It’s OK to Make Mitsakes
Do you remember when you first walked?
Your first word?
Your first sentence?
How frustrating it was when you wore your shoes for the first time?
Well, I bet you’re doing all of these things now on autopilot, and with perfection.
If you think about it, this is actually how you learned. How we all learn.
By making mistakes and learning from them, we evolve and become successful in life.
So why has our mentality changed?
Why is it not okay now to make mistakes?
Why are we ashamed when we make mistakes?
This mindset has come to us from our schooling system. As we progress through the grades, we’re told that it’s not okay to make mistakes.
We should aim to get full marks.
Straight A’s.
But guess what?
As babies, we didn’t all start walking at the same time.
Each one of us has their own journey.
Some learn faster than others.
So why do they teach us all with the same system in school?
There is a study conducted by Professor Tannenbaum on training in a software package for presentations. They found that trainees who were guided into and out of mistakes during training had superior performance and self-efficacy. This suggests that making mistakes is not only a natural part of learning but can also enhance our performance and confidence in our abilities.
To drive this point home, look at C students.
Why do C students often end up launching their own startups, becoming successful authors, or usually building something great in their life?
It’s because they gave up on the schooling system.
They have nothing to lose.
The school teaches them that they are average and hopeless.
So they go out and experiment with the world.
They make mistakes and they learn. And most of the time they succeed.
However, A / A+ students graduate and get fancy jobs.
They play it safe. After all, they have the security of the job.
Why lose it?
It’s an interesting contrast, isn’t it?
I was an A/A+ student.
I studied engineering even though I did not like it. I got a corporate job and it was well-paid. I had the security but still, I felt there was something wrong. I wasn’t learning and I was afraid of making mistakes.
After all, I was supposed to know everything and mistakes were for failures.
This whole idea changed when I decided to follow my passion: Photography. I dropped my engineering career and am currently studying photography. I don’t feel the need to get good grades.
I am focused on actual learning. Practical learning. Learning from mistakes.
This is how our brain works and we should be easy on ourselves and accept that mistakes are okay as long as we learn from them.
But do we always learn from mistakes?
Not if we don’t have the right mentality.
An article by BBC that discusses how most people struggle to handle failure constructively. Instead, we find ways to devalue the task at which we failed, meaning that we may be less motivated to persevere and reach our goal. This phenomenon is known as the “sour-grape effect”. Alternatively, we may simply fail to notice our errors and blithely continue as if nothing has happened, something that prevents us from learning a better strategy to improve our performance in the future.
If we fail at something, there are basically four possible scenarios:
But how can we learn from our mistakes?
One of the best ways I’ve found to learn from my mistakes is to offer advice to another person who may be encountering similar challenges. By helping others avoid failure, it turns out, I was helping myself to reinforce those learnings in my mind.