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Are you afraid of making mistakes and failing? Does the fear of mistakes and failure make you nervous before you do something? Do you feel a pit in your stomach when you make a mistake or fail? Afterwards, do you keep replaying past mistakes and failures in your head and criticize yourself for them?
There are many things we cannot avoid in life, and mistakes (less serious) and failures (more serious) are two of them. Given this fact, do we have an effective way of thinking towards mistakes and failures? In the past, I didn't, so I answered "yes" to all the questions above. After learning ancient philosophy, I've developed a more effective way of thinking towards mistakes and failures, and although I'm not completely invincible against the discomfort of mistakes or the pain of failure, I'm much better than before.
Below are 7 important teachings that greatly helped me. For the sake of brevity, I will just use the term "mistake" or "failure" rather than "mistakes and failures", as both are mutually encompassing.
1: Mistakes are only mistakes if you don't learn from them.
Motivational speaker Jay Shetty said,
"Failures are only failures if you don't learn from them because if you learn from them, they become lessons."
If we think, "Today I made a mistake…", we'll feel bad. But if we think, "Today I learned something that will help me in the future", we'll feel good. How we think determines how we feel. So after we make a mistake, we need to reflect on why we made this mistake and how to prevent the same kind of mistake in the future. Once we have confidence that we can do better in the future, we'll feel better.
In my experience, it's best to do this reflection sooner rather than later, before our memory fades. By doing this, we can more easily let go of that mistake and not keep thinking about it. If that mistake pops up in our mind again in the future, we can tell ourselves, "I've already reflected on it and learned from it. I don't need to keep blaming myself for it."
2: Mistakes are an opportunity for growth and joy.
As the previous point mentioned, all mistakes hold lessons within them that we need to dig out. Moreover, learning and growing is a joyful thing. As Socrates said,
"Just as one person delights in improving his farm, and another his horse, so I delight in attending to my own improvement day by day."
It's not just Socrates who enjoys self-improvement; it's human nature to delight in one's own growth. If we're not making mistakes, then chances are, we aren't challenging ourselves, which also means we aren't growing, and we'll be missing out on the joy of growth. If we've gone a long time without any improvement, we'll feel like we're stagnating. So making mistakes is a good sign: it means we have opportunities for the joy of growth.
In my daily journal, if I made a certain mistake one day, and then another day I consciously corrected that mistake, I feel good. Then I try to maintain that good behavior. No one's improvement is a smooth upwards line; usually it's full of ups and downs, but as long as we consciously persist, the long-term trend will be upwards, and once we've maintained improvement for a worthy amount of time, we'll be very satisfied with our growth.
3: Failure is the mother of success.
I once heard a story about Thomas Edison, the inventor of the light bulb who failed thousands of times before he finally succeeded. One time, a young reporter asked him, “Mr. Edison, how does it feel to have failed 10,000 times in your present venture?” Edison replied, “Young man, I will give you a thought that should benefit you in the future. I have not failed anything 10,000 times. I have successfully found 10,000 ways that will not work.”
If we want to do anything worthwhile in life, it's not going to be all smooth-sailing. There will definitely be bumps and hurdles along the way, and yes, that means mistakes and failures. But it's precisely thanks to these mistakes, or more accurately, the lessons that we gain from these mistakes, that enable us to finally succeed in the future. In a sense, people need to accumulate failures AND lessons to attain success (if we simply accumulate failures without any learnings, then we'll just keep failing in the future).
Oftentimes, we look at successful people and only see their success, but what we fail to see is the great amount of failures they've accumulated beforehand. In other words, successful people aren't just more successful than normal people, they've also failed a lot more than normal people. When we realize this, not only will we not be so afraid of making mistakes, we might even feel like we aren't making enough! Of course, the point isn't to make mistakes on purpose, but rather to challenge ourselves towards a worthy goal and continuously learn along the way (which is a joyful thing).
4: Fail small. Adjust fast.
When planning, we should predict things that might go wrong and make contingency plans for them. But no matter how diligently we plan, we can't predict the future, and there will probably be unexpected challenges. Hence, there's a saying that goes,
"No plan survives first encounter with reality."
If we are aware of this, then not only will we not be surprised in the face of mistakes and unexpected problems, we'll be expecting it.
We can also learn to fail small and adjust fast. For example, if I am writing a report to my professor, I can send an outline to my professor first to get feedback and quickly learn my mistakes. Then I can adjust and send another plan to my professor. This is less risky than doing the whole report by myself and submitting it without my professor's review beforehand.
To give another example, if I need to make tea for some guests, and I don't have much experience making tea, I should taste test the tea myself, adjust the flavor until I like it, and ask someone else to taste test it too (ideally someone who is knowledgeable on tea). I'm not going to get the taste perfect on the first try. I need to fail small and adjust fast. This is even more important if your decisions or actions will impact others.
5: Do your best, and let go of the rest.
I've seen some people who get nervous extremely easily, and it's because they are too worried about making mistakes. That limits their potential and growth. If we are overly worried about making mistakes, it's usually because we are focusing too much on the result or what others think. The thing is, the result and what others think are both out of our control. Worrying doesn't help; in fact, it probably makes us perform worse.
There's a great teaching from the Serenity Prayer (feel free to skip the first word):
"God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference."
Of course, not worrying is easier said than done. But rather than continue to worry in our heads, we should channel that energy into productive action, and that means working on the things we can control. For example, if I have a presentation coming up, rather than worrying that I'll mess up (which I can't control), I should focus my attention and energy on practicing (which I can control). Then on the actual day, before my presentation, I tell myself, "I've already done my best given my circumstances. Whatever happens, happens." If I do make a mistake, which is very likely, I won't be upset because I know I've done my best at what I can control.
If I worry that others will laugh at me for my mistake, then I tell myself things like:
"Caring too much about what others think is a main cause of suffering. This is a test for me to practice letting go of ego."
"The people who matter won't judge me, and the people who judge me don't matter."
"Don't care about the opinions of normal people. Care about the opinions of wise and virtuous people."
Daniel Amen's 18/40/60 Rule: When you're 18, you worry about what everybody is thinking of you; when you're 40, you don't give a darn what anybody thinks of you; when you're 60, you realize nobody's been thinking about you at all.
6: Forgive yourself for not knowing what you didn't know in the past.
If we still beat ourselves up for past mistakes, it's important to practice self-compassion. No one is perfect. If your best friend made that mistake, would you keep criticizing them over and over afterwards? Of course not. We'd tell them, "It's OK. Forgive yourself for not knowing what you didn't know at the time because you couldn't have known back then." We should do the same for ourselves.
7: Mistakes are normal and inevitable. The important thing is how you respond to them.
Again, no one is perfect. So don't beat yourself up for making a mistake. Don't lose faith in yourself if you've failed. It's totally normal.
Given that mistakes are inevitable in life, the important thing is how we respond to mistakes. Can we maintain our calm and peace? The great Stoic philosopher Seneca said,
"To bear trials with a calm mind robs misfortune of its strength and burden."
Thus, mistakes are an opportunity for us to cultivate our mind. The mind is our most important asset. Anything and everything we do requires us to use our mind, so strengthening our mind's calm and concentration is one of the best things we can do for ourselves. Usually, after making a mistake or learning that they failed, people become startled and flustered. This weakens the mind, and this is precisely what we need to change. After making a mistake, we need to remember to keep calm.
For example, recently, I was trying to carry five porcelain cups on one tray, and I was uncareful, and a porcelain lid fell to the ground and shattered. Instead of getting flustered and upset, I immediately told myself, "Stay calm and slow down." I then asked a person beside me to help clean up the mess, and to do so carefully. I also asked other people to help carry the remaining cups to the other room. I'm not always able to remain calm right after a mistake, but this time, I was able to, and I'm happy about my growth. Of course, afterwards, I reflected in my journal about why I made that mistake (too impatient and greedy for quick results) so that I can prevent similar mistakes next time.
I've also seen other people mess up in a presentation, and they simply smile and say, "Oops, sorry, I said that wrong. I meant to say… Thanks for your encouraging smiles." Even though they made a mistake, they didn't get noticeably flustered or embarrassed, so the audience members didn't feel embarrassed either. Their mistakes helped them to improve rather than regress, and that's delightful.
Conclusion
What is your default reaction to mistakes and failures? How would you like to change it?
Weekly Wisdom #303
I have presentation at school in a few weeks, Thanks for this my fear of making mistake is slowly but surely getting better on how to face it