Mistakes are Your Best Friends

It’s a part of life.
You will fall down.

Thinking about things I’ve learned over the years, I’ve realized that I learned far more from making mistakes than I ever did from doing them right.

Marking mistakes means you’re trying something new (or you’re very tired and need to take a break).

There’s nothing wrong with mistakes.

The trick however is to figure out what the mistake was and then make sure you don’t make the same mistake again.

Don’t be afraid of mistakes.

For some reason, our society has taught us that making mistakes isn’t a good thing. I suspect it has something to do with the school system, and that most service based jobs can pretty much be reduced to a simple algorithm.

If you’re really thinking about something (and not going through a simple algorithm), you will make mistakes. You don’t know everything there is to know about something (and hence how you learn about it).

That thought brings to mind the importance of actually DOING something as opposed to only thinking you’d like to do something.

When you’re trying something new, don’t worry about the outcome being exactly how you pictured it in your head. Pay attention to what happens and what doesn’t work out exactly like you thought it would while you’re in the process. That way if you do a similar project in the future you’ll know pitfalls to avoid and the end result will better.

Writing that out made me think that process is very natural and common sense. However experience has shown me that often people will try the same thing over and over again but expect a different result. While they’re not giving up in those cases, they’re not learning from the mistakes they made previously.

Keep in mind, many “mistakes” may bring unexpected results and thus may give you new ideas.

If you want some further media to consider, please see:

Sir Ken Robinson: Schools Killing Creativity
Sir Ken Robinson: Bring on the Learning Revolution