edna


I am  pretty sure everyone must have spilt milk in their childhood either during breakfast, lunch or dinner.  I do remember my mom telling me that while i was little, i was very inquisitive. I always wanted to know everything and so one faithful day she prepared hot water for tea and left it on the table, i crept to the table and kept shaking it and finally the glass of milk on the table spilled and poured on me. I started crying and that brought my mom into the room. I can imagine the look on her face but then she told me that she didn’t cry over the milk i spilled rather she thanked God that the hot water didn’t pour on me. 

My mom would always say ” Don’t cry over the spilt milk.” These were merely five words but have great wisdom in them. Today, when I recall this, it’s not always easy to not express what we feel and how we feel especially when we are hurt. I feel that we should really not cry over spilt milk but learn from our mistakes and try to avoid them in future. I have seen many students who appear for an exam and fail to perform good in the exam. So, after the exam, they start thinking on how bad the exam was and before you know it, they spend hours in that. Their thinking will not change anything regardless of how much efforts they put into it. The obvious consequence is students not able to perform well in immediate next exam because they just spent time in crying over what happened in previous exam. So, a good piece of suggestion is not to think for a long on the exam , but instead learn from the mistake and to avoid that.

Failure is not an uncommon thing. Everyone must encounter it at some point in life and while some embrace it, others don’t. But learning from failure is comparitively difficult. And learning from failure and implementing new approach or avoiding previous mistakes and achieving success is much more difficult. 

A friend of mine went for a presentation but failed to nail it. He could not take that failure and just kept thinking and got depressed and also stayed away from everyone. One week later he had another presentation and he managed to fail that too because of earlier failure and moreover, not getting into the zeal for attempting any other presentation So, one more good opportunity was lost. I am looking forward to him putting aside his fears and picking up from his past failures. 

Frankly speaking, crying over spilt milk is a waste of time and that time can be really used to do something more creating, innovative and resourceful. Moreover, spending time crying leads to nothing but pains, regretion, depression and anger. Decreases confidence and self esteem, allowing gloom to take over. So, why cry?  Crying over spilled milk doesn’t and  hardly motivates anyone. Rather it makes one tired, stressed, hopeless and so on and so forth. The chances of getting it right in the future becomes very slim.
 So, the lesson here is to learn from the mistakes we have made, stop crying over them and follow a better lead next time.

Whitney Edna Ibe is the Executive Consultant, Life & Mental Health Coach, and Writer/ Editor at Whitney Edna Ibe Consult (Blog), Flyhiee.com, The Social Talks, Penprofile.com, and Mental Wellness Society International. She is in charge of consultations, services, and implementation.

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