The Upside of Making Mistakes

Earlier today, a friend of mine was laid to his final resting place. We were born on the same year and I have known him since we were kids. Besides being a really sad event, his death is a strong reminder to me that time is indeed the most precious resource we will ever have.

Photo Credit: Jack Zalium (Creative Commons)

Surely, I have known this to be true all along. But it is one thing to acknowledge a fact and quite another to know how to act knowing it. And with respect to our limited time on this world, I’m sure I can do better than what I’m doing now.

That’s why I continue to search myself for answers that I may find within. Sometimes I try to imagine what I would do if I knew I only had so few time left. Among the things I thought I would start doing is to try to overcome being timid in many aspects of my life.

I would be bolder in my actions and become less afraid of the consequences of mistakes I may commit. It doesn’t mean that I would be reckless but it means I will not be too cautious to try something. It means being active to do what I can to accomplish the things I want to do as much as possible.

When I think about it, this aversion to making mistakes is probably what’s keeping most people from achieving their goals in life. If this is true for you, forgive yourself and move on. After all, there is a great deal of force behind our tendency to be cautious which we continue to live with.

We are a product of an educational system that punishes mistakes. Sure it’s good to be always right. But that’s an impossibility that we can’t achieve. Being timid and careful is not how we can learn from experience. Nor can it be the way we live our lives if we’re serious about achieving and contributing the best way we potentially can.

Those of us who’s got big dreams should know that it requires big efforts to achieve them. We should expect a continuous and unrelenting push that we need to exert so that we can win. Inevitably, we’re going to make mistakes along the way. But we shouldn’t be afraid of that at all. On the contrary we should welcome them because mistakes make us wiser.

Being right has its merits. It gets the job done faster and therefore gets the goals achieved quicker. Ideally, we would want to know we are doing the right thing and not find out at the end that we were wrong. Making mistakes is a discouraging experience for many.

But for people who are doing whatever they can to the pursuit of their happiness, committing mistakes is not as bad as no movement at all. The fear of being wrong will never be an excuse for them to do nothing.

Their mistakes tell them that they are not sitting idly by while time slips away never to return again. These are proof that they can still learn. They can still pursue their dreams. They may still commit some mistakes but they are confident that they will learn from them and do better next time around.