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What Is a Mistake?

Cory Muscara

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Cory Muscara

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What Is a Mistake?

Personalized support for learning how to integrate mindfulness into your life. Delivered fresh everyday by our world renowned experts. Choose meditation duration:

Hi, welcome back to

your Daily Mindfulness.

In today's session, we're going to

talk about reframing the idea of

what it means to make a mistake.

So here's a quote by the thought leader,

Nassim Taleb, who says, "A mistake

is not something to be determined

after the fact, but in light of the

information available to that point."

I'm going to say that one more time

and really let that one sink in.

"A mistake is not something to be

determined after the fact, but in light of

the information available to that point."

So often our conceptualization

of a mistake is based on what

ensued after we made a decision.

We made the decision the best

we could, and then something

happened that made us perceive

that that must have been a mistake.

And while on some level you could argue

that, okay, well, the decision I made

led to this experience, so objectively,

it could be perceived as a mistake.

All of that is taken into consideration

with the information that you have

in hindsight, which is not the

information you have available in

the moment of making a decision.

And so to label it a mistake can only

be done when you have all of this extra

data that you didn't have available to

you at that point, which is one of the

reasons I, I really love this quote.

Which is that you can't actually

evaluate a mistake after

the fact, because it's over.

The only thing that you can evaluate

as a mistake is if you have an

opportunity to align with your heart

and what feels true and what you

know to be true and right in this

moment, but you choose something else.

I think that's a much better lens

to view making a mistake through.

And it also, I think, cuts ourselves

some slack, recognizing that the best

we can do each moment is to align

with, with what feels true, to assess

the data that we have available to

us, the resources that we have to meet

this moment, to really feel into it

deeply and to think through it deeply.

And then with all of that go, this

is what I believe is right right now.

And if we do that, that's not a mistake.

What follows, it's not up to us.

We can't control it.

But what we can control is assessing the

situation, assessing what information we

have at hand and making sure that we align

to what feels right for us right now.

And if we do that, then I believe

it's impossible to make a mistake.

Things might go wrong.

They might be painful.

We might have unanticipated outcomes.

But that's the way of life.

That's the way of the universe.

Our job is to meet this moment fully,

assess what is right, right now, align

ourselves to that, and then let go.

Thank you for your practice.

Let's settle in for today's meditation.

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