Oops

I once worked for a man who told me that he loved to watch a good carpenter to see how he or she handled their mistakes. Graciously, he saw me as a good carpenter – he certainly saw my mistakes.

Mistakes can rule your mind through fear, or they can be a source of great freedom. Some of us try to deny them. We say it’s the tools or the materials or the people with whom we have to work. We say our mistakes are really creative interludes, the results of our superior way of seeing a situation. If this is the tack we take, we spend each project gathering self-justifications that can by the end of the process become quite heavy. It’s like lying. The problem is we have to remember the lies.

Mistakes can, however, be a great source of freedom. They can cause us to go higher with our techniques and skills. We have to learn another way to get it done. They take the time factor of making mistakes away. We are suddenly free to turn corners and find our way to the end of the project. They can also expand our mind. They cause us to think.

Don’t let “oops” be a source of fear, but of freedom.