Reminders of failures

"Learn from mistakes, then move on!"

“Learn from your mistakes” is one of those sayings that crop up all the time and in many different situations, and I agree with the sentiment. For the most part…

Of course we should always learn from our mistakes: doing something the same way and expecting different outcomes is pretty dumb to start with. However, the saying has more to do with improvement than with radical change.

I fully support the idea of looking at a failure in order to improve the next attempt at the same thing, after considering why something went wrong and attempting to avoid that mistake the next time. The proper way to develop something new is to iterate a product or process and gradually come to a solution that is as close as possible to perfect. (note: at ClutterMeister, we avoid attempts at total perfection to keep mental pressure in check).

Is it good to focus on failure, then? Yes, but only for as long as that particular reason for failure has not been eradicated. Once that has happened, it’s actually better to let go of that failure and chalk it up as a learning experience that has been fully explored and can be discarded.

That is what usually happens with prototypes. Once a better version has been built, the prototype is a relic that needs to be chucked or put into a museum.

In our daily lives, we encounter successes and failures on a regular basis, but we often focus more on the failures than the successes. Serious research has been done into the reasons for this and it has been found that successes tend to be forgotten a lot faster than failures. We need more successes for something to register as important as we do failures to be imprinted in our brains for a long time.

This rule not only applies to the sense of failure or success, but also to the items associated with those. Many of my clients as a professional declutterer are very attached to sentimental items, things that remind them of people, places and events that have special importance to them. In most cases, those items are reinforcing happy memories, but sometimes I meet clients with items that reinforce sad memories. That’s a double whammy: like failures, those sad events are a lot more powerful to start with, but on top of them an item in their home reminds the person of that event over and over again, reinforcing any bad juju associated with them.

I keep thinking of one of my clients who kept items reminding her of her abusive ex-partner (in her words) “to remember what to look out for in new partners”. A good idea in theory, but having those items around only reminded her of the bad times, and kept her from trusting anyone because there was no room left for good memories.

Learning from your mistakes is important, but letting your life be guided by them is probably not a good idea.