Love your mistakes

Was doing some brief reading, and came across this article "How Successful People Remain Successful".

Thought it was a interesting topic for an article, but alas, it is only to trick you into reading an interview between the authors (Mark Thompson and Stewart Emery) on their latest book, Success Built to Last. Dirty Bastards!

In short, this book is a follow up to another book called Built To Last, which is about visionary companies that became extraordinary, and what is was that made them extraordinary. Sounds interesting, i'd certainly like to know what made these companies and their CEO's tick.

A few things grabbed my attention from this article, and really made sense. One of them was:

"We learned that whether you are Jack Welch or the Dalai Lama, it is dangerous not to do what you love. If you don’t have a level of passion that drives your thinking about what you’re doing day in and day out, there will be others out there who are passionate who will overtake and outrun you. People who care will take the initiative away from those who are half-hearted. So loving what you do is a competitive imperative, not simply a nice thing to have."

But on average, how many of us are truly doing what we love? Whether it be making money (be a loan shark) or making love (be a porn star), how many of us have tried to do what we love? Even i can't make this claim, that my profession is actually what i love doing. Though, strangely, i'm starting to love my work more and more. Its sorta like an arranged marriage, not love at first sight. Hopefully my boss keeps "bribing" me more often, to keep me in love with the company.

The other thing that got my whiskers twitching was :

Some people have enormous setbacks in their lives, or they make mistakes, but you have to learnt from your mistakes. As Quincy Jones, the musician, asked us, when was the last time you actually did that? When did you take the lessons from a setback and put them to use? These people were very consistent about looking to success and failure as feedback.

Damn true. We always talked about how we'll learn from our mistakes bla bla bla yada yada yada. But has it been all talk? On a personal level. I'd say its 50/50. I don't think i've really learnt from my mistakes. For starters, i know i still indulge in a little porn once in a while. (Stop gasping for air! I'm not the awesomely macho and goodlooking angel that i seem to be! I'm just awesomely macho and goodlooking.) Though not all of you out there may agree that it is a mistake, i think its a mistake for me. Not in a religious sense, but it just feels that way.

There was this one scene in "Scent of a Woman", where Al Pacino's character says something along the lines, "Everyone knows without question, the difference between right and wrong". Might be just a 'croc of shit', but when Al Pacino says it, it must be true!

Well, i guess i've still got time to learn. Afterall, youth is for the young, to make mistakes and learn from it.