Learning from Our Mistakes

In this podcast we explore how when we "mess up" in life, the better path is to learn from these mistakes rather than being "self-critical."

Transcript

Welcome to the Happiness Podcast.

I'm Dr.

Robert Puff.

When I was a kid growing up in Iowa,

I lived by a lake and in the winter the lake could get frozen over solid so that you could actually walk on it and when it got really hard you could even drive on it.

While it was on one of those cold wintery days that I decided I'd take my parents car,

Drive it out to the lake and spin it around.

That sounded like a lot of fun to me.

Well,

I drove onto the lake and immediately I got stuck.

I was just stuck in a snow bank and I couldn't move the car.

I couldn't go anywhere.

I was really stuck.

And this was pre-cell phone day so I had to walk over to someone's house,

Use their phone and call my dad and tell him what happened.

Well,

When I got him,

You may think he yelled at me,

He screamed at me,

Called me stupid.

Nope,

He didn't do any of those things.

He just kind of chuckled and said,

Well,

Take care of it son.

That's all he said.

And I had to call a tow truck and tow my parents car out of the snow bank and I had to pay for that tow truck with my part-time job that I had that wasn't very much money.

So it was a learning experience.

And I remember I wasn't self-critical,

But it was expensive.

So it had a little bit of a bite to it.

But I said,

Well,

Better not do that again.

And I didn't.

But I actually did get the car stuck,

I think three more times.

And this time it was in ditches.

I would be driving on a wintery day when I shouldn't have been and it'd go right into the ditch.

And I knew I wouldn't even call my dad then.

I'd just have to either call a tow truck or see if I could get a farmer come by and pull me out.

And I took care of it.

And after a while,

I finally stopped doing that.

I don't think I've ever gone into a ditch ever since or got my car stuck in a snow bank.

So today,

What we want to focus on is that we are going to make mistakes in life,

Sometimes some really big ones,

And we're going to do it over and over again.

But if we want to work towards stop doing that and we want to change our behavior,

Blasting ourselves,

Calling ourselves names,

Being self-critical is not the path to stop it.

What is a path to stop it is to truly learn from what happened and then work towards not doing it again,

Not through self-criticism,

Because self-criticism sets us up to repeat it,

Believe it or not.

When we're not self-critical,

But we say,

Hmm,

What can I learn from this?

Then what will happen is learning will take place and we'll have a lot better chance to not do it anymore.

We have a tendency to think that,

Well,

If I call myself stupid enough,

That I'll stop doing it.

And if that worked,

That would be great.

But it doesn't.

It doesn't work at all because what it does is it does exactly what it's doing.

It's calling us stupid.

And what do stupid people do?

They do stupid things.

So we keep doing it.

That's why self-criticism is very harmful.

So my favorite phrase is,

What I love to hear when I mess up,

And I do mess up,

We are going to mess up in life over and over again.

But what we want to do,

What we want to say when these events happen over and over again is,

What can I learn from this?

Because now the message we're giving ourselves is not that we're stupid,

Not that there's something wrong with us,

Not that we have something malfunctioning in our brains,

But we set ourselves up to learn.

Now mind you,

Things take time to learn,

So we may take a few times to learn them.

But if each and every time we mess up,

We say,

Okay,

I did,

I get it,

I messed up again.

But if I want to stop this,

I need to learn.

I need to look at it from every angle and say,

Okay,

What are the pros here?

What are the cons?

What set me up to get here?

And how do I not do this again?

And then we learn.

Then we grow.

You see,

We're in our head a lot.

We're just hearing stuff in our head throughout the day.

And if it's negative,

If it's self-critical,

It really tends to create a self-fulfilling prophecy.

It's like whatever we hear,

We are.

So we have to pay attention to what we're hearing.

But I think a lot of these stories come from our mistakes.

We definitely make mistakes in life,

Lots of them.

And we have two options.

We can be self-critical,

And I'm pretty much going to guarantee if we do that,

We're going to stay stuck.

Or we can say,

Hmm,

What can I learn from this?

How can I grow from this?

Even if I do it over and over again,

I'm really going to examine this,

Look at this,

And see if there are ways I can stop this so that my life gets better.

Because we're listening to this podcast to improve our lives,

And self-criticism is not the path for improvement.

Self-criticism is the path to stay stuck.

Let me use another example.

I had avoided drinking alcohol for the most part most of my youth life because I had uncles and relatives that were definitely struggling with alcoholism,

Who I loved,

And I knew I needed to be careful.

But when I got into graduate school,

I think it was my second year,

There was a lot of stress.

And I had some friends that would go out to the bars and get something to drink to relax.

And they invited me,

And I went.

I started going with them.

I think I went about three times.

And it was probably over the span of a semester,

But I remember each time that I went,

I really wanted to relax and just forget everything.

So I drank a lot,

And when I came home,

I'd be sick either that night or the next morning.

And on the third time,

I remember waking up feeling awful.

And I went to the bathroom,

And I did what I had done the other two times.

And I was looking down,

And I thought,

You know,

This probably isn't very good for me.

It might be time to stop.

I was honest.

I wasn't judging myself.

I was just saying,

Huh,

Let's look at the whole picture.

Yes,

It's relaxing me some,

But it's also making me feel horrible the next day for hours.

And I thought,

That's not a good combination.

I think I'm going to stop that.

I was honest.

I looked at the whole day,

Not just the evening of relaxation.

I looked at the next day when I felt really sick and I put them together and I just said,

It wasn't worth it.

So I stopped.

And I've never gotten to the point where I've thrown up again,

Ever.

So how did I do it?

Again,

I didn't judge myself.

I didn't criticize myself.

I didn't call myself a jerk,

An idiot,

You know,

All the words we love to use.

I just said,

Hmm,

I look at the whole picture and I didn't like the whole picture.

I wanted to change it.

I changed it.

And then everything around me changed too.

So self-criticism really does keep us stuck.

And when we are not self-critical,

But we look at the whole picture honestly,

And I do mean honestly,

Then we can make other choices are probably put better.

Then we can make choices because if all we hear is self-criticism,

We're most likely going to just keep doing it.

But if we hear,

What can I learn from this?

Then we can make choices.

Self-criticism keeps us stuck.

Learning from things gives us options.

Now,

Mind you,

We may keep making the choices that aren't the best for us.

So each and every time we want to sit down,

Reflect and say,

Okay,

What's going on here?

What are the pros?

What are the cons?

What's going on?

What's conditioning?

How am I being influenced by other people?

But it's with that sense of wonder,

With that sense of,

Okay,

What can I learn from this?

We can really become much better at changing because most people that we know that really are stuck in life and having a difficult time getting by,

Emotionally that is,

Is because they are very self-critical.

We know this.

That's been my experience working with people for so many years now is that the more the person is stuck,

The more they're self-critical.

It's like a vicious cycle.

To break that cycle,

We have to stop that.

I know it's hard because it's such a knee-jerk response for human beings to be self-critical.

I mean,

The world loves to blame people and we love to blame ourselves.

But the most important thing here that we have to be careful of is what's going on in our heads.

You see,

I know that people can be critical of us.

Of course they can.

Those are powerful words.

But they can't take root.

They can't really affect us if we don't let them in.

If we let them in and then repeat them in our minds over and over again,

They're powerful.

That's what a lot of people do.

That person may have just made one statement one time and then we rehearse it over and over and over again.

That's where really the problem comes from.

Not from what they said.

Of course that was wrong.

Of course we want to set boundaries with people like that.

But more importantly,

We want to say,

Let's not reinforce it in our heads by repeating it.

If we know it's not good for us,

Then why would we repeat it?

And it really matters what we think.

It matters what we're thinking about all day long.

Our thoughts are like the food we eat throughout the day.

We are what we eat.

We are what we think.

So if we're thinking things that are self-critical,

Then guess what?

Self-fulfilling prophecy is going to say,

That's true.

You are fill in the blank.

If we're thinking throughout the day,

Yep,

I realize it.

I messed up here.

But what can I learn from this?

And then under that gentleness,

We can learn.

We can look.

When we are with someone who gently helps us look at our lives in ways that it isn't working well,

It's easy to make changes in her.

Or a lot easier,

At least.

But when we have a very harsh person looking at our lives,

It's much harder to make changes.

So let's not be that harsh person because that harsh person will just keep us stuck.

But we have to remember that harsh person is our thoughts.

That's what matters.

No matter what anyone says or does to us,

What matters is our thoughts afterwards because they're the ones we carry with us all day long.

Just the other day,

I got together with some friends for the evening.

And as we were hanging out,

There were a couple of people there that I didn't know.

And one of the women,

She was probably in her 40s,

Was just coming out of a broken relationship.

And she was pretty upset because she really liked the guy,

But it didn't work out.

And it didn't work out because it was a very,

In her words,

Dysfunctional relationship.

It just wasn't healthy for her.

And she said she knew it right from the get go that this wasn't going to be a healthy relationship,

But she went ahead and did it.

And that had been her pattern in life.

She just kept dating really dysfunctional guys,

Guys that were abusive and not kind to her.

And she just kept dating them over and over again.

And the people there were really nice to her,

Encouraging her,

Saying she was beautiful,

That she was a great catch,

And that she would find someone someday.

But what stood out to me was how incredibly self-critical she was.

She just thought she was the ugliest person in the world.

And there was actually something wrong with her for just keep dating these really dysfunctional guys.

It's like she was attracted towards them,

Even though she knew they were bad for her.

But like I said,

The thing that really stood out to me was how self-critical she was.

I mean,

If you had met her,

You'd think,

How's that possible?

This is a woman who had her PhD.

She had a good career.

Most people would find her very beautiful.

I mean,

She had a great family,

People that supported her,

Lots of friends.

How could she keep doing this?

Why would she even think that?

But what matters is what we think.

And if we're self-critical,

There is a high probability that we're going to stay stuck.

And we're not here to stay stuck.

We're here to grow.

We're here to improve our lives.

And the way we're going to do that is no matter how many times we metaphorically get our car stuck in the ditch,

We're just going to say,

Hmm,

What can I learn from this?

What can I learn from this?

Not how stupid we are,

Not what's wrong with us,

But what can I learn from it?

And really spend the time to learn,

To look,

To examine.

And if we need help doing that,

Bringing in people that we trust,

People that we can really trust to help us examine it from a caring,

Learning perspective,

Not from a judgmental perspective.

That's the way we grow.

But we do have to be honest,

Because we have a tendency to focus on one thing and not the other.

Like in this woman's case,

She really liked these guys.

I mean,

It was like a drug for her.

She actually used that word,

Where she was just so excited to be with them and couldn't wait to hear from them.

But then there was a pain that came with these relationships.

And we have to look at that part too.

I mean,

The way I was able to stop my little bout of drinking was,

I really thought about how much I don't enjoy throwing up.

And though going out with friends was fun,

Drinking a lot,

To the point of excess,

So that the next day I threw up and felt horrible,

Wasn't worth it to me anymore.

So I looked at the whole picture and said,

It's time to stop.

And I did.

So we have to be honest.

We have to really look,

Nod judgmentally,

And then say,

All right,

It's time to work on this.

Now,

If it's a habit that has been in place for a while,

Then it's going to take longer.

So we have to be patient with ourselves.

Like if we struggle with eating too many desserts,

And we say,

Wow,

I'm putting on weight.

I don't like that.

This is not good for me.

It may take some time to reverse that.

Starting to go to the gym,

Giving up our desserts,

It can take some time.

So all along the way,

We need to be our own little cheerleaders,

Like praising ourselves for the steps we're making,

Even though we may not be at the end result yet.

Kindness,

Praise,

Work so much better than criticism.

We can change anything.

We just have to work at it.

We have to be honest,

And we have to say,

What can we learn from this?

And then when we do that,

As we keep improving our lives,

Happiness will become our natural state.

Thank you for joining me on the happiness podcast.

Besides creating this podcast,

There are a variety of other things that I do.

If you'd like to keep abreast of these activities,

And perhaps someday we may be able to meet in person,

Just go to www.

Happinesspodcast.

Org.

That's happinesspodcast.

Org.

You can subscribe to my newsletter,

And if you do,

You'll be emailed a free PDF copy of my meditation book called Reflections on Meditation.

And until next time,

Accept what is,

Love what is.

Reviews

Loved this. I’m going to make a conscious effort to change my inner dialogue.
Thank you 🙏🏼

loved this talk. accept what is, love what is -and- what can i learn from this ❤️

Useful knowledge 🙏🏻 to remember when I’m self critical ty

Empowering, especially the part about being highly self-critical in dysfunctional relationships. Thank you so much for this. I’m grateful.

Appreciate the new way to frame a mistake. Thank you.

That was very powerful and applicable! Thanks for your insight.

This is invaluable, if you tend to be self critical, Dr. Puff gently,lovingly and logically steers you away from this destructiveI’ve tendency.

Another excellent podcast from Dr Puff! Inspirational material 🙏

Excellent podcast

I made a HUGE mistake on Wednesday at work that I’ve been ruminating on ever since. Listening to this finally gave me some relief. Thank you !

thank you so much! that really helped me❤️i felt horrible after some mistakes that i made, but i realized that it is ok to make mistakrs as long as you learn from them :)

A must to listen to!! Thank you!!

Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. The combination of your soothing voice and empowering words has turned this into my favorite meditation :) x

I really enjoy your podcasts. Thank you

Wow, I've heard this idea before but this in depth explanation really stuck with me. Maybe it was the tone of voice or the examples but I think that I will really be able to apply this idea now and make necessary changes in my life. Thank you Robert

So good so Good every meditation I’ve listened to of yours is thoughts provoking! meaningful an transcends

Love it, very insightful. Thank you! 🌈

Logical advice.

I really enjoyed this podcast and his wise words. Will keep it always in mind for the future.

Really good perspective