Great Things About Making Mistakes!

I’ve been thinking about this. Many people think that making mistakes is a bad thing. But I’ve come to the conclusion that making mistakes is a good thing, a very good thing! Allow me the time to explain.

We’ve, most of us, grown up with the idea that making mistakes are bad things. We’ve screwed up! We are some kind of dummy who can’t get things right. If we make a mistake, don’t we try very hard to hide it from others so they won’t think ill of us? We try very hard not to make mistakes, don’t we? That seems sensible. We don’t purposely try to make mistakes. We try very hard to do the opposite. But in the real world, where we often don’t know what the right answers are, it is inevitable that we will make some mistakes trying to solve problems. The unfortunate truth is that we get lots of criticism for making mistakes even if our intentions are good.

In the real world a lot of the good answers we find come to us after we have tried out other answers and they have proved themselves to be the wrong ones. The scientific method in research is all about that principle. Trial and error is what we go through, keeping it up to find the answers to the problems we are faced with. We don’t know ahead of time which answers will be the right ones.

My conclusion is that there is nothing wrong with making a mistake if we learn things from those mistakes that will improve our performance in the future. Unfortunately, those around us, some who may be affected by our errors, don’t necessarily see things that way. Sometimes they don’t constructively handle our efforts at trying to find answers, (i.e. parents, teachers, bosses,) and come down on us hard. That can discourage us in our search for the right answers. It can shake our confidence in ourselves. If we face a lot of that, it can have implications for the way we live our lives.

So why does that approach, trial and error, have such a bad reputation in our daily lives? And why should we fight back at that attitude?

Let’s take a look at some of the really great things that can come about from making mistakes.

If you made a mistake, it means that you have recognized that you have a problem that you need to solve.

If you made a mistake, it means you are actively trying to solve a problem that you have.

If you made a mistake, you have learned about an answer to your problem that won’t work for you. It is not a good idea to avoid repeating it.

If you made a mistake, you, hopefully, will have learned you have to find other solutions if you are going to find an answer to your problem.

If you made a mistake, you have an opportunity to learn you must keep trying to find answers if you want to solve your problems. Would you accept the other option?

If you made a mistake, you are offering someone who cares for you an opportunity to share a learning moment with you.

 If you made a mistake, you are offering someone who cares for you the opportunity to offer the encouragement to keep on trying to find solutions to your problems as opposed to just criticizing you for your mistake.

If you made a mistake, you are offering someone who cares for you an opportunity to build your confidence in yourself by urging you to keep trying. (Unfortunately, the negative was often the traditional attitude when we were growing up.)

If you made a mistake, you may be seeing where you have to look, (or who to avoid,) in your surroundings to build the support you will need to find the courage to confront the problems you may have to face in your growing up process.

If you made mistakes in growing up, and learned from them how best to deal with them, you may have learned a valuable lesson about life.

Life is about learning from our mistakes.