Stop Thinking of Mistakes as Barriers to Success
Here are 3 ways to use mistakes to move you forward
Have you ever made a mistake?
If you say no, you’re lying.
Nobody gets it all right all the time. And that’s perfectly okay. It’s part of being human.
The key to living well is to see mistakes for what they really are.
But first, let’s see what may be holding you back.
You turn failure from an event into a person.
When you’re in school, you have to take a test once in a while to prove you were listening and learning.
What if you missed more than 50 percent of the answers? How would you see that? Would that test score be a failure or would you be?
That test shouldn’t have the power to define your whole life, should it?
Neither should one mistake.
The most that can really happen is for people to associate you with that unfortunate event. But still the event is not you. You can do other things, and you can succeed at them.
You focus on what not to do instead of what you should do.
When you focus on what you want to avoid, you’ll always be scared.
What if I mess this up?
What if I break the rules?
What if someone doesn’t like what I do?
And that’s just the beginning.
You’re far better off to discover what needs to be done and just do it. You might run into a problem, but you don’t have to react to it before it happens.
Mistakes are teachers.
Anything in life can be a learning experience if you see it that way.
When you go to school, teachers aim to teach you the right way to do things. They may allow you to make mistakes while you’re getting your feet wet. Why? Because they know you’ll learn more from a mistake than a textbook.
You always learn more by doing than by reading.
Test what you know and see for yourself. You might discover your teachers were right. But you might also learn that they didn’t tell you the whole story.
Treat your mistakes as teachers, not tormentors.
Mistakes are feedback.
Success and failure are the same.
They are both results.
Look at your results closely. They’re telling you how well your approach is working. Did you reach your goals? Great! How did you do it? Can you do it again the same way?
Mistakes give you the same information. What didn’t work so well? How can I change it so it does work next time? Who can I talk to that has experienced success? What can that person tell me that will help me make the right changes to my process?
When you’re done collecting your data, start using it to move forward.
Mistakes don’t have to become emotional nightmares.
Let’s face it. It takes a few minutes to process a mistake.
You can get emotional when shame comes with a mistake. That’s okay. You’re human. It hurts when you get stabbed by life or by another person.
Do yourself a favor. Limit the amount of time you spend thinking about a mistake. Stew about it for a while if you must. Analyze it. Learn from it. Then take what you’ve learned and move on.
When you do that, you don’t deny your feelings. You give them free rein to vent themselves out. It helps to have a friend you can vent to, talk with, and think things through. If you don’t have one, find one now.
Afterward you’ll feel better and free to move forward with courage.
Mistakes are part of life.
When you plan a trip, you have to travel every mile to get from where you are to where you want to be.
Mistakes are among the steps you make on any trip. You might read a road sign wrong and make a turn that gets you off course. You might have to stop to go to the bathroom and lose time. You might think you’re further along than you really are and get disappointed when you find out you still have 4 hours left to drive.
When you take short cuts, you might save time. Then again, you might end up taking longer than you thought because you missed too many steps.
Mistakes are part of living and growing. Accept it. Don’t be afraid of it. Deal with them when they come.
It’s what everyone — no matter how big or small — must do to get through life.
So go ahead and give life your all. You’ll move forward. You’ll rebound quickly after setbacks. And you’ll always find something you can use to reach your goals and make your dreams come true.
This story is published in The Startup, Medium’s largest entrepreneurship publication followed by 337,320+ people.
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