Thursday, June 5, 2008

LEARN FROM YOUR MISTAKES

Use Mistakes to Build Yourself Up..!

This is a story of a famous research scientist who’d made several very important medical breakthroughs, and was being interviewed by a newspaper reporter:
“Why are you more creative than the average person?” he was asked.
The famous man smiled, “It all came from an experience I had with my mother when I was two years old!”
“I was trying to remove a bottle of milk from the refrigerator when I lost my grip on the slippery bottle and it fell, spilling its contents all over the kitchen floor - a veritable sea of milk!”
“When my mother came into the kitchen, instead of yelling at me, giving me a lecture or punishing me, she said, “Son, what a great and wonderful mess you’ve made! I’ve never seen such a huge puddle of milk!”
“I stared at my mother stunned as she continued, “Well son, the damage has been done. Would you like to get down and play in the milk for a few minutes before we clean up?”
“And that’s what I did!”
“After a few minutes, my mother said, 'You know, son, whenever you make a mess like this, finally we all have to clean up and restore everything to its proper order. So, how would you like to help me do that? Lets use a sponge, a towel, or a mop. What do you prefer?'
“I chose the sponge and together we cleaned the spilled milk!”
“Then my mother said, “What happened was a failed experiment in how to carry a big milk bottle with two tiny hands. Let's go to the back yard, fill the bottle with water and see if you can discover a way to carry it without dropping it!”
Says the famous scientist, “I did just that and learned that if I held the bottle at the top near the neck with both hands, I could carry it without dropping it!”
“That was the moment I knew I didn't need to be afraid to make mistakes. Instead, I learned that mistakes were just opportunities for learning something new, which is, after all, what scientific experiments are all about. Even if the experiment 'doesn't work,' we usually learn something valuable from it don’t we?”
Wouldn't it be great if all parents responded the way that mother did?
Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could respond to people who we manage in a similar manner too; help someone learn from his or her mistake?
That man’s mother helped in building up her son to be a great man by showing him how he could learn from a mistake he’d made.
Are you someone who makes a lot of mistakes?
Or do you have a child who does? Whatever, start using those mistakes and build yourself up..!

No comments: