On Making Mistakes

I have made more mistakes in my life than I can even begin to try and think about. I make all sorts of mistakes on an everyday basis. I’ve stolen, I’ve lied, I’ve been lazy, careless, acted in jealousy, acted in anger, fucked up interviews, fucked up at work, treated myself like shit, people-pleased, over-slept, under-slept, word vomited, forgotten important things, the list really does go on forever. 

Mistakes, once reflected upon, are a critical part of growth. If we never fucked up, we’d never have to change, and that change is often progression. When I’m talking about mistakes here, obviously there are some things are so morally wrong that they do not classify as a mistake; racism, sexism, homophobia, and any sort of harmful or violent anti-person actions or beliefs do not classify as mistakes, they are simply wrong and inexcusable. 

We are taught from childhood that mistakes are bad through negative re-enforcement, if you do something wrong, you get punished for it. We live in a world with unescapable pressure to be perfect, a top performer, successful (by some false concept of what success even is.) It is no wonder we are so harsh on ourselves and others when they make mistakes. 

What I have learnt from making so many mistakes is that:

a) Regret is one of the most uncomfortable emotions 

b) Mistakes are a normal and important part of life and therefore need to be normalised 

c) We all need to be a little bit more compassionate to ourselves and each other 

In my opinion, sitting for too long on the chair of regret only leads to self-hatred. Retrospection and growth can come from self-hatred but rarely while you’re in and amongst it. Instead of being paralysed with regret, I find it helpful to acknowledge what went wrong and why in a slightly more neutralised light. Accept that you are human, and humans are complicated. To make no mistakes you’d have to be an entirely neutral being. Unfortunately, or fortunately depending how you look at it, we are not neutral beings we are made up of all sorts of experiences, opinions, prejudices and traumas. 

Our relationship with mistakes does a disservice to how much we can learn from them. If the inevitability of mistakes was more accepted, I think we’d actually be able to grow more. Repressing or ignoring the fact we’ve fucked up, to escape the negative feelings attached to fucking up, stops us from actually examining what went wrong, why and what we can learn from it. Here I am not saying that mistakes should just be just accepted, quite the opposite, mistakes need to be taken seriously to understand what needs to change. This requires being open to other perspectives, truly listening and being willing to accept you have done wrong and apologise. At the end of the day, the mistake itself is only part of the problem, the way we respond it and what we take from it is often far more important. 

Aside from being more compassionate to ourselves when we make mistakes, something which I feel less of a need to touch on in an era of self-love and individualism, I think it’s hugely important to extend that compassion to others. When we view others purely through the lens of their mistake, disregarding their character as a whole and all the wonderful things that make them up, we stunt others. We miss the chance to approach someone with compassion, help them understand their error and learn from it. 

Take making mistakes at school for example, if a teacher was to say you got the answer wrong and you are therefore bad, you’d likely put yourself down, gain greater self-disbelief and then never improve. Alternatively, if a teacher was to say hey, I feel you missed the mark here, this is why and this is what you can do to improve, you would likely grow. 

This analogy, while a simplified way to understand mistakes which can often be highly complex, does underline the compassion and humanistic approach I believe we must take. At the end of the day, we are all flawed characters and the more we accept that within ourselves and others, while, importantly, strive for better, the happier I hope we can all be.