There Are No Mistakes, Only Lessons and Opportunities

Prefer to listen? Audio below.

I bought a couple meters of brown denim fabric recently because once I saw it, I immediately had a vision.

The texture, the weight, and the unique shade of brown was going to be perfect for a pair of shorts I’ve been wanting to make.

But when I got home and I washed it, the fabric came out terrible. It had distorted in a weird way and left a bunch of random white lines everywhere.

I was so annoyed that I almost scrapped the entire project.

But, instead of throwing the fabric away, I decided to get curious.

I looked at those white lines and wondered if they would be presentable if I acid washed the fabric. It was a risk, but I took it by mixing bleach and water in a spray bottle. And after several sprays, a few minutes and a vinegar rinse, my ruined piece of fabric became something entirely different: A beautiful maroon tinted brown with an abstract pattern that I actually loved.

Okay, I thought. Now we have something here.

So next I started sewing…

Only to realize that the sewing pattern for my dream shorts was absolutely terrible.

The sizing was so far off that I had to alter it, not once, not twice, but three times.

And honestly, considering the amount of challenges this one project presented, I should’ve easily quit.

But I kept adjusting.

And eventually, almost a week later, when I put the finished look on, I was beyond happy. Completely in awe of how I transformed both the fabric and my vision.

So it made me think, how often do we encounter one unexpected turn and immediately decide the story is over?

We don’t get the job.

The relationship ends.

The plan falls apart.

The thing we thought was going to work doesn’t.

And because we were so attached to the version we originally imagined, we mistake the unexpected for failure.

But what if it’s just information?

What if it’s simply life giving us new material to work with?

In relation to my life right now, this sewing project is a direct reflection of my journey thus far here in Spain.

Not everything has unfolded the way I imagined it would. There have been unexpected turns, changed plans, and moments when I’ve wondered if I’m somehow off course.

But I’m learning that not what I planned doesn’t necessarily mean not where I’m supposed to be.

When something changes unexpectedly, we usually only see what we’ve lost. We don’t yet know what the change might make possible.

The same was true of that denim.

If I had quit when the fabric distorted, I never would have discovered what it could become.

Sewing has taught me that almost nothing is permanent.

You can take out a seam. Change a pattern. Cut something differently. Try again.

Life gives us those same opportunities, even when they don’t feel like opportunities at first.

Maybe the question is not, How do I get back to what I originally planned?

Maybe it is, What can I create from here?

That’s the question I’m trying to carry with me.

There are no mistakes, only lessons and opportunities.

We always have a choice.

We can quit or we can pivot.

We can keep trying to recreate the original vision, or we can become curious about what this new version might become.

Sometimes the most beautiful things we create are the ones we never planned to make.

Where in your life have you mistaken an unexpected turn for an ending?

What might become possible if you stopped asking, “Why didn’t this work?” and started asking, “What can I create from here?”