Maulana Wahiduddin Khan I TOI I November 11, 2014

English poet Alexander Pope wrote, "To err is human; to forgive, divine.'' This saying has now become a well-known proverb. It is a fact that everyone makes mistakes. This is part of human nature. But there are two kinds of mistakes. The first one is simply a mistake. There is another kind of mistake, that is, a `mistake plus'. The first kind of mistake fails to give you anything. But, a `mistake plus' gives you many great things. A mistake plus seems to be a mistake in the beginning, but in the end it becomes an experience of gain.

When one makes a mistake, there are two possible kinds of responses.The first response is to become regretful. One who is full of regret will become disheartened after every mistake. He will be a victim of stress.It is also possible that he may lose courage and be unable to do anything else again. This is the negative aspect of making a mistake. But there is also a positive aspect. That is, it encourages you to engage in introspection and selfreassessment. When you do this, your mistake will turn into a mistake plus. A mistake plus is bound to activate your mind. It will lead to brainstorming.

In return, it will emerge as a natural gift for you.It will increase your creativity and produce a thinking process that may lead to the capacity for better reappraisal of yourself and an increased ability to analyse things. A mistake becomes a mistake plus when it awakens your mind. It thus enables you to replan your life. A mistake plus makes a man a superman.

Nature's greatest gift to man is his mind. The mind is the greatest miracle of nature. German psychologist Alfred Adler observed: "One of the wonder-filled characteristics of human beings is their power to turn a minus into plus." Now there is the question of how this miracle may come about? The answer is that if a person makes a mistake and saves himself from being a victim of negative thinking, then by nature a miraculous event occurs. That is, by the law of nature a rethinking process is developed in him.

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He analyses what happened with him and tries to understand where he went wrong.He thinks how he may achieve at the second attempt what he could not at the first attempt. In this way a new process of positive thinking is initiated in the mind of this person, which becomes a means for his intellectual development. Thus, this process turns his mis take into a mistake plus.

A mistake is an error or fault resulting from poor judgment. If you think positive, your mistake will motivate you to try to find out where you went wrong.This kind of rethinking will open up new possibilities to you. Thus, in an indirect way , the mistake will become a means to climb to new heights of success in life.

The condition for turning a mistake into a mistake plus is that one should not take a mistake to be a full stop. Rather one should consider a mistake as a comma. If one makes a mistake 10 times, one should put a comma at each instance. One should not put a full stop unless one's mistake has turned into a mistake plus.

Remember that in this world the quantum of mistakes is limited, but the quantum of achievements is unlimited. No mistake can close the door to your achievement, provided you are able to keep your thinking positive.