| To put it in a slightly extreme way, every human being is a fool. And fools always make mistakes. They don't even notice when they make mistakes, so they go on repeating the same mistakes over and over. And people who are even more foolish than ordinary fools make mistakes that cannot be corrected. People who are good at making excuses are great fools. That's why they keep making mistakes. Wise people don't make mistakes. Why? This is because they can see things that ordinary people can't see, and can foresee all the consequences of doing something one way or another way. Wise people accept their mistakes straight away and learn various things from them. They are also good at learning from the mistakes of others. They don't consider other people's mistakes as "none of my business." Learning from the mistakes of 10 people, they can make themselves 10 times wiser; learning from the mistakes of 100 people, they can make themselves 100 times wiser. This means that the gap between the wise and unwise is growing all the time. Moreover, wise people can clearly tell immediately what's important and what's not important in a matter. In addition, they can quickly rank the priority of important things. Since they clearly identify the important points, they don't waste their time. And even when they do waste their time, they are very good at utilizing the wasted time in their favor. It is true that it's essential to diligently make efforts, but wise people value method ahead of raw effort. That's why they use most of their time to study the method or approach for achieving their objectives. It is because they know very well that once they make an error in their approach, they will go further and further away from the goal to the same degree that they continue the first erroneous approach. I would like to say that the key quality that distinguishes the wise and the foolish is the courage to correct their actions. |