For a very long time, I was dwelling on mistakes that I made in the past. But recently, a trip to Los Angeles changed that for me!
- Everyone makes mistakes, and that’s very normal.
Even the most successful people in the world make mistakes. For example, Gary Vaynerchuk left YouTube in 2006 for another video platform which gave him equity in that business. Clearly, that was a mistake because YouTube definitely had more audience than the other video platform. What’s more, Gary Vaynerchuk actually passed on investing in Uber, so he missed out on a large amount of profit.
But Gary never dwells on his mistakes. Neither should us.
When I look back on what I’ve done so far in my life, I can immediately see that I married the wrong person in my 20s and went through a painful divorce in my 30s. Marrying the wrong person was obviously a mistake. Sadly, I dwelled on that mistake for a long time. Fortunately, a recent trip to Los Angeles made me realize something powerful: I have to stop dwelling on the mistakes that I made in the past because I have to let the past stay in the past. Period.
Interestingly, when I was in Los Angeles, I met Henry, a guy who has lived in Los Angeles for 21 years. When he was young, he moved to Los Angeles in order to build a good career. After working hard for more than two decades, he has built a very successful career. What’s more, he doesn’t dwell on his mistakes. This is very impressive because he is all about positivity and gratitude & he doesn’t complain at all.
- Why should you be fast?
I had a job which gave me the best training: Although the quality of my work was good, my speed was too slow. That was when I suddenly realized that speed is much more paramount than perfection.
Working faster is underrated because people tend to overlook this aspect in their work while believing that perfection is important. Henry told me that the real reason why he is able to achieve more is because he actually does more work by doing things fast.
Speed is a key part of productivity and efficiency. During my trip to Los Angeles, I noticed that everyone around me moves really fast – because they live in a big city, their pace of life is pretty fast. Henry says because he doesn’t dwell on his past mistakes, he has more time to do everything quickly. Dwelling is the enemy of speed because dwelling slows us down instantly & chances are dwelling leads to no result anyway.
“If we stop dwelling on past mistakes, we will surely have much more time to focus on what is important to us right now and build a promising future.”
