Mistakes are worth contemplating, and yet we often don’t. The reason, I think, is because it hurts a little to focus on them. It’s not fun to see ourselves that way. Mistakes are definitely not ego food.
But there is something very important to remember about mistakes: not focusing on them can ultimately be more painful. 
In Tom Feltenstein’s inspiring book, Uncommon Wisdom, I found this quote from Michel de Montaigne,” Those things are dearest to us that have cost us the most.” Think he’s talking about mistakes? I do. Do you think of your mistakes as dear?
If you don’t contemplate your mistakes and learn from them, you are subjecting yourself to double jeopardy. Because today you will not only make the new mistakes we are all destined to make as we go through life, but you are also doomed to repeat the old ones you should have learned from yesterday.
Whether your mistakes are valuable or expensive depends on whether you contemplate and learn from them, or deny and keep on paying for them. I think paying for a mistake once is dear enough, don’t you?
