Mistakes Is My Best Mistake

When asked why I decided to make this mistake I always responded I don’t know, or I’m not sure but as I informed myself in why drinking as a minor is life-threatening I learned a lot about not only myself but as to how I affect other people by my actions.

We all make mistakes that we later regret, but that's life. We need to focus more on just accepting to live with it.

In reading "Mistakes were Made but Not by me," multiple accounts are given of traits exhibited by humans that are displayed subconsciously. The authors, Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson, begin by defining these traits and give readers the actual terminology to these characteristics. With various examples being provided to the reading audience they are then able to make a clear correlation between the behaviors displayed and how they may impact not only themselves but others around them. "Mistakes were Made but Not by me" has a theme which is centralized around the two key facets which are cognitive dissonance and self- justification.

There are many times when a person comes into your life and changes it for the better. I was happened to be blessed to be born with that person that changed my life, my dad. He has always been there and guided me in the correct way. Just like in Sedaris “Me Talk Pretty One Day”, how something negative leads to a good outcome, my negative event resulted on how dads’ actions impacted my life in such a significant way. (635). My dad became a great example for me to look up to, by showing me how dependable, adaptive, and hardworking he truly is. My dad gave me the ambition, to continue my education, and become a dependable mother for my daughters and family.

“No matter the situation that you’re in, I just want you to know that you always a choice to make,” my father Nicholas R. Hines repeated to me for the what seemed like the millionth time in my life. As I a child I very rarely saw my dad, but when I did, it was in a court ordered supervised visitation center. It wasn’t until I was ten or eleven that I realized why this was necessary. I discovered that my father had made some poor choices when he was drunk and angry with his wife. Regardless, my sister and I love our dad dearly, even though we know the mistakes he has made in his life. That is one of the reasons I decided to Interview Nick Hines.

I came home one day to see both of my parents sad. As a third grader, I didn’t completely understand at the time, but my father had been laid off from the job he’d had since his teenage years. My father had started at the age of eighteen as a student worker at Southern Miss, and after years of hard work he had been promoted to the manager of shipping and receiving on campus. When the recession struck, the need to save money resulted in his position being terminated. My father was without a job. My father loved that job and when he lost it, he changed. He found a new love, alcohol. He let his love for alcohol become an addiction. He would do anything for alcohol; he even had secret stashes when my mom had removed all the prior alcohol from the house. Quickly my father became a violent drunk and began to routinely beat my mother and me. He became unstoppable; no person could get him back on track so my mother, in an attempt to keep me safe, removed him from the house. Even my mother’s best efforts weren’t always enough, as my father constantly broke into our house. One day my mother and I came home and my father was waiting in our den with a gun. We walked in, he pointed the gun at us, and then back at himself. He couldn’t decide to kill my mother, himself, or just all of us. He had more hatred in his eyes

A important aspect in the book Mistakes were made (but not by me) is the pyramid of choice. The pyramid of choice would be defined as the process of making a decision when both choices have no clear advantages on either side. In the beginning, the choices that are present only seem a “millimeter apart.” Once a side is chosen however, the person will feel urgency to self-justify their decision. A trend of “entrapment” is created, which is the constant self-justification of an unclear choice made, making both sides of a decision miles apart. The authors of Mistakes were Made (but not by me), Tavris and Aronson, did prove the existence of such a pyramid when they gave multiple examples of entrapment throughout the text. One example of someone

Luckily, Thomas and Victor were okay; however, Arnold’s problem with alcohol does not stop with this horrible mistake. For years he continued to drink and abuse his wife and son, Victor. When Arnold’s wife could not take it anymore, Arnold left the family and moved far away, missing most of his son’s life. My family has also had this problem. I have never been a victim of child abuse, but my father’s abuse of alcohol has impacted me in many ways. When I was about seven, I was told that my dad was leaving because of his alcoholism. I did not understand at the time the significance of my parents getting a divorce, but having lived ten years without my father, I feel I can relate to Victor in many ways. My dad has missed so many important events in my life, such as making the cheerleading squad, my first prom, and even the day I got my license. After seeing this movie I realized that even if my dad could recover from alcoholism, it could never make up for all the years we lost together. Lives are ruined by this terrible addiction everyday; not only the alcoholic’s life, but also the lives of those who love them.

“My dad enjoyed alcohol; a lot. He never yelled at us, but when my mom was having her ‘episodes’, that was what we called them, he would leave us alone with her. He said he had trouble dealing with her when she was having problems. I think he was cheating on my mom, but I could never prove that and he would never admit to it either.”

Two different but similar forms of writing are able to be tied down into one general but specific category. In the book, Mistakes Were Made (but not by me), by Elliot Aronson and Carol Tavris, Aronson and Tavris commentates on events that people go through. The book is mainly about Elliot Aronson’s and Carol Tavris’ opinion on how people behave and should behave when caught in tough situations. Instead of focusing on one main character in the book, each section of the book illustrates a different person 's’ situation and that situation would correspond with a specific theme in the chapter. Throughout the book, Aronson and Tavris give us a broad idea of how some psychological thinking/processes comes into play, each psychological concept corresponds to a chapter or section in the book, these ideas are: confirmation bias, revision of memories, self-justification, pyramid of choice, cognitive dissonance, blind spots, closed loops, reducing cognitive dissonance, blaming, self-justification (for the greater good), and (sunk costs). Another form of writing, “Wrong Answer”, by Rachel Aviv, is an article focusing on the main idea of a school going through tough times and the outcome of the actions taken by the staff. The article revolves around Parks Middle School in Atlanta. The teachers and staff in Parks Middle School were caught cheating and changing the answers students submitted for standardized tests, and this little mess resulted in hundreds of teachers being laid off and

I will never forget that day, the day I casually walked downstairs to find my parents sitting face to face at the kitchen table with both arms crossed and a serious look on their faces. I slowly walk towards my dad who is reaching out to give me a hug, looking at me with his sorrowful eyes, tells me that he will be moving out. At the time, I remember feeling confused, but I did not feel so emotionally affected because I was only just 5 years old. Being raised in a single parent household has been a challenge in my life and has impacted me through financial problems, social situations, and maturity.

Everyone, at some point in their life, has made a mistake. Sometimes we get lucky and only falter a little, making it through the problem relatively intact. Other times, we mess up a lot and have to fix what was damaged over a long period of time. However, the same is true for most, if not all cases—those who make the mistake learn from it. Often times, our failures teach us valuable lessons that we only gained because of the experience we gathered after messing up. I have personally achieved a wealth of knowledge and experience just from all of my own little mishaps, and a few major ones.

Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “For everything you have missed, you have gained something else, and for everything you gain, you lose something else.” In his novel, Great Expectations, Charles Dickens exemplifies Ralph’s belief and conveys that when a person has gone wrong in life, a trauma or pain can help him or her return to a better path. All through the novel, characters such as Pip, Miss Havisham, and Magwitch illustrate this theme through the decisions they made in life and where those decisions took them.

I remember when my dad gave me advice for handling hard things. I remember when I struggled with one thing

Never did I think a horrible mistake would positively impact my life this much. During my short 17 years of life, I have overcome many obstacles that have now shaped me to who I am today. One of the first obstacles life ever threw my way was the changing of schools multiple times. I transferred schools three times in my life, which made keeping friends rather difficult. I first transferred to a new school when I was going into the 5th grade. I found this challenging because I was at my former school from 18 months old till 10, so it was all I knew. I was scared to acquire new friends, which now I find was the silliest idea to be afraid of. Once I found my niche at this new school, I made a huge mistake in life that altered my path forever.