Making Mistakes
People place such high standards on everything and make you feel like if you aren’t here, you’re nothing. We, as people, love getting good news, and like any normal person, we hate the bad news. While victories are great, mistakes are just as important. We learn more from our mistakes than we do from getting something right. I wanted to know why mistakes aren’t taught as a lesson, instead of making it seems like it is horrible to get something wrong. I wanted to know if anyone liked making mistakes because they can be a stepping stone of growth to getting to where you need or want to go.
Basic Concepts
Thomas Edison once said, “I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward.” There is research that shows if you only concern yourself with getting the right answer, you won’t always learn the basic concepts that help us grasp what you are trying to do. Mistakes need to be a guide to what we still need to learn, and not taken as a failure to learn. Mistakes are often misconstrued in our lives. We are told mistakes help us grow yet, we try our hardest to avoid them. Why do you think that is? Because, in this world, if you make a mistake, it can be exteremley costly. You could fail a class, lose your job, not make the team, and the list goes on. The world we live in holds too high of standards to make mistakes.
Mistakes are what make us see what the right answer is because you already know what not to do. When you are afraid of messing up and prioritize getting the right result rather than the effort and journey you have to take to get there, you miss out on a ton of life’s most fun moments. The great American psychologist Carl Rogers once said, “The good life is a process, not a state of being. It is a direction not a destination.” I believe this is a great quote because if you only focus on getting to wear you want, you will miss the most important and fun moments life has to offer.
People don’t often think about how a mistake can lead to new discoveries. Take Teflon and penicillin for example. There was a man by the name of Roy J. Plunkett who was doing a science experiment for his college where he was trying to find another way to cool refrigerators. He was running some tests when his final product came to be, Teflon, which in no way can be used to cool a refrigerator. Penicillin was discovered by Alexander Fleming when he was studying petri dishes with different diseases in them. One of the dishes had a mold in it he had never seen before which was a result of being exposed to the air for too long. He extracted the juices from it, which lead to the discovery that the mold he found could cure all different types of diseases. This is considered one of the greatest advances in medical history and it wasn’t even intentional. These are the great results that come from making mistakes.
Being Overconfident
Making mistakes keeps us humble. It is a very important concept that we often overlook. We stop challenging ourselves when we think we are above mistakes which can lead to poor decision making. Being overconfident can make you blind to your full potential. Bill Gates once said, ‘Success makes a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose.’ When it comes to mistakes, it holds a dear place in my heart. I’ve messed up more than I can count, so why not spread my knowledge with everyone. Mistakes aren’t good when they happen, but if you embrace them the right way, they will have tremendous benefits in the long run.
You can’t move forward without having to take a few steps back now and then. There is no better feeling than accomplishing something that took you a couple of tries to complete. I’m writing this commentary, so people will use their mistakes to their advantage and not let them drag themselves down.
Mistakes a great thing to make in life. Without mistakes, you will never grow or learn anything new. Why would you want to do the same thing for your whole life? That what is going to happen if you don’t mess up because if you fail, that means you are doing something you haven’t done before or don’t know how to do. If you don’t take anything from this, at least remember this, mistakes are the most important thing in growth because if you don’t make them, you aren’t learning anything new.
