“Leave other people’s mistakes where they lie.” – Marcus Aurelius

It is so easy to see why other people fail to succeed or why their best laid plans didn’t work out. It is also so easy for others to see the same with us. Why is that? It is simple really, it is easy to see because we can see the whole playing field or at least enough of the field to see where they are going wrong. The same is true of their view of our situation.

How can use this to our advantage? We could do a number of things. The first and easiest thing we can do is to look at an obvious mistake someone in our lives might be making and then ask ourselves, ‘where in my own life am I doing something similar?’

Then we need to detach from ourselves and truly look at our own lives objectively. This is difficult but it gives us perspective. It also requires that we keep our emotions out of the picture. Detachment also helps with this, just stepping back from any situation enough to see it from the outside.

This takes practice. Fortunately, life gives us a lot of opportunity to practice this skill. The time and effort it takes to develop is worth the effort.

virtus fortis vocat