Do you know anybody who likes to make mistakes? Unlikely! Most of us tend to beat ourselves up about a lack of perfection. What if I told you that your current mistakes could lead to greatness in the future? That's right; mistakes are actually a good thing. The sooner you learn that lesson, the better. Let's take a closer look at how mistakes can lead to your next big break.
Mistakes are Learning Opportunities
There are so many different ways we can walk through the world. Today, we're looking at growth versus fixed mindsets. If you have a fixed mindset, you make a mistake and immediately see all the ways it reflects poorly on you. The assumption is that your intelligence and ability are set in time, and errors reflect reaching the end of your potential. Does that sound familiar?
On the other hand, when a person with a growth mindset makes a mistake, they see it as illuminating everything they have yet to learn. The growth mindset person considers failure as a jumping-off point for improving upon their abilities. Which one do you think can lead to more happiness in your future?
How can You Analyze Your Mistake?
Being objective when we fail is incredibly difficult, but there are some questions you can ask yourself to set yourself up for future success. Some of these questions are:
What was I trying to accomplish?
Where did it go wrong?
Why did it go wrong?
Making Mistakes Means You're Trying New Things
A famous quote by author Neil Gaiman talks about wishing the reader to make many mistakes in the year to come. Why would Gaiman wish failure upon his young, impressionable readers? He says, "Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You're doing things you've never done before, and more importantly, you're doing something."
The act of making mistakes means getting out of the box of rigid thinking and attempting things in a new way. Perhaps even trying things that have never been attempted by anybody before. With every so-called error, you expand your view of the world around us and learn new things.
Correlation Between Mistakes and Big Breaks
Most people will look back on their lives and see how their mistakes led them to the present moment. If your reactions to those mistakes were open-minded, you may even find that you wouldn't want to give up your new life for anything. Did not getting that dream internship lead to your ideal career?
Storytime! Penicillin was discovered because Alexander Fleming was a careless lab technician. He left the window open before going on a two-week vacation and came back to find that some mold had prevented the growth of staphylococci. A mistake that led to a discovery that has saved millions of lives. Pretty lucky mistake, huh?
Next time you find yourself making a whopper of a mistake: take a deep breath and remember, this could be the one thing that teaches you an important lesson for your future. You've got this, superstar!