Make Mistakes

Veronika Bond

“You have a right to experiment with your life. You will make mistakes.”

Anaïs Nin

One of the biggest obstacles to success and happiness is our fear of making mistakes. We assume we’ve got to get things right first time.

Wouldn’t it be nice to have everything figured out perfectly before we even start? Where do we get this idea from?

It must be a cultural thing. Maybe we can blame it on the media; I mean, all those flawless celebrities on magazine covers with their glittering success stories, impeccable discipline, accomplished partners and cute children…

Even if we know a lot of it is photoshopped and not real — even though we can imagine the hard work, the sacrifice, the cost — basking in the glory of success still seems highly desirable.

It’s become increasingly harder to blame our lack of success on external factors. This is not to deny the existence of political vagaries, social injustice, economic instability, imperfect parents, the greed, the rich, and the ugly…

However, we live in an era of infinite possibilities, legendary opportunities, and unprecedented access to information and resources.

In the past you were supposed to know your vocation when you left school. You would start a career and give it your best shot. And if your career choice turned out to be a mistake, that was just tough. You’d made your bed and you had to lie in it.

There were exceptions of course. Paul Gauguin was once a successful banker. In his thirties he swapped his wealthy lifestyle for the unpredictable life of an artist.

In the past the rigid patterns of our culture made it difficult for us to admit our mistakes and make changes. Now it’s the rigid patterns in our own minds that make it unacceptable for us to even make mistakes.

The problem is not lack of opportunity or resources. The big mistake we continuously make is looking for external solutions while ignoring the fault lines running through our inner world.

There is an internal sub-culture that determines our every move. Everone’s got one. It is the source of our biggest errors.

Our mistakes are supposed to be our greatest teachers. But we are reluctant students. It is difficult to learn from something you are not even aware of.

This creates quite a comical situation. In our efforts to avoid mistakes we keep making the same ones over and over again, albeit in slight variations.

When things go wrong you may be able to catch yourself thinking or saying, “Someone should fix this, or improve that, or correct the other!”

If there is one thing I consider worth sharing, one thing I’ve learned from my mistakes — my greatest teachers — it is this: No mistake has ever disappeared from my life until I recognised that ‘someone’ was me.