Recently, I have been pondering the value of mistakes. I remember many years ago, seeing entrepreneur and advertising guru John Singleton give a talk in Sydney. As he walked to the podium he tripped slightly (to this day I'm not sure if it was deliberate!) swore strongly (his style) and commenced telling us about his many mistakes. They were glorious, funny or tragic and pretty much all of them had taught him something valuable.
As I walked along the beach last week I thought about the huge amount of mistakes I have made in my life. There seemed so many! The more I thought, the more I found. I was in danger of believing my whole life has been a series of mistakes. Some mistakes were very funny, some sad, others pathetic & immature and many invaluable. I can trace mistakes in my personal communications with friends, family and work colleagues. Ignorance quickly shows up and highlights our next lessons.
As a teenager I must have been exercising my rights to make mistakes in a big way – or so it seemed. Such a painful growing period!
As a young adult I thought I had a few things figured out (perhaps I had) but I still seemed capable of blundering around.
In my 20's & 30's the avalanche of errors continued and to this day continues to roll down the hill.
I thought the 50's were supposed to make you wiser (or at least not caring so much about people's reactions to your mistakes) but I find I can still hold my own with the best of them.
I'm starting to get used to my mistakes now – perhaps I'm just being more philosophical.
As a parent, and as I see my daughter growing up, I wish I could spare her the pain that will inevitably come from our inherent human capacity to make mistakes. But that would take the joy of getting it right from her also. Now that would be a mistake!
What am I saying? Celebrate your mistakes, because there is no way on earth that some of them can be avoided. And learn all you can from them – or even better, the mistakes of others! If you want, you can have some of mine! I have plenty to spare.
PS. Another way of looking at mistakes is to call them 'learning experiences'. With this approach, even the worst 'mistake' offers the hope of future wisdom. Of course, if you have the same learning experience more than once - it wasn't! Duh ...back to the drawing board...
