Making Mistakes and The Learning Process!

In my last blog entry I wrote about taking risks and challenging convention. I also wrote about making mistakes and it being part of the learning process.

Within my training I try to apply this and like with any well thought out plan you have a certain level of control on how this is applied – there are some unknowns involved in that as well and also some uncontrollable elements as well (weather and terrain for example).

Devising an effective training plan requires placing lots of small steps in place over a set amount of time to reach a much bigger goal – it is also a learning curve as well and mistakes will be made along the way and it is how that learning is applied so those mistakes do not become habit and are part of the norm leading to overall poor performance, lack of motivation and losing sight of that much bigger goal.

As you may also recall from the last blog entry I decide to take risks and challenge convention by going out on a date with someone I was seeing last year – in doing so I felt I was breaking one of my golden rules – never go out with someone you’ve previously split up with. It was a really good evening and it was fantastic to speak to each other positively about things we had achieved since we last saw each other and what plans we had for the future.

On Wednesday morning I was feeling very optimistic that if there was a plan in place and we took those small steps then that bigger goal was more than achievable. Wednesday afternoon I was feeling deflated after receiving a text from my date – she had also had a fantastic evening, felt that there was still a major spark there and was somewhat optimistic as well but was very hesitant due to the fact I hadn’t spoken about one particular topic and that put question marks over whether there was indeed any future.

To receive that at work by text was a bit of a body blow really – I would much rather have dealt with that issue/concern over the phone or face to face and expressed this in my reply.

Things then escalated and became slightly argumentative and I felt that all the positives of that evening had been brushed aside and was being replaced with a negative and I was suddenly under the microscope.

We had not seen each other for months and my main focus that evening was to see how we got on and whether there was any possibility of a second date – nothing more, nothing less – and I felt this was a more than reasonable expectation. A second date would have included conversation about the topic I hadn’t spoken about on the first – I’m certain of it – and had it not then maybe a text of that kind I received would have been more than justified.

Instead I’ve put the barriers back up, there will be no second date, and I feel that it may well have been a mistake to have broken my golden rule in the first place. I spent yesterday evening licking my wounds a bit, feeling upset and hurt and retreating back into myself which was not good considering how I had felt that morning.

This morning I’ve looked at what I am now considering a mistake and rather than seeing myself as a failure have looked at what I have learnt from the experience instead and how I move on from this. Instead of the ‘what ifs’ I used to ask in the past I took risk, challenged my normal conventional way of thinking but it hasn’t worked – that doesn’t matter though because I gave it a go and I felt I had shown that evening I was a changed person (and for the better).

I gave something a go, it didn’t work, I’ve learnt some things, and because of that I don’t see that as failure but progress in myself. As far as any future dating is concerned – I think I’ll give it a very, very, very wide berth and concentrate on the new job and training.

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