Virtually everyone wants to achieve greatness, whether it is something monumental that changes the world or just being the best person he/she can be and positively impacting the lives of the people he/she cares about. However, achieving greatness isn’t easy, and it doesn’t come overnight. Learn how making mistakes can help you to achieve the greatness you are capable of.

You may be thinking, “How does making mistakes help me to achieve greatness? Mistakes are usually considered bad or undesirable; how can that lead to greatness?” Mistakes are often considered bad or undesirable by most, but most also realize that they are virtually unavoidable; we are only human, after all, and human beings do make mistakes from time to time- no one is perfect.

When mistakes do occur, you need to learn why the mistake occurred and how to prevent it or similar mistakes from happening in the future. Then, the mistake is worthwhile and can actually help you to achieve greatness. This is because you know what you need to do to avoid such a mistake, thereby leading you to perform the actions you need to take in order to achieve your best work and to achieve the greatness you are capable of.

Mistakes are truly bad or undesirable when we repeat the same or similar mistakes over and over again, as we don’t learn from them. As the old saying goes, “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.” This saying refers to the fact that mistakes are not the bad or undesirable element most make it out to be when we actually learn why it is a mistake and how it occurred so that we can avoid it in the future. This is how mistakes can help you to achieve greatness.

Therefore, you should not see mistakes as something bad or undesirable, so long as you learn from the experience the first time a mistake occurs so that you can keep the same or similar mistakes from occurring again. Take note of what the mistake is and how it occurred so that you can learn how to take actions necessary to keep the mistake from occurring again. By learning the actions and skills necessary to prevent such a mistake from occurring again in the future, you are taking positive actions that improve your skill set and help you to achieve the greatness you are capable of achieving.

Learning from successes can boost your self-esteem because you can learn more about yourself and your strengths. Virtually everyone excels in at least one area (often more than one area); this can help you to learn where your best skills lie and to do more activities that enable you to take advantage of these advanced skills more often.

When you do something well, you feel a sense of accomplishment, pride, and confidence surge in you because you were able to achieve something that either helped yourself and/or helped others. In many cases, you were the best person for the task and were more easily able to achieve it than other people would have. Therefore, other people will look up to you because you were able to complete the task and/or achieve the feat so quickly and easily as compared to others.

When you are having a difficult time or struggling with challenges, it is important to look back upon your successes and realize that you have the capability of doing great things and succeeding at whatever you are doing. Sometimes, life “throws us a curveball” that makes us uncomfortable and causes us to struggle a bit with tasks that we are not used to completing and have a hard time completing at a high level.

The key is that we must remember that even during these difficult times, we have the capability to adapt and succeed. Reflect back on those times when you’ve had successes, especially those tasks that others struggled and they called upon you to do them. Whether it was an issue with a computer or electronic device, an item at home that needed repairing, or just offering helpful advice to someone dealing with a situation you dealt with before, you were able to succeed where others couldn’t or would have a harder time succeeding.

By reflecting on your past successes and realizing you have the capability to adapt and do many tasks well, you will realize that whatever present challenge you’re facing can be overcome as well. You just have to focus on the task at hand, utilize the lessons you’ve learned from having past successes, and put the work in to overcome the present challenge. By taking time to reflect and learn from your past successes, you can keep your self-esteem during times of great difficulty and be able to overcome virtually any challenge that comes your way.

Learning from failures can boost your self-esteem because you realize that you can rebound from tough challenges, plus learn valuable skills that can aid you in overcoming future tough challenges more easily. Virtually everyone faces challenges in life; no one has it easy all the time, which means there will be things in your life that will not go as planned. At times, it will seem that the whole world is against you and nothing goes in your favor, nothing turns out as planned.

Times like these are bound to bring down your self-esteem and make you question whether you are able to do high-quality work, achieve your goals, etc. It is at times like these that you need to reflect back upon past failures so that you recognize that you have gone through challenging periods before and have the capability and skill set needed to go through them again and be able to come out stronger than ever before.

That is the other key element you must learn when reflecting on your past failures: Learning from them so that you don’t make the same or similar mistakes in the future. When you make a mistake, it’s not the end of the world; on the contrary, you have a learning opportunity to learn what you did wrong or not as well as you could have, then learn how to do the situation better if the same or similar situation arises again.

Learning from your past mistakes can show weaknesses in your skill set that you can strengthen over time through learning from the experience and gaining insight into what you can do better. By learning what you can do better, you can feel more confident in handling the same or similar situations in the future, which can boost your self-esteem.

Therefore, you should not look upon making a mistake as the end of the world, and you should not allow it to bring down your self-esteem either. Everyone makes mistakes; the key is learning from those mistakes so that you don’t make the same or similar ones in the future, plus you improve your skill set so that you can handle the same or similar situations with more confidence and ability in the future. This will allow yourself to gain more self-esteem through analyzing and learning from your past mistakes so that you make fewer mistakes and achieve more in the future.

To achieve greatness, you have to be willing to grow as an individual and improve yourself. In order to grow as an individual and improve yourself, you must be willing to expand your skill set and be willing to have many experiences that can improve this skill set. This means that you cannot be afraid to challenge yourself, take reasonable risks, and stepping outside of your “comfort zone.” If you are fearful, you will not reach the greatness you are capable of achieving.

Many people are fearful and hesitant to step outside of their “comfort zones,” preferring to do things that they are familiar with. They prefer to do activities and stay in fields that they are comfortable in, that they know they do well in. Few people prefer to step outside of those zones to try something new, handle new, etc. for a few reasons. One reason is because they fear they will not do well with the new activity or challenge. A second reason is fear of embarrassment because other people may see them struggle with this new activity or challenge. A third reason is that they fear ridicule from people because they struggle with this new activity or challenge.

Fearing taking on new challenges or activities for any of the above reasons or any similar reasons only keeps you from achieving the greatness you are capable of achieving. By not challenging yourself with new tasks and challenges, you will be unable to grow as an individual because you will not learn any new skills to add your skill set. You will continue to excel and be productive in the skills you know, but you won’t expand your skill set to grow as an individual and possibly be even more productive and capable than you currently realize. This is a key reason why you won’t achieve the greatness you are capable of; you won’t even know if you’ll find a better skill you can use to achieve greater goals and accomplishments if you don’t take on new tasks and challenges.

Therefore, fear can stop you from achieving greatness because it hinders your growth as an individual and prevents you from learning more about yourself and increasing your skill set and abilities to handle various tasks and challenges. By being willing to overcome that fear and challenging yourself with new tasks and challenges that get you out of your “comfort zone,” you can grow as an individual and be able to achieve the greatness you are capable of achieving.