’t fall down. No child would ever walk if they feared falling down.

It’s Natural To Fall and Get Up Again

It is natural to fall and get up again. It is natural to take action, to learn from what happens, strengthen our muscles, and move forward.

You can’t move forward if you fear failure or making mistakes. In fact, it’s good to make a so-called mistake. It means you’ve taken a risk. You’ve stood up to fear and became stronger than it. A great teacher, Dogen, said, “Life is one continuous mistake.”

Anything that makes you stronger than fear, anytime you stand up to the bully, take a risk, look fear in the eye, and take action, you have won. It doesn’t matter how things turns out. You have lessened fear’s hold on you and reclaimed your original freedom.

If you fall down a hundred times, that means you have won a hundred times. You have faced fear one hundred times, gotten up, and tried again. You have strengthened yourself in the process and weakened fear. You have reclaimed the truth of who you are and emerged more powerful than fear.

Exercise:

Take a look at the times you made a mistake, fell down. Describe what happened. What did you learn from it? What did you fail to learn? Write down what you thought should have happened.

Who Is Deciding A Mistake Is A Mistake?

It’s easy to call something a mistake because the outcome is something you didn’t want or expect, or because it caused you pain. But who’s deciding it was a mistake? If the outcome had been different, would it have been okay?

You decide it was a mistake. But it’s just something that happened and turned out a certain way. Why even call it a mistake? Do you do it because you weren’t able to control all aspects of life? Who can? Why should you?

It is fascinating to see how strong the fear of being wrong is, and how strong the longing to be perfect all the time. These feelings are embedded both in fantasy and are the voice of fear.

Turn a deaf ear to this foolish voice and enjoy being wrong whenever you are.

“There are some things,” said Nasrudin, “that you positively know inwardly must be untrue.”

“Can I have an example?” asked someone who was always looking for evidence.

“Certainly. For instance, the other day when I was walking along, I heard a rumor that I was dead.”

— Indries Shah

What’s Wrong with Being Wrong?

What’s wrong with being wrong? Write down all the times you were wrong. Who cared? What happened? Was it the end of the world? Did you learn something from being wrong?

List five ways you can be wrong now. Do one each day. See what happens? Is it so terrible? Do you want to live your life terrified of being wrong?

By being so afraid of being wrong and insisting on always being right, you drive yourself crazy. You drive others crazy as well. If you feel they’re wrong, you dismiss or reject them. Or if you imagine that someone else is right and you’re wrong, you feel inadequate. Living in this manner, you are firmly caught in a mirage.

Step Out Of the Mirage

Mirages aren’t only in the desert — life is filled with them. When you drive in the desert and see a non-existent lake up ahead, it looks completely real. But it’s just an illusion created by your thirst. Thinking it is real, however, you race ahead to drink from it. The more you race toward the mirage, the farther it recedes. Then it seems that the water is a few hundred feet further up ahead. You race even farther in the hot desert, intensifying your thirst and becoming even more desperate for water.

But this mirage — or any mirage, for that matter — will never quench your thirst. The fantasy of being a perfect person, who is always right and not permitted to be wrong, is simply a mirage. Searching for perfection will drive you crazy and never bring wisdom or fulfillment into your life.

Searching For Perfection Will Drive You Crazy

Nothing will break this defeating pattern until you acknowledge that a mirage is a mirage. It doesn’t exist; you’ve made it up. The same applies to your race toward perfection and fear of doing anything wrong.

Life is one continuous course of action, reaction, and more action. The most important thing is: Do what you can do as fully as you can, with your whole heart. Be as available to see, hear, and feel clearly, and then respond.

When you take wholehearted action, your life changes, and step by step you come out of hiding and remember who you are. The consequences of your actions are not your business. Just take each step wholeheartedly and see what happens.

The best way is not to focus on the consequences of your actions. Just focus on the action itself. Don’t give a gift to someone with the secret expectation of a thank-you, a gift, or a favor in return. Acting with an ulterior motive always produces a lack of balance, because half of your attention is on what you hope to get back in return. And when you don’t get it, you become angry and resentful.

Don’t go on a date and sit there wondering if you’re making a good impression or saying all the right things. Just be there with the other person — truly be there. Focus your attention on them, make friends, really listen, really answer. Enjoy the time for what it is without expecting anything in return.

Expectations generate fears of being disappointed. You monitor your behavior, and in that way automatically become split. Half of you is always checking on how the other half is doing, if you’re getting what you want. You are not truly there for others.

Stop and pay complete attention to where you are, whom you’re with, and what is actually going on. Be fully available to whatever is happening in your world.

If you’re focusing on results, then anxiety, fear, and dread appear. If you just throw yourself completely into action, enjoying and doing it fully, you receive satisfaction in the doing, and fear vanishes. This kind of focused, wholehearted, single-minded action is a wonderful medicine for fear of all kinds.

“No target is erected

No bow is drawn

The arrow leaves the string

It may not hit

But it cannot miss.”

— Zen saying

Here is more Zen, Sufi, and Talmudic wisdom by Dr. Shoshana in “Change Your Mind…”

Author: Brenda Shoshanna, Ph.D. is an author, psychologist, speaker, and long term Zen practitioner. Her work integrates the teachings of East and West and focuses upon ways of making the teachings real in our everyday life. This article is from her book, Fearless, (Seven Principles of Peace of Mind). She offers a weekly podcast, Zen Wisdom for Your Everyday Life. Her new blog is TURN THE PAGE,

The Takeaway by Lewis Harrison “Ask Lewis”

I love reading, and sharing what great teachers create. Great wisdom bypasses my left-brain-intellect and connects that part of me that seeks meaning, love, kindness, empathy, and clarity.

I have many friends and associates, who are respected teachers. They usually share their creations with their own fans and followers. I want those who know and appreciate my work to expand their horizons and explore and share the ideas of important teachers like Dr. Shoshana. Here, I have gotten permission from her to repost their important writings.

I have known Brenda almost three decades. She is a powerful Zen teacher, with deep appreciation of, and understanding of Talmudic wisdom.

When it states written by Lewis Harrison at the bottom of this story it refers to my Medium Portal. This specific story is by Brenda Shoshana Ph.D.