Befriend Your Mistakes: Explore and Soar!

Befriend Your Mistakes: Explore and Soar

Mistakes and how you manage them will, to quite a large extent, determine your path and the degree of success that you experience in this world.

Too often, mistakes are viewed as roadblocks or detours on your journey toward accomplishing your goals. But think about the impact of this reaction...

Can you see how this is really an overly cautious and self-defeating perspective? One that clamps a tight lid on your curiosity and your creativity?

Think about how children learn, exploring their world for the first time. How many bumps and bruises do they collect as they learn to put one foot ahead of the other? How many unsuccessful tries does it take before those first successful steps?

And yet, this is anything but wasted time. Along with each so-called 'failure' comes the incremental learning that eventually leads to success.

Mistakes - They Never Get Old 

And so it is with us, too, no matter how old and how experienced we are. Our miscues and errors can always be mined for gems of wisdom.

Jony Ive has a very practical perspective on this whole process.

But who is Jony Ive and why should we be interested in what he has to say?

Well, he's Apple's senior vice president of design and he has played a very significant role in shaping Apple's design choices since he joined the company in 1996. Arguably one of the most successful companies in the world, much of Apple's success is due to its twinning of technological excellence with a unique and elegant aesthetic.

And what Jony Ive says is this:

"There's no learning without trying lots of ideas and failing lots of times."

If you're afraid of getting it "wrong" you're not going to try the idea you just had. You'll dismiss it out of hand, and then you'll never know what might have come of it.

In fact, eventually you'll probably stop even having so many ideas. You're training yourself to shy away from "mistakes." This, in turn narrows your world and nips many a possibility in the bud. It's a challenge that many people face - and perfectionists, in particular, struggle with this.

How do YOU feel about it? What does your learning process look like and where do you put a lid on your own creativity?

It's really worth thinking about.

By Paula Eder, Ph.D.  https://ezinearticles.com/?Befriend-Your-Mistakes:-Explore-and-Soar!&id=10066133