Echoes After the Misstep

The wrong turn doesn’t end the story — it starts a new one.

We often treat mistakes like stains: something to hide, scrub, or forget. But sometimes, the wrong turn is the very thing that leaves a trace worth keeping.

My dad had a way of naming this truth. After something went sideways, he’d shake his head and say:
“Bad decisions always make for good stories.”

At the time, I thought he was joking — a way of shrugging off the fallout. Years later, I realized he was teaching me something deeper. A mistake doesn’t end the story. It starts the echo.

Because what lingers isn’t just the spark of the bad decision itself — it’s the echo of how we carry it forward. Do we retell it as shame? As comedy? As a cautionary tale? Or do we let it become raw material, a signal that sharpens us rather than dulls us?

That’s the overlap between mistakes and creativity: both depend on reframing. Both ask us to see not only what went wrong, but what meaning might still be hiding in the noise.

Ways to Listen for the Echo

• Reframe — A mistake is data, not destiny.

• Retell — If you can laugh about it, you own it.

• Ripple — Every story you carry forward becomes a signal for someone else.

Every mistake carries a spark. Every retelling is an echo. And sometimes, the best stories — the ones that linger, the ones that bind us together — are born not from getting it right, but from getting it spectacularly wrong.

So I wonder: what’s a “bad decision” in your life that, with time, turned into a story worth telling?