The importance of making mistakes when developing experience. Have you ever heard or read the expression “to err is human”? Well, certainly, it is completely true and accurate. If something distinguishes us humans from other species, it is that humans can reason logically, and that allows us to guide ourselves throughout life without being carried away by instinct.
However, when faced with a decision, whether it is important or not, people tend to make mistakes, especially when they do not have any experience making those decisions.
In this sense, in today’s article, you will learn the importance of making mistakes to develop experience since this is the best way to learn.
The importance of making mistakes: What is an error?
An error is something wrong. It can be an action, a concept, or a thing that was not done correctly.
Making mistakes is part of human nature. Many people forbid themselves to make mistakes, but this does not seem right. Errors allow people to learn and gain the experience they need to overcome any situation in life.
Why do people make mistakes?
There are many reasons why humans make mistakes, but the most common reason is lack of experience in a certain field or situation. Also, another reason can be a high sense of optimism, since by being too positive, you can bias yourself towards negative aspects that can harm you.
Overconfidence can also be very detrimental when making decisions and can cause us to make many mistakes. This is because, by having confidence, you can think that nothing bad can happen to you, but it turns out that it is not true. You have to be alert and ready for anything at all times since life is very uncertain.
The importance of making mistakes: What do I do when I make a mistake?
The first thing to do when you make a mistake is to reflect. You must ask yourself: Why did I make this decision? Why was it not the correct decision? What external factors prompted me to make this decision?
After answering these questions internally, the best thing you can do is try to make up for the mistake you made to prevent it from further harming you.
Consider that all people make mistakes, and it is common that at first, you do not know what to do to correct them, so you should calm down a little, breathe, and let everything flow to find the best solution to the problem.
The fear of being wrong
As stated above, most people are afraid of making mistakes because they think it is not good. Some do not even allow themselves to be wrong because they want to be perfect.
It has been proven that people with a fear of making mistakes tend to have a cognitive style (way of processing information and interpreting reality) focused on threats and losses, forgetting what they can win. This interpretation of the world makes it difficult for them to make decisions or take action because they experience high anxiety levels when they have to.
To avoid this anxiety, they decide not to try or to give up if they cannot solve the problem easily and quickly. In this way, their anxiety ceases, and their avoidance or escape behaviors are reinforced, in exchange for not learning to develop strategies that allow them to manage their fear of error, or to realize that, even if they make mistakes, they will know how to solve it.
In maintaining the pathological fear of making a mistake, cognitive aspects related to interpreting reality, and other purely learned aspects, combine.
How to overcome the fear of making mistakes?
The destructive goal is to push yourself to exhaustion in search of perfection. The healthy goal is to seek excellence in the result while enjoying the continuous and eternal process of improvement.
Today’s mistake helps you get it right tomorrow. Make a list of some faults in your life:
- Do you remember what you discovered next?
- Did they offer you any apprenticeships?
- What did you change about your behavior, circumstances, or thoughts from them?
What is now an unwanted result, tomorrow may become what helps you to achieve it, because it makes you worry, get back to work, expand the information you had and develop new skills to deal with the situation.
Your mistake improves your relationships with others, The importance of making mistakes
A mistake is a reminder that we are all fallible, no one is perfect. You can use it to be kinder to yourself and others.
Sometimes it seems impossible to you that someone else does not see what you see, that they cannot execute what you do with the same skill and quality.
The truth is that what is clear to you, for another is not so obvious and, where you see ease, the other may see difficulty.
Many of your conflicts with others can dissolve if you increase your tolerance for the faults of others, and every time you make a mistake it is an opportunity to become aware that no one is exempt from doing it.
The 3R Technique: recognize-repair-reset
When you don’t allow yourself to fail, you can feel so anxious, frustrated, or embarrassed that you try to hide it, or even lie.
An example of lack of acceptance is constantly blaming others for your own mistakes.
- Give yourself the right to be imperfect. Start by acknowledging your responsibility for the mistake, assuming that you did something wrong, overlooked, or neglected something.
- Then deal with the repercussions that your mistake may have had. Sure there is something you can do to minimize its impact or repair it.
- Finally, turn the page, do not rewind what has happened, imagining again and again how you could have prevented it or what you could have done, or said, differently.
Reset and re-grant yourself the opportunity to re-experience again.
The importance of making mistakes
Our life is constantly learning. Sometimes we believe that only young children can learn new things, but we must be aware that each of the things that happen to us in our day to day can have a direct impact on us, causing other types of events to be triggered, which may or may not be planned.
On many occasions, what we had planned to do does not go the way we wanted, generating some frustration. We say then that we have made a mistake since we have carried out an activity waiting for an end that has not been the one that happened. However, we cannot always control everything around us, and it depends on many factors that we get the desired results at all times.
Maybe we have not calculated the scale of this well, which may have led to the bad result, regardless of the other factors. We call this failure and error, considering that it has been our fault that it did not work as we had in mind.
Many become frustrated in the face of this situation and block themselves, without realizing that the mistakes made are always an opportunity to learn and apply this knowledge in the future, so that we can avoid these mistakes and we can achieve, with patience and effort, the desired results.
Conclusions
Now that you know the importance of making mistakes to develop experience, you can learn much more to become a better person and achieve the success you want.
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