Make mistakes

Don’t regret it if you do something wrong!!

Don’t feel sad if you ever fail while doing something!!

Don’t cry if someone makes fun of you!!

No failure is the end of life!!

In school, when we used to fail a test, we motivated ourselves to do better next time. Somebody handed back a paper with a red number on it, we were miserable for an evening, and by the weekend we had mostly decided to try harder. Nobody had to teach us that. It was automatic.

Then we grew up and lost the ability entirely.

When did failing become permanent?

Somewhere between the classroom and the office, a failed attempt stopped being a data point and started being a verdict. We stopped saying “that didn’t work” and started saying “I am not good at this.” Those are not the same sentence. The first one is about an attempt. The second one is about you, forever.

I think it happened when the audience got bigger. At school, three people saw your marks. Now a bad decision has witnesses. Colleagues, family, everyone with a phone. And when failure has an audience, we stop treating it as information and start treating it as damage to be hidden.

So people stop trying things they might be bad at. Which means they only ever do what they are already good at. Which is a very comfortable way to stay exactly where you are.

There is a famous quote: “WINNERS NEVER QUIT AND QUITTERS NEVER WIN.” This quote has a deep meaning, and it is not the aggressive one people usually read into it.

If, after making a mistake, you lose hope and stop trying, then trust me, you are a loser. Yes, you read that right. You are!! And not because of the mistake - because you closed the door yourself. The mistake never had that power. You handed it over.

Mistakes are not the same as carelessness

Let me be honest about something, because “make mistakes” gets repeated so often that it has started to mean nothing.

A mistake is what happens when you try something at the edge of what you can currently do. That is useful. That is the whole point.

Repeating the same mistake for the fourth time because you never stopped to look at it is not brave. It is just noise, and no amount of positive framing turns it into progress.

The difference between the two is one boring step that nobody puts on a motivational poster: actually sitting down and working out what went wrong. Not blaming yourself. Not blaming the situation. Just looking at it clearly enough to name the specific thing you would do differently.

Mistakes and failures don’t decide your future. Your future is in your hands. They are there to maintain the balance of life, and to show you exactly where your current edge sits.

Just do it

Make a mistake. Check where you were wrong. Rectify it. Start the same work once again with more power.

Four steps. The second one is the one everybody skips, and it is the only one that turns a mistake into experience instead of a bruise.

And about the people laughing - they are almost always the ones who never attempted the thing at all. It is very easy to have a perfect record when you never step onto the field.

Remember: mistakes are proof that we are trying.

Keep a record

One practical habit, if you want mistakes to actually compound into something.

Write them down. Not in detail and not as self-flagellation - one line, what happened, and one line on what you would do differently.

Almost nobody does this, which is why so many people make the same three mistakes their entire lives while genuinely believing they are learning. Memory is a poor archivist for this: it keeps the embarrassment and quietly discards the specifics, which is exactly the wrong half.

A page of these is worth more than most books you will read this year, because it is written about you, by the only person with access to the full situation.

-kashish