What Your Stupid Mistakes Say About You
You feel like an idiot, but at least you tried.
Mistakes suck.
By definition, a mistake happens when you want A, but somehow you do B.
Let’s say you want coffee, but you’re distracted. You press the wrong button at the vending machine and…you get tomato soup.
Or you want confidence, but during your job interview, your mind goes blank, you’re unable to align a sentence and you just feel like a clown.
These are the types of mistake I’m talking about. No huge consequence, aside from making a fool of yourself.
But who really wants to make a fool of themselves?
In those moments when you slip and roll your eyes at your stupidity, there lies a consolation prize.
Basically, your mistake says three things about you:
#1. You’re not perfect.
#2. You’re not dumb.
#3. You’re not boring.
#1 You’re Not Perfect
It’s good to be imperfect. Perhaps if you were perfect, you’d be insufferable.
You would never know how it feels like to be foolish. Life would be too immaculate. And who knows if you might end up being too full of yourself.
At least your mistake confirmed that you’re an actual human being. Not a robot.
To emphasize, I’ll tell a true story:
I once caused an explosion in a bubble tea shop.
Now, if you’re a bubble tea enthusiast like me, you know these high-caloric drinks are often served in a cup enclosed with a special film, and you have to pierce the lid with a big straw.
That day, I sat by a table with some people I’ve just met. I must have been stressed, because I pierced the lid a bit too strongly.
I don’t need to tell you what happened next.
Okay. “Now that’s the explosion?”, you might think. Granted, it’s an exaggeration. But it felt like drama in my brain.
“I’m such an idiot”, I thought. “I don’t even know how to put a damn straw.”
To my younger self, I’ll say: You’re not perfect. But you already know that, so that’s not the problem. The point is that you believe perfection is the norm. That other people are ‘perfect’ and you’re not.
Because of that, you think there’s something inherently wrong with you. After all, social anxiety is the need to perform well in order to compensate for the deeply flawed human you think you are.
But let’s assume you are flawed.
Is it really a bad thing? At least, embarrassment is there for a reason: to keep you grounded.
Sometimes, it’s okay to just be a person.
#2 You’re Not Dumb
We have this weird paradox: Failure is bad, but learning is good.
Of course learning is fun and sweet and exciting when you make it. But when you’re failing, why does learning suddenly become mortifying?
I have my little theory. We have come to believe that MISTAKE = DUMBNESS. We say things like: “You should have known better”, and we shame the person for not having that outer knowledge already ingrained in their DNA.
You try to cook for the first time and you fail. You try to pass that exam and you fail. Whatever that is, you’ll be thinking the same: “It’s not for me. I’m too dumb for that.”
Now, take the silliest mistake like the bubble tea incident, and this is what you assume:
“Nobody else in the world has a problem with piercing a straw. The faculty of piercing a straw PERFECTLY — not too softly, yet not too strongly — AT ALL TIMES, is the most basic human competence, except for me. I’m the anomaly.”
But we got this the other way around. A mistake makes you smarter than before, not dumber. How are you supposed to have known better? Your past self has literally no clue. You had no opportunity to experience what you’re experiencing now.
And okay, maybe you’ll go to bed feeling like a fool, but by next day, you’re wiser. Your ‘mistake’ got cemented into your brain, so technically, you can only make progress. You’ll do better. It can’t get worse than yesterday.
Unknowingly, you probably saved your future self from trouble.
#3 You’re Not Boring
You might think you’re the dumbest person that has ever walked on this planet, but trust me: Someone out there could just think you’re funny.
That’s the same when you watch a sitcom, and you laugh at the character who goes on a date wearing their t-shirt inside out. “I wouldn’t want to be in their position”, you think. Well, you’re not attached to their mistake, because you’re watching them from a third person perspective.
But what happens when it’s you? Oh no! It’s me. It’s always me who does the wrong thing. Why? Because it’s me!
However, if you look at your dumb mistake from a spectator’s viewpoint, you realize: Maybe the thing you hate about yourself is a charming point.
We like clumsy characters because they could be us.
We assume a hero is someone who was born with superpowers, knows exactly what they’re doing, and are never doubting themselves, ever. But if these characters already know everything, then they learn nothing. So they can’t show emotional depth. No wonder the storyline is bland.
But what if life was a sitcom? Maybe there’s someone in that room who has to make that mistake, and it happens to be you.
Wait a few years, and perhaps you’ll have an amusing story to tell.
Next Time You Fail: That Can Happen
If it’s normal to praise yourself when you succeed, then it’s okay to give yourself a bit of compassion when you fail.
Secretly, you may wish someone would give you a pat on the shoulder and say: “It’s okay. That can happen.”
So yeah. You are not a machine. Your stupid mistakes are here to remind you that you’re fallible. The cool thing is that you can learn from it, or you can laugh about it. Or both.
Maybe you’ll even write a book about it. And with a smirk on your face, you’ll end the last sentence with something like:
Ahh…I guess I took it way too seriously.
