Everyone makes mistakes. This isn’t a new finding, and most certainly isn’t inaccurate, yet people still make a big deal when people make mistakes…but why? It’s extremely common (almost on a daily basis), everyone’s done it at least once/will do it at least once, and it’s expected, it’s a part of life. I guess the most common answer is that people can’t seem to get past the initial pain or hurt that might’ve come from what someone did to them, or what they failed to bring to the table when their contribution was needed the most. However, if we’re able to see past the initial mistake, what you can find is a life lesson, something that’s taken me a very long time to come to terms with: everything is a lesson.

I, like so many others, have made huge mistakes in my life. Most notably, I recently lashed out at a friend over her spilling information about something that I had trusted her with, but in the long run, I was the one who made the mistake in lashing out. For me, trust is a very fragile, paper-thin wine glass, where if you bump the edge ever-so-slightly, the entire glass is going to crack, or even break. I grew up in a home where trust was virtually nonexistent, not that that’s an excuse, but it 100% plays a role in how I handle things, and why I keep everything so bottled up all the time. It especially comes full circle when my trust is broken—let me just say, I don’t take it lightly, which in my experience, I should learn from because I don’t handle it well…get where I’m going here?

But why do mistakes matter? Why do they hurt so much? What is the point of getting so wound up over something that probably wouldn’t matter in six months, two years, ten years?

Because you’re growing. You’re changing. Literally, the chemicals in your brain are adapting as you make mistakes and watch others make mistakes, and you experience emotions you typically try to avoid like doubt, betrayal, or embarrassment. Every single little thing that goes against your beliefs, your morals, your trust, how you thought about someone and even more, is evolving you into a more well-rounded, developed version of yourself—and it’s scary! No one wants to get out of their internal comfort zone. People can say that they love to be daring, be adventurous, and expand beyond their comfort zone, but when it boils down to it, their personal relationships, their sense of being, and everything they hold true within them is something that no one wants to change. No one wants to escape the comfortability of everything they hold to be true.

Mistakes make you stronger. Pain makes you stronger. Everything, and I mean everything is a lesson. At times, lessons can be extremely hard to accept, like when you don’t get your dream job, the college of your dreams denies you, the “love of your life” leaves you, and the friends you trust your life with end up betraying that trust—but it’s all for a reason. There’s a bigger picture that you have to keep in mind: everything that happens today or tomorrow is only going to help develop you into the greatest person that you can be. And believe me, you’ll never stop growing. You’ll be with your peers and learn from the mistakes you make with them, and they’ll learn from their mistakes with you as well. You’ll be in college and be publicly humiliated in class, but someone else will go through that exact same situation. You’ll be in a group interview for the highest position of a company, and you’ll say something that spikes an argument. You’ll look at your kids as they go off to college and realize that you’ve been around the block, but that the mistakes you’ve made as a parent have taught them and yourself something so much more valuable than if you had done everything right.

Everything is a lesson, and you my friend, are learning.