Making The Same Mistake Twice

small simply danLrene mistakes.jpg

image from http://quotes-lover.com

I loved this when I saw it because I am a big believer in the fact that we do have choices and sometimes we do not always utilize them. I have heard people say “I keep making the same mistake over and over”  whether in relationships, jobs, friendships, etc. The truth is it is only a mistake the first time. After that we are either choosing to make the same mistake or choosing to not take precautions so that we do not make the same mistake again.

I believe happiness is a choice. I wish I could bottle the process and sell it on the market or just give it away because once a person finally realizes that their happiness is an “inside job”  not things on the outside, it becomes a whole new world. I wake up every morning choosing to be happy and if I am not feeling happy I look for things that make me smile. As my health declines, I continue to choose to be happy. As my world narrowed to the one room, I still was choosing to be happy. But, so many get the idea that things, people, places, money will bring them happiness. I watched my mother this way. She was always saying that if she just had this decorating project going..she would be happy. Truth was, the projects gave her joy but once the project was over, the joy was gone. She never really learned where happiness was which was in her heart.

Life is a constant learning process. Took me years to learn how to not let doctors mistreat me.  I might not be as sick as I am now had I learned to stand up sooner but took me a while and so I kept making the same mistake over and over. And that mistake was choosing to keep going to the same doctors instead of looking for new ones. I did the same thing when it came to being chronically ill. I made my self miserable by choosing over and over to let people push me to “be normal” when I was not. I am chronically ill and can not do what others can do but would try to push myself to do things and then throw myself into pain crisis or a bad flair. But, it was still a choice I was doing. I was not making good choices for myself.

There comes a point in life where we have to be accountable for our choices. There comes a point that we have to quit blaming everyone for what we do, what we do not do, how we live, and mistakes we make. We can make any choice we want, but with those choices comes consequences. We can not avoid those. I chose to keep using the same doctors and the consequence was that I became sicker and sicker. You would think we would wise up when something keeps happening over and over. Sort of like when we eat a food and get the sick stomach and yet we will keep eating that same food again and again.  Choices are the easy part….the consequences are the learning part. That is what teaches us what works and what does not work.

If we keep having the same issues in our lives over and over then we need to look at our choices because it means they are not “making the same mistake again” but a choice. Sometimes I have to stop myself and ask myself what is going to be the end result of what I am doing and do I want to deal with that. When I was much younger, I would as the expression goes..”cut off my nose to spite my face” .…acting on emotion instead of reasoning. As I have aged, I have learned that I need to think about my choices and when I see a pattern repeating itself, I need to find different choices. Many people do not like to hear that because it is so much easier to blame it on “another mistake” instead of assuming the responsibility and saying “I made a bad choice”.

reflection of a choiceimage from http://www.pinterest.com/pabloraulcantu/reflection-quotes/

We should learn as a child about choices and our parents should teach us. We should teach our children. For if we do not teach children how to make good choices, then they will end up in horrible situations. Wonderful children can get in trouble just from a poor choice. People say they are afraid to choose because they are afraid they will be wrong or fail. Know what?  So what if you are wrong. You just learned something. Step up and make those choices and keep learning so that you learn how to keep life-like you want it.

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