I am always on the go. I love productivity. Making progress towards my personal, professional and spiritual goals is a type of obsession in life. Slowing down, much less taking a step back, causes great stress for me. This is probably why I have often had a difficult time admitting mistakes. It’s not the result of arrogance, but the fact that my mistakes are usually much greater than the average follies of others. You see, I take pride in my efforts to carefully plan and calculate my activities. I even seek consistent control over my emotions. Therefore, my mistakes are rarely the foolish failures of life – mine are true miscalculations in judgement. I have come to trust myself so much that acknowledging a mistake requires me to acknowledge that I have let myself down. This is something that I am sometimes slow to do.
C.S. Lewis states in Mere Christianity that “we all want progress. But progress means getting nearer to the place where you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turning, then to go forward does not get you any nearer. If you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; and in that case the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man.”
God, make my goals pure. Then, if I must fail, grant me the wisdom to fail early bringing me closer to the prize.