Mindful Monday Episode 2

“Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new“ – Albert Einstein

Why hello lovelies, and welcome to September. If you are like me it is unbelievable to imagine we are already here in the last months of 2024. It is my absolute favorite time of year, especially in the mountains of North Carolina, but everything seems to snowball from now to the end of the December and it feels like if you even just close your eyes to blink it will be the new year when you open them.

Anyone else?

Anyways, for this week’s mindful musing I wanted to share an inspirational quote of Albert Einstein that has been a favorite of mine since I first discovered it several years ago.

I can speak from personal experience how incredibly easy it is to be hard on myself when it comes to not being perfect, and seemingly constantly making mistakes. I have to continuously remind myself that perfection is a healthy goal to strive for, whilst also knowing that it will almost never be attained.

The joy is in the journey as they say, and not the destination. Can that apply to perfection as well? If we could all achieve perfection easily in the different things we are working towards, how much of our character and growth we by failing and making mistakes

And aren’t mistakes, especially while trying and learning something new, a part of the human experience? I have wondered recently if with the rising wave of artificial intelligence entering the creative spaces and workspaces, if mistakes will one day become a thing of value as it will be a sign of human connection and creativity?

I have especially noticed this fear of making mistakes in the years I have spent teaching music lessons to children. It always breaks my heart how in even the youngest of them there is already an awareness of this goal of perfection and a fear of not achieving it every time they sit down to play.

Of course making mistakes is not ever the goal we have when we set out to learn something new, but I learn so much more from my mistakes and my failures than my successes have ever taught me.

I would love our world to be one where mistakes, while not encouraged, are valued for the important life teachers that they are.

And Einstein was so so true, they are always a sign of someone striving to learn something new. May we all continue to be life long learners, and not be afraid of the mistakes we make along the way.

Have a lovely week ~