Wouldn’t be awesome if life had a big eraser that you could use to wipe away all your past mistakes? Wouldn’t it be great to have some do-overs in the past; make changes, say something different, go back and do what you now know you could have done?

The truth is, we can’t go back and change the past but we can learn from it, make a come-back, and erase the negative residue it leaves behind. In my home office I have a giant eraser on my desk that says, “For Big Mistakes.” I keep it there to remind me that no matter what happens in life, I can recover from it. Henry Ford once said, “Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.” I guess he understood making a come-back since he literally forgot to put reverse in his first automobiles. Michael Jordan probably understood this too after getting cut from his high school basketball team. I wonder if Walk Disney may have come to know this truth as well after he went bankrupt 7 times and was fired from a newspaper editor who said, “He lacked imagination and had no good ideas.”

To use your eraser for big mistakes you have to learn the 3 things successful people do for big mistakes…

1. They Learn From Their Mistakes

We make our future better than our past by learning from our experiences. It has been said that experience is the best teacher, but not necessarily. The best teacher is EDUCATED EXPERIENCE–meaning that we learn something from our experiences. You will be destined to repeat your experiences if you are not learning anything from them. Just because you went through something does not automatically mean you learned from it. Many people have EXPERIENCED great things but have NOTHING to show for it. They are not better off or any wiser. However, when we evaluate and take the time to reflect and learn from our experiences, we can always make improvements.

2. They Let Go Of Their Mistakes

Once you have learned from your mistakes, you have to forgive yourself and move on. Too many people get stuck in their past failures and wallow around in self-destructive misery. If you want to be better tomorrow than you are today, you have to learn to forgive yourself of the mistakes and failures you may have made. Unforgiveness towards yourself and others traps you in a prison of discontentedness. It paralyzes you, keeping you from truly stepping out. Unforgiveness chains you down, not allowing you to experience true freedom. Let go and let God.

3. They Leverage Their Mistakes

Your greatest failures can be your greatest stepping stones. Understand that you have to live from your mistakes for they can be an asset to you. Don’t try to hide them or cover them up…use them to propel you forward. Know that mistakes and failures can turn around into great victories in the future. Communist Joeseph Stalin ordered Russia to be purged of all Bibles in the 1930’s. This was carried out with a vengeance. Years later after Stalin had died, Russia softened it’s stand against Bibles and allowed missionaries to distribute them to the people. One missionary team  was having trouble getting Bibles shipped from Moscow to the city of Stavropol.  They heard about a warehouse outside the city where thousands of Bibles had been stored, and they asked if they could have them. The government said yes. The Bibles in the warehouse turned out to be the thousands of ones Stalin had confiscated in the 1930’s. God has a way of working things out. Leverage failure and turn it into success.