Do not be afraid to take advice from those that have tried something and failed. Do not take it from those who have never tried anything.
Do you like making mistakes?
I certainly don’t.
Making mistakes is inevitable. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could be at ease with them? Perhaps there is a way to think of them differently and see their benefits.
Mistakes often feel dangerous. Throughout human history, our errors have often been treated as dangerous for a variety of reasons:
- Our vulnerability. We have limited and fragile support systems. When those systems fail, people often lose their lives.
- Real dangers. Nature can be dangerous, and making mistakes can put us at the mercy of nature and its animal residents seeking a meal.
- Ignorance. Many cultures scapegoate someone whenever there is a failure of some kind. Scapegoating can be serious and deadly.
- Order. Many societies punish those who do not conform to the prevailing orthodoxy and treat difference and non-conformity as a mistake. Even our brains flash an error message whenever we go against prevailing social norms according to research published in the Spero Forum.
We have a history of handling mistakes and failure in an unpleasant way. Since each of us carries our human history with us, it can be a challenge to overcome the fear of making mistakes.
If we can embrace the reality of mistakes, we can free ourselves to be more creative in our lives and dig up some interesting insights.
