Learning to Make Mistakes

A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new. – Albert Einstein

An email exchange has me focused on mistakes and my conclusion: The only mistake is to dwell on mistakes. The “shoulda, coulda, woulda if I could only do it all over again” festering. Reliving the details as if the slow-motion replay in your brain will somehow erase the mistake.

Never happens.

That course is designed to force failure. That’s how we learn. –Emily Prentiss character on FBI training exercise

From the email exchange:

“The person I replaced in my last job had created a really bad culture in the company, and one of the manifestations of that was that everyone was afraid to make mistakes. Nobody would take risks and, when the inevitable goof-ups still occurred, people would go to great lengths to cover them up. I preached to the people that mistakes, if they’re honest ones, are good. They should be celebrated, because that’s how we learn. The line I used most often, because it’s something we’ve all watched many times, is that babies learn to walk by falling. They make a mistake and then correct for it. And after a certain number of boo-boos, they start to get the hang of it.”

Mistakes are life and life is full of lessons. Here’s your homework: learn to celebrate your mistakes.