Paul J. Meyer said to “consider every mistake you do make as an asset.” I had no idea I had so many assets.
My first big sale was to a neighbor who had just closed his bank account and was skipping out of his rent that night, which of course I did not know. He took $40 worth of mace key chains and I took his check. Looking back on it, it may have been a mistake.
Lesson: Money in hand before turning merchandise loose.
To prove my manhood to a bunch of guys I whose names I can’t remember, I dove from a dock toward the shore. I thought the two feet of water would be enough, but I misjudged the distance the dive would take me and I landed on the beach.
Lesson: Ignore what the morons on the shore think (and dive toward the water).
Back in the 1930s, a woman named Ruth Wakefield was making butter cookies. She broke chunks off a Nestlés chocolate bar for the batter, but they didn’t melt as she thought they would. Rather than chocolate-flavored cookies, she got soft butter cookies with melted chunks of chocolate, the single most popular cookie ever.
Lesson: Not all mistakes turn out badly.
Whether you succeed or fail, you must first try. The trick is try and to keep trying, win or lose. Every mistake has a lesson that – if we let it and it doesn’t kill us – brings us closer to what we want.
