by Andy Paulo

Created on: August 10, 2008

I think it was Janis Joplin who first said "We all make mistakes." It still rings true today. To what mistake Dame Janis was referring, I haven't the foggiest. But if we all looked back on our lives we could probably find one or two things we've screwed up, or that we regret doing. Some of the more astute readers might have noticed a mistake right in this paragraph. "We all make mistakes" was actually coined by Mickey Dolenz.

Some will tell us not to worry about our mistakes. But just as the elderly are the only ones who say "You're as old as you feel", those who tell you not to sweat the small stuff are usually the ones curled up in a ball under their desks at work because they accidentally called the new temp "Barry" when her real name is "Sandra".

What you need with mistakes is perspective. When you accidentally called your third grade math teacher "mom", it wasn't the end of the world, although it did leave Mr. Grandy a bit flustered. The other side of the coin would be calling one of the big-wigs from Corporate "mom" and is slightly more troubling. Not only does it show that you didn't learn from the Mr. Grandy incident in third-grade, but it may indicate a troubling psychological problem wherein you look to your corporate overlords as a motherly parental-guidance unit, working desperately for the hugs you were denied in your childhood years. (If your third-grade math actually was your mother, you must have had an awkward year.)

But that's the key, isn't it? Learning from our mistakes. You touch a hot pan on the stove as a kid and, theoretically, you should learn that hot pans are hot. But sometimes we keep curiously touching the metaphorical stove and ending up with very real metaphorical burns. Unfortunately, the metaphorical Neosporin is locked in the back of your metaphorical car in that metaphorical first-aid kit you always forget about.

So how can we tell if we've learned from our mistakes? Well, the easiest way is the "touch the stove" test. Think back to a dumb mistake that you've made. For the sake of this example, we're going to be creative and say that mistake is touching a hot stove. Now ask yourself, "Do I want to touch the stove again? A hot stove is in front of me, do I touch it?" Take a minute to formulate your answer, and be sure to present it in the form of a question.

If you answered "What is no?" then you've effectively learned from your mistake. However, if came up with "What is yes, Alex?" then you're a simpleton with no real sense of

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