An error becomes a mistake only when we fail to convert it...Those were the words of the famous ex American president John F Kennedy.
In life, we are bound to make mistakes as human beings, the mistakes doesn't make us any less human, sometimes we have to admit that we even make mistakes even with the best of intentions, but those errors only become mistakes when we leave them unattended to.

I will quickly branch into life and relationships quickly before I round up. Do you know that the reason why some people set themselves up for failure in life, it is because we feel some errors should simply be overlooked, those overlooked errors end up becoming the mistakes that bite us in the ass.

Take for instance, a man who feels he's doing something patriotic for his country, might end up feeling he committed an error, if he doesn't take steps to correct those mistakes he made, it might become the error that will send him to his death bed with regrets.

Another instance is the case of a leader who has numerous affairs while in office, of course, at that point in time he has the power to cover his errors, but what happens when he leaves the direct corridors of power? His errors will become the mistakes that will sink him and his ambition.

It is not only that, so many people, either parents, teachers, guardians and what have you, have often come out later to admit the errors they made in the past ended up becoming the mistakes that outdid them in the end.
The greatest tactical error Hitler made cost him a war he cherished (although that was a good thing), a mistake that outdid him in the end.

In relationships, being too controlling is an error people often make, at the end of the day, it becomes a mistake that costs us that thing or person we might cherish.
Errors like becoming easily irritated, quick to anger or disgust, raising your voice, are things that will do no good, because the truth is after all is said and done, we often look back at such errors and just simply ask why we did them in the first place.

The answer is simple, those mistakes were errors we refused to attend to, they later became our own undoing. From personal experience, the costliest kind of errors which become the mistakes which hurts the most are often the relationship kind.

A friend who was seeking relationship advice once asked how I sometimes managed to suppress the urge to claim right and cope with people who might seem controlling, I told him something quite true...

You ask yourself which is more important, your desire to always be right or your relationship.

If you can answer that, then you know why you do not have to react and turn a minor error into a mistake.

The difference between a mistake and an error can be explained like this,when you see yourself being able to dialogue over a perceived poor judgement, that's an error and it remains that way, but when you wallow in the "how I wish" lines, then I am almost certain that it has become a mistake.

You can easily bounce back from an error, but leaving an error unchecked for long becomes something more costly, that is when the error becomes a mistake.