Points of Interest

“It May Be Difficult To Learn From Our Mistakes” ~ Diane Halpern

by Hutt Bush

Not everyone shares the same sanguine view of hindsight. Author Diane Halpern is downright contrarian and writes:

“Hindsight is of little value in the decision-making process. It distorts our memory for events that occurred at the time of the decision so that the actual consequence seems to have been a ‘foregone conclusion.’ Thus, it may be difficult to learn from our mistakes.”

This is the opposite of the 20-20 school of thought. What is your opinion? Have you observed hindsight mis-serving you or anyone else? Perhaps “selective memory” describes something less than perfect vision about the past?

If you wanted to have your memory be most useful by truly learning from your mistakes, how would you use it? What kinds of things would you focus on? What habits and ways of looking at and evaluating events would you put your attention on? How can you make hindsight and remembering the best it can be so that you can avoid or minimize old mistakes?

Copyright 2009-2012. Being Point®, Inc.
posted in: Being A Good Human Uncategorized

One thought on ““It May Be Difficult To Learn From Our Mistakes” ~ Diane Halpern

  1. I feel that I only need to learn a lesson once- not over and over and over again. I do learn from my mistakes- but what I learn is not to repeat them , not necessarily a new way to do anything- so in this regard, I agree with Diane Halpern.

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