Mistakes do not define you, they refine you

Mistakes do not define you, they refine you. It’s easy to lose focus on the big picture, on your future when your day to day life consumes all your time and energy. There is no doubt that living in the present is important. However we tend to look at the past and dwell on either our mistakes or our achievements.

Let your past be stepping stones to your next success – not an anchor in which you think you have to stay

Learn from the past, analyse it, study it all you will so you can learn more about yourself, others, your work. However when it comes to the future, one of the key lessons I have learned is to trust yourself.

Steve Jobs, who needs no introduction, shared the following in 2005 at Stanford

You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

Steve Jobs

Here is a link to the transcript of the speech

Mistakes do not define you, they refine you. At least this is what God does with our mistakes, messes, and mishaps. If we allow him to clean up the mess, he will use every bit of it for our good. If we let Him, God will use the results of our mistakes as the foundation upon which He can build a new life.

How does God use our mistakes?

• To correct us
  Proverbs 20:30 ~ “Sometimes it takes a painful experience to make us change our ways”
• To refine us
  1 Peter 1:6-7 ~ “In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith — more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire — may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ”
• To protect us
  Genesis 50:20 ~ “You planned evil against me, but God used those same plans for my good…”

On our darkest of days, God whispers to us “I take this mess and use it for your good. Come to me. Turn to me. Trust in me.”