The Power of Loving Your Mistakes

Getting something wrong is the best way to learn - yes, you read that right. It may not be the most comfortable or intuitive idea or thought as you frantically prep for exams and work, but research now supports the theory that the more mistakes you make, the better you are learning. Learning and growth in one's life, either personal or professional, is an inevitable, and ongoing process from the very first second to the last in our lives. 

Trial-and-error learning involves learning from consequences of one's behaviour. Some of the consequences will be mistakes. It is also logically possible to learn from others' mistakes, provided one knows the constituent inputs that led to a given mistake - and that is as well part, an important part of team play and society - but we have to make mistakes on our own. Look at ourselves and say again and again it is OK to make mistakes.

I have made such a lot of mistakes throughout my life. Some of those mistakes were caused by me not knowing better, not thinking, not seeing, not having the awareness of circumstances, of others and most of all not of myself. Other mistakes were made by me feeling invincible or just not caring about consequences. Other mistakes were made, when I left my family, my save area(s) and tried to figure out what it meant to be an adult, on my own. The most important takeaways from my life were learned, not by succeeding at something the first time, but by royally screwing it up / when I've messed up royally 😉

Sometimes we are successful IN SPITE OF our home zones, save areas, etc., - and NOT BECAUSE OF our parents, principals or guiding, save areas.

We all have, what I call, “residue” resulting from our upbringing, life trauma, lessons learned, bad choices, etc. The KEY is not letting that residue weigh us down, nor box us in. 

It is vital to have a culture of self-awareness, constructive criticism and learning from mistakes. Reflect on what went wrong and what you can do differently next time. Use your mistakes as an opportunity to learn and grow. Theories are important building blocks, practicing and doing are next, and mistakes are often boosters to get better.

• Aware what and how something happened ...
• Accept your mistakes. Sometimes just owning your mistake is really hard. ...
• Find the lesson in it. ...
• Be kind to yourself. ...
• Remember that you're thinking about it more than anyone else. ...
• Figure out what's next. ...
• ... Let it go 😗 

In this context you might be interested to read about one of my rules of life - Awareness, Acceptance, Action 

And in this context you might have heard the quote / saying "Be a goldfish." people use this phrase due to the short-term memory goldfish have - to quickly get something off its / one's mind and move on. And that's absolutely OK for a number things in life and other things, failures, mistakes or situations of 'bad luck' are valuable seed for growing.  

And by the way, I just recently read a great article on Medium about it "Life is a Goldfish Bowl - Sink, swim, or just change your perspective"

Closing Thoughts ...

In this context I like to mention an article about teamwork - I wrote there about my experience in sports - and that I learned almost nothing from winning a game or race - but from mistakes I learned so much more.

Originally I published this article on my other blog WX Widow Experience, where I'm writing about mental health, coping with bereavement, and the value of life and dealing with death.