“Uh oh! I made a mistake.” When you have this realization, what tends to be your next thought? The difficulty we have with mistakes is largely a function of what we tell ourselves those mistakes mean. If, for example, your thinking tells you your well-being has gone missing because you made a mistake, the experience of making a mistake can lead you to believe something is really wrong. But is it?
When we’re unforgiving of our mistakes, we’re losing sight of our humanity. Humans make mistakes. You’re human, so you’re going to make mistakes. What I’ve discovered over a long life is, there are very few mistakes that can’t be re-done or corrected.
A mistake doesn’t mean anything other than the result of your action doesn’t match the intention. It doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with you. It doesn’t mean you’re in mortal danger. It doesn’t mean you’re a bad person, or that you’re incompetent. It means you’re human. And that’s all it means.
On a television or film set, there’s generally a healthy attitude about what it takes to get the shot the director has in mind. It’s just assumed that most shots are going to require more than one attempt, or “take.” If it takes five takes to get the shot, it means there have been four missed-takes. Oddly, the pressure to get the day’s shooting done before the light is gone, or overtime has to be paid, doesn’t lead good directors into turning missed-takes into anything more than they are. People don’t walk around a set bemoaning the mistake they’ve just made. They understand they have to move on, so they set the shot up again, and they give it another take.
Why would life be any different?
Without knowing we’re doing it, we invent high stakes for the consequences of whatever task we’re doing. This sets us up to believe that making a mistake will have big consequences. But it was we who made up in our thinking that any deviation from perfection spelled failure, or meant there was something wrong with us.
This sort of behavior is a great example of how hard we can be on ourselves, and the only thing we ever get from it is an exhausted feeling, and the belief that we’re fatally flawed.
It’s a form of perfectionism to believe we’re not allowed to make mistakes. When put into words, it sounds like this: this has to be perfect on the first try, or something’s wrong. In those words, how much sense does it make?
When we believe we should get something right on the first try, we’re confusing the process with the product, as though to say, “if the product is going to be perfect, the process leading to it has to be smooth and direct.” However, ease of process and quality of product don’t necessarily have that relationship.
Sometimes, an easy process results in a perfect product. Sometimes it doesn’t. The end product isn’t necessarily better because the process involved in bringing it to life was smooth. Reverse that, and it’s still true. The end product isn’t necessarily any worse because the process of creating it was bumpy or complicated.
Here’s the truest thing I know about mistakes. A mistake is simply a chance to start over. When you’ve made a mistake, the best and most effective thing you can do for yourself is to give yourself break, and start over. Fretting over the mistake keeps you out of the game. Want to get back in the game? Forgive yourself, and keep moving ahead.
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