Why do you keep making certain mistakes over and over again? No matter how hard you try to fix the situation, they seem out of your control.

I have a friend who keeps dating or marrying the same person just with different names. Sound familiar? Do you have problems - either in relationships, business or life - that keep reoccurring over and over again? What's going on? How do you stop making the mistakes? How do you correct them once you have identified them?

As human beings, we have impeccable skills in detecting when we have made a mistake. Maybe you get a sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach. Or maybe you just "know" that something doesn’t feel right.

You know that a mistake has occurred. Unfortunately, that’s not the problem. The difficulty arises because most of us have not been taught how to look behind this feeling of discomfort to see what the mistake actually is.

The mistake is not the action. The mistake that occurs within a person happens before the action happens. To discover why you keep making the same mistakes, you need to look behind the actions. When that relationship is out of whack, then your actions reflect that out-of-whack relationship. In the example with my friend, she had to eventually look at not what she did with her relationships but at her own idea of relationships.

Mistakes are a necessary part of life. If we never made any mistakes, we would fail to grow as a person. We wouldn't be able to taste forgiveness in our hearts.
We would never know total love and acceptance.

Back to my friend above, her epiphany came with the understanding that she was living the ideal relationship - one that she saw from her parents. Her parents have been happily married for over 50 years. She grew up listening to the story that when her parents met, it was love at first sight. So every time, she went out on a date, my friend fell in love. Even when she felt the pang of something being out of whack, she stayed in the relationship because she didn’t know failed relationships or divorce. Seeing and acknowledging that she was not her parents and that she didn’t have to fall in love with the guy on the first date was the change needed to correct her mistake.

Cleaning Up the Mess

A mistake has occurred. And you will have to clean it up. How do you go from the feeling of being out of whack to forgiveness and ultimately love so you can clean up the mess?

1. Take responsibility. When you feel that sinking feeling of a mistake being made, your first tendency may be to push it away. But the past has shown us that doing this doesn’t work so well. Instead, take full responsibility for your mistake. It's yours, and remember, it's your path to love and acceptance.

2. Forgive. Forgive yourself and the other person. Centuries ago, Alexander Pope said, “To err is human, to forgive, divine.” It takes a bigger person to forgive than to hold a grudge. This acceptance and forgiveness reduces stress and allows you the energy and motivation to deal effectively with the situation.

3. Take Action. Schedule time to further process your actions and feelings related to the situation. Learn from this hard fought lesson. Focus on the future. Develop an action plan that rights this wrong and avoids making the same mistake in the future.