Conservation of Mistakes        by Forrest D. Poston

We say that we should learn from our mistakes and even recognize that we often don’t learn without making mistakes, but we mostly give lip service only without stopping to consider what these ideas mean or how to apply them.  As so often happens, the idea has become so well known that it’s taken for granted as if we will automatically learn without actually having to use a little time and brain power.

And so we repeat mistakes and come up with “new and improved” mistakes, still managing to ignore the pattern, the root cause, or the relatively simple cure.  That much of the idea has been bouncing around in my head for years, but a bit was missing, a piece that fell into place during a conversation with a bagger in the supermarket check out line.

Two workers were coming to the end of a conversation when I entered the line, and a bit caught my ear, leading me to cut in after one admitted being wrong.  I pointed out that admitting being wrong was what made it possible to learn.  He agreed but added, “I learned the wrong thing.”

That’s when The Conservation of Mistakes began to take shape.  He had actually already learned two things via his initial mistake: the fact that he was wrong and the fact that he had learned the wrong lesson.  Realizing that he had learned the wrong lesson meant he now had the awareness to pursue the right lesson.  Becoming aware of that was the third lesson, and figuring out the “right” lesson would then be the fourth in the series.

If we actually take the time to learn as many lessons as possible from a mistake, then we not only don’t need to repeat that mistake but should be able to avoid others.  That includes some of the lessons learned with a bit of reflection even years later….as long as we avoid the mistake of getting trapped in the past.

Learning is maximized, and mistakes are minimized.  In theory, that means we will not only make fewer unnecessary mistakes but avoid the big ones that cause the greatest emotional or physical pain, right up to those mistakes that land us in the hospital or find us planted in our own small plot of ground.