Everybody makes mistakes every day. Some mistakes people make are minor; some can affect the rest of your life.
A wonderful quote from the recently deceased Muhammad Ali says it quite succinctly:
I’ve made my share of mistakes along the way, but if I have changed even one life for the better, I haven’t lived in vain.”
In essence, just because you make a mistake, that doesn’t mean you are not capable of having a positive influence on someone, or even yourself. If you learn from a mistake you made, it’s not in vain. You can use it for good and make the future better.
Why We Make Mistakes
People make mistakes all the time. I make mistakes several times a day. How often do you make a mistake? If you say not very often, you’re probably not being honest with yourself (that’s a mistake).
Most mistakes people make are not really mistakes. You didn’t accidentally rear-end that car on the highway. You tell yourself it was a mistake but, in reality, you make the decision to be scrolling through your Facebook feed rather than paying attention to the traffic around you.
Science backs this up. A study from Princeton University discovered the brain is able to process information correctly but struggles when that information contains errors, or “noise.”
Your desire to flip through Facebook is the noise that made it so your brain could not react quick enough when the driver in front of you hit his brakes.
We make mistakes, in most cases, because we choose to take a particular course of action.
Focusing on the proper action will enable you to keep from making those “mistakes.”
Mistakes People Make at the Beginning of Each Day
Now that we briefly touched on the “noise that causes us to make mistakes, let’s look at some mistakes people make on a daily basis. Most importantly, we are going to look at mistakes made in the morning, before people even leave for work.
There is some credence to be given to starting the day off right.
We say often, when someone is in a bad mood, that he woke up on the wrong side of the bed. The side of the bed may not particularly matter but other things that person did in the morning certainly had an effect on his mood the rest of the day. Let’s look at nine mistakes people make each day:
1. Hit the Snooze Button
Raise your hand if you’ve ever hit the snooze button when your alarm goes off in the morning. Yep, we all have at some point. This is a mistake we make that causes a ripple the rest of the day.
If you set your alarm, get up when it goes off. I know sometimes that is easier said than done. Sometimes you just feel like you need a little more sleep. I’ve been there too…far too often.
I’ve realized, however, that my days go much better when I wake up with my alarm. Have you noticed that too?
There are several things you can do each night that will help you improve your sleep so you feel rested when your alarm goes off in the morning.
2. Leave the Bed Unmade
Productivity experts will tell you to make your bed first thing every morning and it will increase your productivity for the day. It is partially based on having good habits that lead to success. It is also partially because it’s a simple productive task you can accomplish before anything else.
Leave your bed unmade and you won’t have that first “small win” in the morning. Make it and start the day off right.
Here is an article with 24 reasons why you should make your bed everyday.
3. Wait until Morning to Iron and Choose Your Clothes
4. Don’t Rehydrate
5. Deprive Your Body of Proper Nutrition
Some say breakfast is the most important meal of the day. It certainly can be if that’s what you believe. Regardless, depriving your body of the nutrition it will need to conquer the day is a huge mistake people make frequently.
You don’t have to have a huge breakfast to provide your body the nutrition it deserves. It doesn’t have to take a lot of time either.
A quick and easy way I get my nutrition is by making a smoothie. A little almond milk, avocado, kale, frozen berries, hemp protein and almond butter and I’m good to go.
Many days though I don’t even have a smoothie in the morning. More often than not, I choose to start my day with a concentration of healthy fats instead. It’s become pretty popular now but I follow Dave Asprey’s basic recipe for Bulletproof coffee. You can find his recipe here.
If you don’t want to take the time to blend the butter into the coffee, you can just use straight grass fed butter. It won’t be as good and you’ll have to stir your coffee continually, but it will still work.
6. Leave the House with No Time to Spare
You’ve planned everything perfectly and you should make it to work right at starting time. Perfect…until an accident backs up traffic so bad that you’ll be 30 minutes late.
Leaving the house with just the right amount of time to make it to work is a rookie mistake. Leave early. Give yourself some extra time.
When traffic backs up and you still have plenty of time to make it into work, you’ll keep from getting stressed and ruining the most productive hours of the work day.
The solution is simple: Leave for work earlier than you need to.
7. Not Expressing Gratitude
Brian Tracy, the great sales trainer, speaker and author says, “Develop an attitude of gratitude, and give thanks for everything that happens to you, knowing that every step forward is a step toward achieving something bigger and better than your current situation.”
Don’t just be grateful for the big wins and successes in life. Be grateful for the apparent small things in life such as waking up in the morning, having a reliable vehicle to drive and the love of your family.
When you get to the point that you always have an attitude of gratitude, your days will be filled with so much more joy. You will encounter less stress and be less stressful to others.
8. Get Upset with Traffic
People that have a high level of inner peace, do not worry about the things they can’t control. In fact, they don’t even worry much about the things they can control.
Instead, they let the things they can’t control just happen. It doesn’t get them too worked up.
Imagine being stuck in a traffic jam on the way to work in the morning. You hear on the radio that there is a multi-car accident a few miles up ahead of you on the highway. What are your thoughts?
Are you worried about being late and how inconvenient it is for you?
Or, are you grateful it’s not you in the accident and you say a prayer for those involved?
Use the extra time you have by yourself to your advantage. Spend the time praying, meditating or simply sitting in peace. You can’t control the traffic but you can control how you react to it.
9, Arrive at Work Right on Time
The final mistake people make before they get to work each day is getting to work exactly on time. The mistake is not understanding what it means to be on work in time.
If your shift begins at 8 a.m., you should be in position ready to work at 8 a.m., not strolling in the front door of the building at 8 a.m. Arrive early enough that you can have your cup of coffee in-hand and computer booted up before it’s time to start.
Your employer pays you for your full effort the entire day. Give the company what it pays you for. Besides, arriving early will reduce the possibility of stress due to traffic or other inconveniences in the morning.
“Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.”
Mistakes are like this too. It’s typically okay to make a mistake one time (even though as we learned at the beginning it really wasn’t a mistake, it was a choice). Don’t repeat your mistakes though.
As Will Smith’s character Hitch says in the self-titled movie, “Begin every day as if it were on purpose.”
Have a plan for each morning and be intentional about everything you do. Don’t be so rigid that you add stress but do things on purpose. When you are intentional about living your life for yourself, you will make fewer mistakes, be happier and more successful.