Welcome to the Very Well Mind podcast. We've interviewed over 100 authors, experts, entrepreneurs, athletes, musicians, and others to help you learn strategies to care for your mental health.

This episode is hosted by psychotherapist and bestselling author Amy Morin. Now let's get into the episode.

Okay. You're listening to the Friday fix.

Every Friday, I share a quick mental strength exercise that will help fix the thoughts, feelings, and actions that drain you of the mental strength you need to be your best.

Don't forget to subscribe to the show on your favorite platform so you can get mental strength tips delivered to you every single week. During the last episode, I talked about how to stop

repeating your mistakes. We all know it's painful to keep going back and doing the same old

things that you're used to doing, especially when you're trying to reach a goal, and you get stuck. But avoiding your mistake a second time is only half the

battle. It's also important to learn from your mistakes. That's what we're going to talk about today.

How to turn a mistake into a valuable life lesson. There's this notion that when you fall off the horse,

you should just get right back up again. But too often, we're quick to jump right back into it

without taking time to reflect on why we made a mistake in the first place. I think this is one of

the biggest reasons why people don't learn. We're just too quick to dust ourselves off,

jump right back into what we're doing,

without figuring out what went wrong or how to do better next time. On the other hand, though,

some people dwell on their shortcomings. And the more that they keep replaying the same mistakes in

their head over and over again, the more likely they are to feel bad. And when they feel bad,

they're actually more likely to

repeat those same mistakes. So how do you actually learn from a mistake? The key is to spend a little

time reflecting on it. But notice that we said reflecting and not dwelling. The way you can make

your reflection helpful is by asking yourself these three questions. Number one, what went

wrong? Evaluate why you likely messed up. Your mistake might stem from ignorance, for example.

Maybe you didn't have enough information, or you lacked the skills that you needed to do the job.

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