There are no mistakes (1.28.10)

By: Cleo Robertson

The first time I heard the expression “There are no mistakes” I thought to myself, “No way. I’ve made lots of mistakes in my life.” However, I respected the older person who had given me this bit of wisdom, so I took a few minutes to think of mistakes I felt I had made.

Walking out of Sunny Hours Beach School when I was 5 years old was one of my first memories that seemed like a mistake. Mom told me I would have to be alone all day and I said, “Great.” For years I thought she had made a mistake in not making me go back to the school. When I look at the picture of me at 5, I wonder how she could leave me alone all day. The benefit, however, was that I learned to get around, judge people and take care of myself very early in life…not a bad thing for me.

There are many other examples.

There was the time I was fired, at the age of 12, from my job at the Sugar N Spice in Pass-a-Grille. Surely that was someone’s mistake. I had worked hard every day for the whole summer. How could anyone make such a bad mistake as firing me?

When I graduated from Boca Ciega High School in 1956 with four scholarships, everyone told me that I was making a really big mistake by not going to college. I didn’t want to go to college. I wanted to work, see life and do things so I went off to Cleveland and began my journey.

When I was 17, Mom believed a surgeon when he said he could “fix” my aches and pains in my back by cutting every nerve and muscle for six inches on both sides of my shoulder blades and removing bone from my bilateral scapula. “See,” I said to myself. “That was a big mistake. I just ended up with more pain.”

I could go on and on, we all can in fact, enumerating our mistakes and lamenting our poor fortune. But on this day when I heard the expression, “There are no mistakes,” for the first time I didn’t brush off the actions above as simply mistakes. I thought about each one and here’s what I found.

Staying home alone at 5 seemed like a mistake to me for years. But then sometime in my 40’s I realized the reason I could do anything I wanted with my business was because my Mom had let me do anything I wanted as a child, like quitting preschool. True, I missed out on horseback riding and lots of other good fun, but in the long run I learned to get things done…on my own.

Some people would say my Mom was wrong in letting me do anything I wanted at such a young age. Her approach would not be right for everyone, but because she assumed I would make good choices, I did. The last thing I ever wanted to do was upset or disappoint my Mom. Even her absent kind of parenting turned out to be good for me and certainly not a mistake by any means.

Getting fired haunted me all the rest of my business life. I didn’t find out why I was fired for over 40 years (the boss’s wife was having an affair with my boss, the chef, and when the big boss found out, he fired everyone—it had nothing to do with me personally or my performance.)

But luckily I didn’t know that, so I went on to prove that I was the best employee anyone ever hired. Through a lot of hard work in numerous jobs over the years I gathered the tools I needed to start my own business. No mistake there.

Not going to college seemed like a mistake for many, many years too. During the late 1970’s and early 1980’s I couldn’t even get a job as a secretary because I didn’t have a degree. Of course for those of you who have read my book, Whim of Iron, you know that having no job created a fertile void in which I could invent. Out of that void came the idea to start CBR Associates and I began to walk a path of entrepreneurship that eventually led to success.

Looking back on my surgery at 17 seemed, for years, to be the biggest mistake of my life. Even today my back will ache, compounded by the fact that the surgery keeps circulation from my shoulders and back, exasperating an already bad situation. But again, as I thought about the results of the surgery, I realized it had not been a mistake either. Clearly it was because I wanted to keep other patients from such bad surgeries that 24 years later I invented quality management software for hospitals to help them manage “mistakes.” I wanted to ensure that doctors had some accountability, if not to me, then at least amongst themselves. Since I invented the software, I am now retired, traveling, having a wonderful life. No mistake there.

I have enumerated all these instances because as I look back I can see that there really aren’t any mistakes. Even terrible things that happen have their positive effects. When I heard about the Mexico City earthquake many years ago, I was filled with pain and sadness. For whom? Not for the deceased actually because I believe we all die for a purpose (maybe God or the Universe needed a lot of people to do something important somewhere else). I did, however, feel a great deal of pain and sadness for the living…the relatives and friends of those who died. But more importantly, I felt. I felt alive, I felt grateful, I felt sadness.

I decided then and there that all those people did not die in vain, as is true for Haiti. Their deaths remind each and every person who heard about the terrible event that life is precious, life is here and now, and life is not a given. You can’t count on it. You can’t buy it. You can’t even assume you will be here tomorrow to enjoy it … or in five minutes for that matter.

What all this has told me is that there truly are no mistakes, only opportunities. I’m no Pollyanna but I have seen again and again that when something “bad” happens to me, something very “good” always comes out in a balancing way.

Now many of you are snickering at me as you read this. I know because people snicker and question me all the time when something “bad” happens and I look for the opportunity. But think about it. First of all, believing there are no mistakes leaves us free to follow our instincts and trust ourselves. Secondly, I have learned that by looking for the opportunity in every “mistake” leaves me free to invent, create, search, try and finally, to find parts of myself that I would never have explored without such and such a mistake. As Robert Frost said so well, “I took the path less traveled” and I don’t think he doubted for a moment that it was the right path for him at that moment.

So here’s a suggestion I have for you. When you walk around town or talk to family or interact at work and something happens and you say to yourself, “What a stupid mistake I made,” stop. Think about it. What were the long-term effects? What did you learn about yourself you didn’t know before? What happened that turned out to be good?

Life is short. Life is good. Life is all we have until we die. Believing there are no mistakes makes the life we are living more full and exciting. No belittling of ourselves. No put downs or negative thoughts. No judgments. Just looking inside every “mistake” for the opportunity is an opportunity. Once you get used to looking for the opportunity, you will suddenly one day find that you are having more fun, enjoying every moment more and giving back to the world in ways you never thought of doing before.

At the time I wrote this piece I was sitting in the den of my daughter’s new and wonderful home in Greenville, South Carolina. The weather was a whole lot better than where they had lived in Boston, my twin granddaughters had a pool nearby and were going to a great school, Dad now had a 15-minute commute in beautiful countryside compared to an hour in and out of Boston each day, and my daughter can finally take a break from parenting twins and enjoy tennis year round. All this because Dad lost his job in Boston and landed a new, better one in Greenville. If that was a mistake, I’m all for making mistakes.

It doesn’t cost a thing to try out this philosophy for a day or two and see if you don’t feel more empowered. With practice, you might even begin to have more confidence in your choices. This allows you to relax more. If something does happen that looks like a mistake, you can calmly assess the situation and see if it really took you somewhere in your life you needed to go. I firmly believe that at every moment of every day we are all doing the best we can. “Mistakes” always bring us more wisdom and hopefully more confidence in each and every one of our decisions.

Here’s wishing you happy living and many productive “mistakes.”

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