10 Lessons I Learned From Making Many Mistakes In My 20s

One of the biggest mistakes we make is that we assume we always learn from our mistakes. I’ve met enough people who learned little from their own stupidity.

We all know these people. In fact, we probably are these people. You know why? It’s damned hard to learn from your mistakes. I’ve never met someone who actually enjoyed failing.

Let’s be honest, no one likes to make mistakes, and lose their time, energy, or money. So that’s why we need to make an effort to learn from the things that we wish we didn’t do. The father of functional philosophy and pragmatist philosophy, John Dewey, made that point obvious:

“The person who really thinks learns quite as much from his failures as from his successes.”

Learning from your mistakes does not happen automatically — it requires thinking and reflection. So here’s my reflection on the lessons I learned from the mistakes I made in my twenties. Here we go.

1. Don’t Think You Know Everything

There’s a word for people who think they know everything: Idiot. I meet idiots all the time. And the reason I recognize them is because I used to be one.