What Is a Mistake?

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.