Benefiting from the poor decisions (mistakes) you make

Okay so I used the word 'mistake'...if I had used 'errors' instead I would have been told there is no such thing as an 'error', rather an unwanted/unexpected 'result'.

However back to the heart of the matter how do you benefit, from a personal development point of view, from decisions that do not produce the intended results? Or should I be asking 'do you benefit' from decisions that do not produce the intended results?

Decision making is the basis of our we live our lives, determines the path in life we take, the quality of life we have, and the goals we achieve. But more important then the actual decision made is 'how' we made the decision and 'what' made us choose one decision out of many we could have made? How often do we regret the decision we had made, not only during the next minute, hour or day but years in the future. In relationships, investing, career, business and health...the decisions you make are extremely important.

Now there are many drivers of decision making and the purpose of this piece is not to look at that in too much detail. I will add it is important to recognise that physiology, emotional well-being and living conditions can all impact short term decision making that may or may not be aligned with your inherent life values and motivations. However whilst you cannot guarantee your decision will not always produce the intended result, it is important to learn from what you get but do not want. Why? Because if you continue to follow the same decision making path it is common sense that tells us that the results may again and again not be what you wish for.

So the question you have to ask yourself is whether you are learning from the decisions you make that do not produce the intended results? Are you achieving your goals at work, in your business, your investments and in your relationship and if not are you reviewing the decisions you are making within each to determine how you can improve the decisions you are making? What is it you need to do to improve your decision making? There are a number of things that can contribute to this process - improve your skills or knowledge in a particular area, contemplate whether the 'rules of thumb' you recognise as true are in fact not correct, update your internal 'meta-level' framework and do the opposite of what you are doing to get the result you want.

To truly benefit from poor decisions can be challenging as it may mean altering the principles by which you have been living your life. There is nothing wrong with this as continual personal development should be the goal of every human on this earth. But it can be difficult and life and business coaches with backgrounds in NLP and psychology can make a difference.