Question: What is the quickest way to learn from our mistakes?
Sri Chinmoy: The quickest way to learn from our mistakes is to be determined not to make the same mistakes again. There are two ways to do that: the positive way and the negative way. The positive way is to make ourselves feel that each mistake is a pathfinder, an unconscious or conscious pathfinder to the Truth-existence. The other way, the negative way, is to remember the untold sufferings that we have gone through as a result of committing the mistake. If the experience remains vivid for some time, then we will be always on the alert, and our alertness will save us from committing the same mistake again.
Sri Chinmoy, Soulful questions and fruitful answers, Agni Press, 1976