Someone recently wrote me about the impact of "failed situations" on their life. I invited a shift in perspective suggesting that there are no failures, only lessons. I truly believe that all of our experiences contribute to our education and growth, especially the ones that don't turn out the way we want as they offer the biggest opportunities to evolve, to know ourselves, and to learn something new. "There are no mistakes, only lessons. Growth is a process of trial and error; experimentation. The 'failed' experiments are as much of the process as the experiment that ultimately 'works'."  (The quote is from Rules for Being Human, rule number 3.)


I just celebrated the success of selling a pair of hand knit cashmere socks on Earthwise Designs, my Etsy shop, and the "failed situations" comment reminded me of the first time I tried to knit.  I ended up with a tangled pile of yarn that looked like something cats had been playing with for days. I felt frustrated and discouraged and wanted to give up. But being a persistant person (some have called me stubborn) I picked up the needles again, looked at the mess I had made and tried a different approach. Many attempts later, I had a piece of knitting that actually sorta resembled the picture I had in front of me. The most difficult part of this experience was dealing with the voices in my head  that told me "what a piece of garbage, you'll never get it right, give it up, what a failure, stupid girl". If I had given credence to those thoughts, I would never have learned to knit, and would have missed out on a tremendous amount of joy in my life. Knitting, by the way, is a great form of meditation, and if you are local to Florida's Treasure Coast and want to learn, please email me for information on The Black Sheep Knitters. I can guarantee there will be a lot of educational mistakes.


How we deal with our mistakes determines how much we learn from them and whether or not we will continue to repeat them. When I was teaching in a lecture format, I would tell stories to encourage people to laugh because people are more likely to take in new information when they are in a good mood. The first time I  heard someone say "oh, good I made a mistake; I'm getting ready to learn something!", I thought they were nuts. But wasn't it sweet to embrace an error with such enthusiastic appreciation instead of the doom and gloom I learned growing up? So I tried it, and lo and behold, the more mistakes I made with that attitude, the more I learned, and the less likely I was to repeat the same mistake again. There was nothing "wrong" with me because I made a mistake; I was just getting ready to learn something.  


Cognitive restructuring, changing the internal thinking process, is a proven way to change both attitude and behavior. Thinking of unpleasant experiences as "failures" tends to make us reluctant to try again and invites feelings of discouragement and self doubt. Reframing those experiences as "lessons" or "opportunities" encourages us to move forward, to be creative, to find a way to manifest our heart's desires, whether it be knitting a sweater, or finding that great job, or building your dream home. Choosing to replace our self defeating thought patterns with conversations that support positive change is similar to knitting in that it requires both discipline and attention, and really is pretty easy if you give yourself permission to make mistakes and learn from them. And they both invite you to vibrate at an emotional level of joy and acceptance that leads to bigger and better things. 
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When and why do our instincts betray us? I often talk about listening to our inner wisdom, allowing our guides / angels / unconscious connection to the cosmos provide us with direction. However, our unconscious wisdom "can be thrown off, distracted and disabled. Our instinctive reactions often have to compete with all kinds of other interests, emotions and sentiments" writes Malcolm Gladwell in  a very interesting book called  blink.   He proposes that we all have the abilities to know, to recognize and process data literally in the blink of an eye. He further suggests that such instant knowledge is usually more accurate than rational analysis and investigation.

There have been times in my life that I have had periodic flashes of awareness along the lines of "Pay attention here!.... this could be trouble..... did you see that?....do this now......" And sometimes I chose to ignore them because I was invested in an outcome or caught up in an emotion. In hindsight, it was reminiscent of  "Warning, warning! Danger Will Robinson!"  with me being out of earshot because I was busily engaged in my own agenda. The times that I have paid attention and went with that instant knowing have been extraordinarily rewarding. One time that I chose to listen to my intuition instead of the apparent evidence in front of me prevented what could have been a fatal collision.

I am learning to pay better attention to these flashes of knowledge, and to check in with myself to observe if fear or desire or at attachment to an outcome might be compromising my ability to receive and process information that truly is available to me. And to quiet myself if needed, to inhibit the blockage and redirect my open attention to what is before me. The collaborative connection between unconscious processing and conscious insight allows us to know more than we think we know. 

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