Learning from mistakes is easy to say but not necessarily to do. So let's recap.In the first two posts of my four-part series on taking responsibility for what happens in your life, we examined the concepts of excuse-making, blaming others, and complaining and forgiveness.I’m writing this series with the idea that taking full responsibility leads to a happier and productive life. The concepts covered in the previous blogs will certainly help, but unless we learn from our past mistakes and don’t repeat them, we’ll just find ourselves on a treadmill, running in place and never making any real gains.In the last blog, I talked about a friend of mine who complained about his college situation. Today, I’d like to tell you about my time in college.
A Long Road to A Degree
As many of you know, I am an immigrant, and not long after coming to America, I enrolled in college. I knew that I wanted to work in the field of health but wasn’t quite sure what direction I wanted to follow.I would be taking classes to focus on a position as a manager of hospice care, when a classmate would come in and say something like, “I’ve heard you can be a radiology tech and make a lot of money! Let’s do that!”—and I would change my classes to follow their lead.After a little while, someone else would come back to me and say, “You can work as a hospital administrator and get this much money! Let’s switch our concentration!”—and I would, once again, go along for the ride.Since I was in college and not kindergarten, the instructors allowed me to drop and take new courses at will, and my advisors didn’t hold my hand every step of the way. In the long run, it took me many more semesters than it should have to earn my degree.I can point fingers at my friends, teachers, advisors, or the college and say that they failed me by not keeping me on a singular path; however, that would be passing off the responsibility for structuring my educational path onto someone else.The fact is, it was my fault earning my degree took so long. I learned that it’s easy to get caught up in the excitement of other people’s passions. I also realized that it’s essential to have a goal in college and stick to it or, at least, try to change it as little as possible. The way I went about getting my undergraduate degree taught me a hard lesson: it took much longer and cost more money than it would have if I had followed one path from the beginning.Those weren’t fun lessons to learn, but as I went forward in my academic career, I never made those mistakes again.
Different Mistakes
After I finally earned my bachelor’s degree, I realized that the administration part of health care was where I was best suited. I also knew that I wanted to serve my adopted country in the military and looked into how I could do both to the best of my abilities.I visited a few military recruiters, and one suggested I earn my master’s degree in health administration (MHA) before enlisting. That made sense, so I spent the next two years at another college doing just that.Then, my world came crashing down. A different military recruiter brought to my attention that the school where I’d earned my MHA was not accredited. He told me if I planned on being in the military, I needed to go to a school that was on a pre-approved military list.I could have quit right there.I had gone down the wrong path to achieve my goals.Instead of letting it get to me, I looked at it as another learning situation.Now, if I have a major undertaking that involves becoming qualified for something, I seek the advice of many decision-makers before pursuing it to make sure I’m doing the right thing.It’s OK to make mistakes. Nobody is perfect, and you’re never going to stop making them. The key is to analyze how they happen and establish steps for the next time similar situations occur.While there is nothing wrong with making mistakes, we should keep ourselves from making the same ones over and over, because it means we’re not growing.The take away for you is if you’re looking for a happy quality of life, you must learn from your mistakes.