Suppose we try to do something important and make a mistake that leads to our failure. But that failure, no matter how severe, won’t ruin us — unless we let the subsequent negative thought-patterns prevent us from learning and improving.
To understand this inner dynamic better, let’s analyze why we commit mistakes. At one level, we may err because we lack the necessary information, ability or skill. If that’s the case, we need to learn what we don’t know. At another level, however, we may err because of our mind’s misjudgement — it often overestimates our capacity, making us believe that we know something that we don’t know; or it underestimates our need, making us believe that we don’t need to know something that we do need to know.
Even if our mind doesn’t play a major role in our mistake, it generally plays a major role in our reaction to the mistake. Impelled by our mind, we may react by succumbing to some counterproductive thought-pattern such as escapism (“Let me just forget all this by daydreaming, watching TV or drinking”), resentment (“Why do such things happen to me alone?”), fearfulness (“How can I show my face to anyone now?”), moroseness (“Life sucks”) and self-loathing (“I am a loser; I will never amount to anything”). Such thought-patterns obstruct us in even looking objectively at our mistakes, let alone learning from them or rectifying them. And the more we give in to these self-destructive thought-patterns, the more we unwittingly give ourselves over to the control of our mind. And it will in future impel us to similar, if not greater, mistakes. Such mistakes, if repeated, will eventually ruin us.
How can we avoid being ruined by our failures? By learning a vital lesson from them: our mind is not God; its judgments are not infallible — we don’t have to listen to it.
One-sentence summary:
Whenever we fail, our failure alone rarely ruins us; what ruins us is our failure to learn from our failure.
Think it over:
- How does our mind cause the mistake that leads to our failure?
- How does our mind obstruct us in learning from our mistakes?
- How can we avoid being ruined by our failures?
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18.35: And that determination which cannot go beyond dreaming, fearfulness, lamentation, moroseness and illusion – such unintelligent determination, O son of Prutha, is in the mode of darkness.
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