In anything worth doing, there is no success without failure. Everybody who’s excelled in some area spent a lot of time making mistakes on their way up. Despite this, many people are afraid of making mistakes. A mistake isn’t the end of the world; rather, it tells you that something didn’t work and, usually, gives you an idea as to why.
Most people want to avoid a major failure, which is perfectly understandable. However, it’s possible for someone to overestimate the impact of any given failure and think that they’re done for if they fail once, causing them to avoid even low-risk behavior. To remedy this, aim to fail small instead of failing big whenever possible. Research things, test them out on a small scale, ask for help, etc. Mistakes should rock the boat, not sink it. Know what you’re getting into but don’t let fear or endless research and analysis prevent you from taking action.
It helps to have a teacher or an instructional guide to walk you through something new, but you don’t always have easy access to either of those. Sometimes the learning process comes down to trying something, seeing if it works, trying something else if it didn’t work, and then repeating that process until you figure it out. Mistakes are bound to happen as you go through this process. Don’t intentionally make mistakes, but learn from them when they happen and use them to eliminate possibilities as you work toward accomplishing your goals.
I’ve made more mistakes than I could ever count and learning from them has helped me get closer to where I want to be in life. Most of the early mistakes I’ve made in learning physical skills were due to a lack of experience and muscle memory. As I progressed in these skills, the mistakes were caused by other issues (not paying attention, lack of practice, rushing, etc) and became fewer and farther between. With facts, concepts, and other non-physical things, I’ve learned a lot by getting things wrong in discussions, asking for corrections from people who know more about something than I do, and having a desire for knowledge that outweighed my fear of messing up. As I tend to do with these posts, this one is largely intended as a reminder to myself that making mistakes and failing small is ok and even necessary for progress. That’s something I’ll have to keep in mind as I plan to get a business going, take the road trip of a lifetime, and work on my idea for helping people in need. I’ll come back to this post for motivation whenever I feel hesitant in any of these things, or with any other area in my life. I hope it proves useful to you and helps you fail toward success.