In family life as well as social life, untoward events are unavoidable. Such happenings sour relations and create a distance between people. The best solution is tauba. Don’t wait for others to take the lead. It is for you to come forward and say without hesitation: “I’m sorry, I was wrong.” This is the only way of maintaining normalcy among relatives, friends, acquaintances, and even strangers. Problems in social life invariably arise from some kind of wrong behaviour. In reality, men are by nature egoists and women are emotional. The simple solution to having a tranquil social life is not to ruffle the ego of a man and not to neglect a woman’s emotions.

There is no social ill that cannot be set right by this two-point formula. But it must also be accepted that to err is human, so whenever you err and someone becomes negative towards you, do not hesitate but at once admit your mistake and say: ‘Sorry, I was wrong.’ This short sentence will prove to be magical in its effect and the whole situation will instantly be normalised. This is the miracle of tauba.

Tauba is an instrument of self-correction, initiating a process of self-reassessment. This process is vital, as it enhances your intellectual calibre and increases your capacity for analysis. This, in turn, leads to spiritual development.

Source: Spirit of Islam December 2018

One of the Quranic teachings is tauba, which means repentance. When you make a mistake and do tauba, the blessing of God will return to you. In the chapter entitled Al-Tahrim (Prohibition), the Quran says:

O believers, turn to God in sincere repentance, in the hope that your Lord will forgive you your bad deeds and admit you into gardens watered by running streams. (66:8)

In this verse, the Quran declares that after engaging in genuine repentance, one who has erred will be unburdened of the effect of his bad deeds. What is most important about this is that the wrong-doer will be granted forgiveness by God and will consequently be rewarded with Paradise in the Hereafter. This divine blessing is not confined to the next world; in the extended sense, it also includes the present world. Family life and social life will also be blessed with the fruits of tauba.

If you make a mistake that arouses anger in another, but then you repent and say: “Please forgive me, I was wrong”, this will certainly cause the aggrieved person to have a change of heart. Such an apology will, on the one hand, inculcate positivity in your soul and on the other, it will promote the culture of love among the people you are living with.

It is, however, relevant to understand that often people have no difficulty in saying: “O God, forgive me.” But when it comes to a human problem, they are reluctant to say: “O brother, please forgive me.” This kind of hesitation is against the spirit of faith. A true man of faith will say to another: “Forgive me,” just as easily as he says to God: “O Lord, forgive me.” Tauba is an inner spirit, a readiness to atone for every kind of mistake.

Source: Spirit of Islam July 2016

When one makes a mistake, there are two possible kinds of responses. The first response is to become regretful. One who is full of regret will become disheartened after every mistake. He will be a victim of stress. It is also possible that he may lose courage and be unable to do anything else again. This is the negative aspect of making a mistake. But there is also a positive aspect of a mistake. That is, it encourages you to engage in introspection and self-reassessment. When you do this, your mistake will turn into a mistake plus. A mistake plus is bound to activate your mind. It will lead to brainstorming. In return, it will emerge as a natural gift for you. It will increase your creativity and produce a thinking process that may lead to the capacity for better re-appraisal of yourself and an increased ability to analyze things. A mistake becomes a mistake plus when it awakens your mind. It thus enables you to re-plan your life. A mistake plus makes a man a superman.

Nature’s greatest gift to man is his mind. The mind is the greatest miracle of nature. The German psychologist Alfred Adler observed: “One of the wonder-filled characteristics of human beings is their power to turn a minus into plus.” Now there is the question of how this miracle may come about? The answer is that if a person makes a mistake and saves himself from being a victim of negative thinking, then by nature a miraculous event occurs. That is, by the law of nature a rethinking process is developed in him. He analyzes what happened with him and tries to understand where he went wrong. He thinks how he may achieve at the second attempt what he could not at the first attempt. In this way, a new process of positive thinking is initiated in the mind of this person, which becomes a means for his intellectual development. Thus, this process turns his mistake into a mistake plus. This kind of rethinking will open up new possibilities to you. Thus, in an indirect way, the mistake will become a means to climb to new heights of success in life.

Source: Leading a Spiritual Life