Why am I committing mistakes and will continue to do it

Why is perfectly fine for me to make mistakes:

• gives me the courage and confidence to try again
• can learn from every experience something new
• never forget that I’m not the center of the universe, keeping my humbleness
• otherwise I can’t get better at what I do and I can’t develop myself
• that’s how I can discover things I wouldn’t otherwise have reached normally

Why I can make mistakes:

• a mistake will never define me
• don’t really care to much of what you think or say. You are much more concerned with your life & job.
• no one forbids the mistake. It’s still legal 🙂

Why you should allow yourself to make mistakes:

• you might later screw it even much worse, on another level. It’s better to fall off the chair than from the roof. It’s different …. You end up with some “bruises” but the consequences are different.
• you are human and it is natural for all us to make mistakes from time to time(as long it’s not becoming your life goal :)) It’s not a tragedy. Only a leaning experience.
• you can discover new viewpoints of your own goals and adjust them to your advantage in the future

The mistake author and his/her stigma

The mistake is a kind of stain that we have to carry with us everywhere and that no matter what we try, we fail to get it off the “clothes”. The clothes in this case become our thoughts, emotional memory and further on, our actions.

It seems that our past mistakes does not allow us to be fully present, to experiment, becoming scarred of potentiality of mistakes that could happen in the future

OK, what will happen (if you make a mistake)?

Whatever happens, you can learn something and continue your learning journey.

In 2015/2016, I had the opportunity to participate to a business event in Bucharest about failures in entrepreneurship. Not being afraid to say it loud who you screw it, how did you lost money, clients or whatever because lack of experience or whatever. It seemed wow to me that there wre open talks about all sorts of mistakes discovered by different entrepreneurs over the years. Some had more, others less experience in their industry.

This amazing openness created in the hall gave the speakers&audience the courage to express their cases when they “got some errors in their math calculations”. The most important thing was that learning has won its deserved place in the middle of alike minds, hungry for growth.

If we would trusted each other more being not afraid to make mistakes or express our less great experiences, the world around us would have the change learn, to evolve with us!

Mistakes and creativity:

Why Do I speak about mistakes and what’s the point? Is there any connection with creativity? Surely is!

Only when we will understand that repeatedly (unintentionally) mistakes give us the capacity to refine and polish our ideas, concepts becoming even more creative.

There are countless examples of entrepreneurs / creators who failed in their first attempts but what do you think they did? They REframed their vision, their businesses or whatever else they had, recharged their batteries and started over again, but acting differently.

This is what can a mistake creates from a person. Can determine him/her wonder what went wrong and think of solutions that will bring better results.

In my opinion the mind state of non-error is not quite productive because our brain will start runing on standby mode and slowly our actions will become automated having zero chances to unfold creativity..

Nu mă pot abține să nu dau câteva exemple de ”ratangii”  care nu o să-ți vină să crezi, au avut succes.

I can’t shut up but give you few examples of “failures” whom you won’t believe, they became successful at the right moment of their life.

Harrison Ford – after 9 years the actor struggled to get roles in films with a carpenter part time job, he finally managed to capture audition jury’s attention by the way he read a few lines. He got the role for Han Solo character from the Star Wars movie.

J.K. Rowling – after 7 years of  being rejected by 12 major publishing houses, divorced her first husband, suffered for her mother’s death, raising her children in poverty, this novelist succeeded. The Harry Potter manuscript was chosen to be published. after this was sold in 400 million copies being one of the best-selling books in history.

The Beatles – after two years of constant activity, often working in the studio over 10 hours a day were refused by Decca record company that told them that the guitar groups are out of music trends and won’t be successful anymore. They went further and became the best-selling band in the world (800 million records worldwide). My mother had one of their vinyl discs when I was little, that one she used to play to her pickup.

Oprah Winfrey – although she was fired by her first boss because she was too emotional and does not fit in television, along her journey she became the host of the best rated TV show in history and became the wealthiest black woman (in billions of $).

“Harland David Sanders Colonel (KFC founder) – after several jobs changed, a failed business attempt with a local restaurant and another 1000 attempts to sell his idea of the unique recipe for frying chicken to investors, he succeeded at the age of 68. His franchise is now recognized in 123 countries with 20,000 locations, being the forth best known restaurant chain in the world.

Bill Gates – after giving up his studies at Harvard University, he had a business (Traf-O-Data) which was a real failure but his passion for computers led him to become the founder of Microsoft became the youngest billionaire in the world (when he was only 31 years old).

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Albert Einstein – could not speak fluently until the age of 9, was expelled from school, classified as unfit to be admitted to the Swiss Polytechnic and yet won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1921, becoming a personality associated with genius especially for his theory of relativity which he discovered and that is still promoted today.

Abraham Lincoln – for 30 years he had failed in business and politics,  trials after trials. He did not take these experiences as obstacles for giving up, persevering and became in 1861 President of America.

Michael Jordan – after about 9000 failed shots, 300 games lost, 26 chances to win the game, years of effort, a lot of practice and lack of confidence for not being tall enough he became the No. 1 star in basketball and the first NBA player with a fortune estimated at trillions of $.

Walt Disney – after dropping out of school trying to enroll in the military, went bankrupt with his first business attempt due to lack of experience, was fired from his job because he wasn’t creative enough, later becoming the genius behind the Disney movie studios that marked the childhoods of millions of children around the world (including mine) and won numerous Oscars.

Fail, make mistakes while doing things.

From my point of view, it is much worse to sit on the sidelines and do nothing but to comment on the way a person decide to act. Just criticizing has no value for me as long you are not a Doer.

It’s better to do things, taking risk of making mistakes. Being in action we increase our chances to become successful instead  of standing still like a rock, projecting all sorts of negative scenarios about how we will fail and how everyone will laugh at us (Come on? Really? Do you think everyone will take the time to laugh at you? They have nothing better to do than keep their eyes on your mistakes!)

An experiment in America with two groups of students who were given the task of creating works in a limited time shown that producing more works of art was more relevant than focusing on the quality or perfection of the works. The group that worked focused on the number of delivered works made mistakes, learned and created better works than those who focused only on theorizing, aiming for perfection which in the end  caused not having enough time to show them to the teachers.

What we lose sight of whenever we refer to an invention, a work of art, a film, etc. is the process behind the final product that involves many trials, failures, rehearsals, experiments, hours, days of hard work and especially that crazy passion & determination.

David Eagleman, PhD in neuroscience, shares with us that an idea never comes out of nowhere but after a process of hours, days, even years in which neural circuits work on the “problem” in search of new successful combinations.

Creativity is something we can all improve at, by realizing that it has specific characteristics.

Above all, it is about daring to learn from our mistakes.

James Dyson (English inventor)

So dare to make mistakes, even to fail sometimes!