Near misses are events that happen in our lives where the worst could have happened but didn’t. There was no failure or extreme hardship. Just simply a close call where we felt really bad or were scared for an instant and then moved on.
It’s hard to learn from near misses. We tend to simply attribute our good fortune to luck and move on with our same habits and worldviews as we go about our day.
We relate better to where we are rather than what could have been in the future. Sometimes near misses result in a personal transformation of some type but most times not. We’re too busy to think about what we need to change in order to avoid this near miss the next time.
It’s sad. Near misses are real and much better than either failure or having bad things happen to us. They can teach us a lot about ourselves if only we can stop long enough to see and think about the lessons we need to learn.