Disclaimer: If you follow this as a prescription, you will get nowhere.
Making a mistake is one of the most valuable things you can do. Not because of the mistake itself, but because the fact that you labelled it as a mistake reveals something extremely important to yourself.
That feeling in your gut is trying to guide you away from the things that do not suit you. It’s trying to guide you toward a truer path.
You’d be very wise to listen.
Sounds easy right? But you know that it’s never that simple. You repeat mistakes over and over. You make mistakes that are so insanely obvious and avoidable.
If only you could listen to yourself.
But you’re complicated.
You have conflicting desires.
And so many ulterior motives.
You want so many things at the same time. You want to be authentic, but also liked by everyone. You want the thrill of the risk, but also the safety from not moving. You want mastery, but also the novelty from trying new things all the time. These internal conflicts are tearing you apart.
And so, you make mistakes.
Because how could you not? If you're a walking set of contradictions, you’re bound to fail over and over. It doesn’t matter what direction you take, because it will feel like a mistake either way. You will always feel the lingering lack from the road unexplored.
You can’t win.
And it’s all self-imposed.
In reality, the moment you feel that you’ve made a mistake won’t reveal to you what you really want. It reveals to you that your wants contradict each other. That you want too much. You never do anything you don’t want to do. You wanted to make that mistake, but you also wanted something else entirely.
That feeling of failure is a call for introspection. It's a call to let go of something. If you don’t, you will keep living as a contradiction, you will keep making the same mistakes, you will wake up with the same feeling in your gut over and over again for the rest of your life.
Most people live this way.
You don’t have to be most.
You have the option to answer the call for introspection. To answer the call to let go. To remove and reiterate ruthlessly. To look honestly at your desires and let go of those that don't serve you.
Because the truth is, mistakes aren’t random accidents. They are mirrors. They show you the chaos of your own mind. They show you that you’ve been pulled in too many directions, and that no single step could ever satisfy all the hidden demands within you.
The mistake is not failure.
The mistake is clarity.
Every mistake is asking you the same question: What can you finally put down? What dream, what desire, what fear will you stop carrying with you?
You may not like the answer. Letting go of certain wants feels like cutting off a part of yourself. It feels like death. But that death is necessary. Without it, you are a prisoner of your own contradictions, living in endless circles.
Mistakes reveal that something inside you is outdated. That you’ve been holding onto a story that no longer fits. A belief that once served you, but now suffocates you.
You think you’re afraid of mistakes, but what you’re really afraid of is that inner death. The loss of a desire you’ve carried for years. The collapse of an identity you’ve carefully built.
That’s why people avoid looking at their mistakes too closely. It’s easier to shrug them off, to distract yourself, to keep moving. But if you keep ignoring them, life will keep handing you the same ones. Louder. Harder. Until you can’t ignore them anymore.
So the question isn’t whether you’ll make mistakes. You will. The question is whether you’ll face them with honesty. Whether you’ll use them as a compass to strip away what’s false.
Because when you do — when you start listening — your path becomes clearer. You stop scattering your energy across a hundred different wants. You stop betraying yourself with every choice.
And then, something remarkable happens.
Mistakes don’t crush you anymore.
They refine you.
They stop being signs that you’ve failed, and start becoming signs that you’re getting closer. That you’re narrowing the distance between who you are and who you are becoming.
This is what most people never see. They think success is about getting it right all the time. But success is about removing the wrong until only the right remains. It’s not addition, it’s subtraction. Not perfection, but refinement.
And refinement is built on mistakes.
So don’t fear them.
Don’t deny them.
Don’t bury them.
Listen to them.
Let them force you into honesty.
Your mistakes aren’t the end.
They’re the beginning of clarity.
Sincerely,
Milo Morrison