How to be OK with Making Mistakes!
I grew up believing I was broken, that there was something wrong with my brain. I just found everything so hard and couldn’t seem to remember simple things. At school, I needed extra lessons to learn to read.
I must have mentioned this to my family because when I was about seven, my brother convinced me that he would operate whilst I was sleeping to give me a new brain. I was so excited. But it didn’t work!
So life continued, I’d muddled up timetables, misread questions and was unable to remember even short sequences of instructions. It left me having to check, re-check and check again. I doubted myself, and would never put my hand up in class. I was so afraid of getting it wrong and getting laughed at. I tried to attract as little attention as I could and I became painfully shy.
But what was I so afraid of?
How could getting something wrong, or making a mistake hurt me?
The answer lies in what was going on in my thoughts. Not what was going on in the outside world.
Your innate capacity to learn from your mistakes
When you learnt to walk and you fell, you just got up again. You didn’t over analyse yourself, think that you’re stupid, consider all the mistakes you’ve made in the past, or even believe that you would never be able to walk.
Instead, you just tried and tried again.
Yes, you probably got frustrated with yourself, as your body wouldn’t do, what your mind was telling it to do. Your parents may have distracted you, your thoughts changed and then you simply tried again. Eventually, it worked. You learnt from your mistakes until you could walk easily.
This process is how we learn, get better at things and how we can create anything we can imagine. It’s our innate capacity to learn and grow as humans. For it to work however we must make mistakes, it’s not possible to get good at something without practice. It’s how we learn.
I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost more than 300 games. Twenty-six times I’ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life…and that’s why I succeed. (Michael Jordan, regarded as one of the greatest basketball players of all time)
My Diagnosis
Roll on a few years and at 17 I was struggling with my A-Levels. I still didn’t know my months and alphabet in order. So I decided to talk to my teachers.
A few months later I got a diagnosis with Dyslexia. It was a few weeks before my exams, which in the end I failed. Well, I didn’t pass Chemistry and Biology but I got a D in Maths!
Seeing it and not seeing it
I guess in some areas of your life you cut yourself some slack, and you don’t worry about being perfect straight away.
For example, if you’ve passed your driving test, you probably expected to have some lessons, before you were able to pass your test. You started as a beginner.
In other areas of your life, you have self-doubt about your ability to get it right. So much so, that you procrastinate. You believe it needs to be perfect first time.
The reality is no amount of thinking, or even ignoring/distraction is going to make you better at doing the thing you’re worried about.
For example, what if you wanted to write a blog post just like this one. Well, for years this was me, the message I’d tell myself.
I can’t write because I’m dyslexic.
But this wasn’t true, I couldn’t write because I wanted it to be perfect. And if I’m honest I couldn’t write because I wanted my writing to make a difference, and I didn’t want people to not like what I had written.
Now that’s a big ask, to be perfect, to make a difference and to please everyone!
Once I realised that the only way to become a writer would be to get started and to make mistakes it got easier. Mistakes are inevitable and I can promise you that there will be some in this article that you’re reading right now, lots of them.
But the secret is, that I know the more I write, the better my writing will get. Mistakes are just part of the journey.
So what would you love to do or create, and what’s stopping you getting started?
If you’ve found this post helpful you may like, Are you Feeling Worried?
