‘Brilliant Mistake’ is the title of a song by Elvis Costello, and one that always makes me smile.
‘Surely a mistake is anything but brilliant!’ the logical mind argues. In fact, mistakes can be our best friends, our guides and teachers, leading us to the lives we dream of, but only when we know how to manage them skillfully.
It might seem strange to be focusing an article on the making of mistakes, especially as most of us would claim to already be experts, Oscar winners and Olympians at this mistake-making event. Most of us associate mistakes with pain, with being punished, disappointed, or feeling like a failure. If instead you learn to celebrate a mistake and view it as a positive signal, one that is getting you closer and closer to your desired outcome, you can then start to make great-feeling and productive mistakes all over the place. A brilliant mistake is one that teaches you, one that is born of action and daring, and leads not to the death of the intention, but to the strengthening of it through better distinctions.
Rock star Bono has this take on people who make mistakes:
‘My heroes are the ones who survived doing it wrong, who made mistakes, but recovered from them. ‘
Being human, often you might believe that you personally are making more mistakes per square-inch of action than all those around you. When someone shows you their success, and reports on the creation of it, you are privy only to the sunny side of the whole shebang. The story might be told to you along the lines of, ‘Well, my friend, I just did this and this and then…Voila! Fully formed genius result!’ What is left on the cutting-room floor is news of all the awkward miscommunication, patchy knowledge, tensions and lack of wise judgement which danced alongside all the good stuff. All of which leads you to a lop-sided understanding of the path to success. ‘How can I possibly be succeeding if I’m doing so much wrong?,’ you cry (while still smiling on the outside because you’ve read so many self-development books after all!).
Other storytellers will become the tragic hero of their tale and provide you with an entire litany of disasters, proving theirs was a heavy undertaking, and that such success is gained only with great pain and much luck. This way presents mistakes as pieces of shrapnel or heavy baggage which much be suffered alongside a positive result. In fact, most mistakes can be shrugged off in a moment, yet so often people carry them around for an hour, a day or a lifetime.
Neither of the above styles of account is accurate nor helpful. So here is a new definition of a mistake: A piece of action taken that leads to a result that seems to contradict your initial intention, a powerful lesson resulting from same, and a huge opportunity to act anew with a greater power than before.In other words a mistake is a dip in expectation, followed by an a-ha moment, followed by a big fat new piece of doing – all in the direction of your dream.
A brilliant mistake is one where the new action happens as soon as the better way is realised. Got it? Good.
‘Success is going from failure to failure without a loss of enthusiasm,’ as Winston Churchill said.
Looking forward to seeing you live and in-person on May 22nd in Oslo so we can get more clarity on how we function best and start to get you to the heights you’ve longed for these past few years.
Yours in a Legendary Life,
Judymay
Judymay Murphy
Eyre Oak Enterprizes Ltd
UK Reg. 08127445
www.Judymay.TV
