We Don’t Learn from Mistakes, We Learn from the Recovery
- Jose Manuel Paez, MD
- Jun 2
- 7 min read
There’s a moment, just after you realize you have done something wrong, when time slows. It is not the dramatic, cinematic kind of slow. It is subtle, like the room goes quiet and your skin pulls tighter against your ribs. You know what you did. You know what is coming. And still, somehow, you cannot look directly at it.
We have all been coached to believe in the instructional value of failure. “Mistakes are how we learn,” we are told, as if it were gospel. Growth, we are assured, is forged in the fire of embarrassment, regret, and blunder. Anyone who has been burned knows the lesson is not in the fire. It is in what you do when you stand in the ashes, sorting through what survived.
"If mistakes truly taught us anything on their own, we would all be sages by now."
If mistakes truly taught us anything on their own, we would all be sages by now. Yet people keep overcommitting. They send the text they promised they would not. They speak when they should listen. They freeze when they should move. The problem is not that they have never made these errors before. The problem is that, when the time came to recover, they didn’t.
And therein lies the rub: We often act as if we are exempt from the rules of the game. Yes, we are all tempted to skip the line when no one is looking.
I. The Comfortable Fiction of “Failing Forward”
We have made a myth of the redemptive mistake. It fits neatly into professional pitches and dating bios. “I failed,” we say, “but I learned.” Cue applause, cue progress. Most of the time, that is branding, not reflection.
What we do not mention are the evenings spent justifying ourselves to the mirror, the way we tiptoed around truth in conversation, the post-mistake rationalizations dressed up as insights.
Genuine learning is not triggered by the error itself. It happens in the processing, during the long, unsatisfying hours when we sit with discomfort, listen to what it has to say, and choose what kind of person we want to be now. This is not glamorous work. There is no dopamine hit and no instant clarity, only the mundane, steady labor of repair. That is why it is so easy to skip.
II. Repeating Ourselves
We like to believe we absorb lessons like sponges, yet we are more like record players stuck in a groove. We make the same decisions, trip over the same reactions, and fall into the same emotional spirals. It is not because we are inattentive. It is because we are running on internal scripts we did not write.
Psychology labels this repetition compulsion, attachment patterns, or parts work. Freud suggested we reenact trauma to master it. Bowlby argued that we carry childhood bonding strategies into adult relationships, hoping they still work. Internal Family Systems says protector parts, exiled parts, and managers act out strategies to shield us, often by repeating what is familiar.
"Reflection alone does not change behavior."
Reflection alone does not change behavior. You can understand why you snapped at your partner, ghosted an opportunity, or retreated when you should have leaned in, and still do it again next week. Understanding is not enough. What changes us is the response that follows. That is the recovery.
III. The Real Work of Recovery
Recovery, when done right, is profoundly unsexy. It does not post well. There are no before-and-after shots of an apology handled with humility, no Spotify playlist for the awkward conversation you did not want to have but had anyway. Yet this is where character lives, not in avoiding mistakes but in how we respond to them.
"Recovery, when done right, is profoundly unsexy."
It is the difference between someone who keeps repeating “I’m bad at relationships” like a horoscope and someone who finally picks up the phone to say, “I was wrong, and here is what I’m doing about it.”
We seldom see recovery modeled. Sitcoms skip it; characters mess up, deliver a one-liner, and by the next episode nothing happened. Reality TV feeds on conflict but rarely shows the emotional debris afterward. We get confrontation, not reconciliation. The real work is left on the cutting-room floor.
That is unfortunate because the most meaningful changes often occur after the dramatic moment has ended. The tension dissolves, the camera pans out, the music fades, and you are left with yourself, the consequence, and a quiet question: Now what?
IV. Avoidance as a Lifestyle Brand
It is tempting to keep busy, to move on, watch another episode, send another email, open another tab. Post something vaguely introspective so people will think we are deep. Avoidance has gone mainstream—just ask your inner monologue, which now sounds eerily like an algorithm.
We have built an economy around distraction. Streaming, scrolling, swiping, each provides an escape from discomfort. Mistakes, on the other hand, invite us into discomfort. They ask us to pause, sit in stillness, and feel the echo of what went wrong.
In Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, avoidance is called a safety behavior, a short-term strategy with long-term costs. It shields us from distress without addressing the source, keeping us from the full weight of our decisions and therefore from growth. As The Good Place reminds us, no one gets better by ignoring their demons. You have to meet them, name them, and probably share an awkward lunch while they explain what you have repressed since Lady Gaga and the Kings of Leon were considered “new” artists. 2009, for those of you wondering.
“Avoidance is a short-term strategy with long-term costs.”
V. The Reframe: Mistakes as Mirrors
Let us be clear: we are not glorifying failure, nor suggesting you self-sabotage for growth. When the inevitable screw-up happens, and it will, the real question is whether you will take the hit and pivot, or hit replay.
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy places values at this crossroads. You do not fix a mistake by beating yourself up. You fix it by asking what matters most and taking the next small action that honors that value. Recovery does not erase the past. It realigns the future.
Picture the hero who finally drops the tragic-origin monologue, laces up, and climbs back into the ring (Rocky IV, snow on the beard, Drago tasting dust). Or the coming-of-age kid who quits ghosting, stuffs the apology in an envelope, and stands on the porch waiting for the door to crack open. Growth doesn’t hide in the cinematic twist; it shows up in that quiet, stubborn decision to act like the person the story has been begging for all along.
VI. Micro-Recoveries: Pivoting in Daily Life
Not every recovery needs a grand gesture. Most do not. The most meaningful recoveries are usually the smallest, happening quietly, internally, in moments no one else notices.
It is the pause before snapping at your partner when you are tired. It is the choice to close the laptop and walk away from an email you were about to send in anger. It is a text that says, “I was off earlier. Can we talk?”
Call these micro-recoveries, tiny pivots that require willingness, awareness, and a bit of humility. The results compound. Each small act builds muscle memory for resilience.
Think of Issa from Insecure, stumbling through love and ambition yet always trying. Or Andy in The Devil Wears Prada, learning how to lose and reclaim herself in a single breath. They are memorable not because they are mistake-free but because they know how to course-correct. Micro-recovery is the daily practice of inching closer to who you are meant to be.
VII. What the Philosophers Knew (and Why They Would Love Ted Lasso)
Ancient wisdom called this out long before the group chat. The Stoics were obsessed with self-regulation, not in a joyless way but in a steady, grounded one. Epictetus did not care that you made a mistake; he cared what you did next. That response is the virtue.
Viktor Frankl, writing from a concentration camp, echoed this truth. Between stimulus and response there is a space, and in that space lies our freedom. Mistakes compress the space; recovery reclaims it. Buddhism frames it as samsara, the cycle of forgetting and remembering, messing up and returning to center. Every breath offers a reset.
Enter Ted Lasso. The man is a recovery machine (Cue broken poster above the door). He fails constantly, says the wrong thing, misjudges people, then comes back with grace. Not perfection, not pride, just willingness to repair. Imagine if more of us operated that way—less focus on never failing, more focus on never refusing to try again.
Closing the Loop: Rituals for Repair
Recovery is a skill that benefits from a structured approach. After your next mistake, walk yourself through a personal recovery loop:
What happened?
What did it stir up in me?
Which value do I want to act on now?
What can I do today to realign?
Journal it, say it aloud, or let answers surface on a walk. The point is not punishment; it is transformation. Mistakes generate tension, and recovery releases that tension into usefulness.
If the mistake harmed someone else, use a relational repair loop:
Acknowledge the impact.
Own your part without defensiveness.
Ask what would help rebuild trust.
Follow through consistently.
That final step matters most. Recovery does not live in intention; it lives in action.
Final Scene
Perhaps we should stop asking how we can avoid mistakes and start asking how we can become better at responding to them. The real work is sitting in the quiet after the fall and choosing, again and again, to stand up a little wiser.
There is no shortcut, no app, no life hack, only the slow human work of facing ourselves. Making the call. Having the talk. Rebuilding the bridge. Trying again.
"The mistake is the moment; recovery is the movement. The movement is where the meaning lives."
If any part of this resonated with you, if you’re finding yourself in a loop you’re ready to step out of, I offer Clarity Calls as a space to pause, reflect, and map out what recovery might look like for you. No pressure. Just a conversation.
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