My Favorite Mistake

My most recent newsletter focused on self-forgiveness. How do we forgive ourselves for the mistakes we’ve made? The biggest reaction was about the nature of the mistakes I referenced. People were adamant about which were big and which were silly. For some, the stock market misses were the biggies. For others, market decisions paled in comparison to life choices like having kids or marrying. I included dieting choices because I work with so many people for whom these choices have the do or die feel. I know for others the career missteps are the most painful.

There’s a concept I’ve been recently taken with: inattentional blindness. It’s the notion that unless we’re specifically attending to something, we can be totally blind to it, even when it’s before our very eyes. The most amusing experiment is about the students who miss the person in the gorilla suit while attending to how many basketball passes six students make to one another in a video clip.

So, the takeaway? It’s easy to miss the obvious. What’s your favorite mistake?

And there's always Sheryl Crow's My Favorite Mistake.