Harvest the fruit of your mistakes

mapmaker.curtrosengren.com

In a comment to my post on keeping a mistake genius journal, Occupational Adventure reader PW wrote:

I'm at the age where the notion that, after my demise, a family member would find a fat journal devoted to my mistakes makes me a little uncomfortable! Could you work on creating one which self-destructs when out of the owner's hands?

I started to respond in the comments, but it ran on for long enough that I decided it merited a blog post of its own.

That's a great example of an incredibly common mindset that makes it so hard for people to own up to and learn from their mistakes (PW's in really good company in feeling that way). But here's the thing. The mistake genius journal idea isn't actually about mistakes - it's about knowledge!

Mistakes and knowledge go hand in hand. Here's how the full process looks:

Step 1: Make a mistake.
Step 2: Learn from it.
Step 3: Apply what you've learned.

Simple, right? But we get so caught up in banging ourselves over the head with our mistakes that we never get around to step 2 or step 3. We plant the seeds, but we're so fearful of being "someone who makes mistakes," that we stay hidden in the barn rather than going out and harvesting the resulting insights.

Instead of thinking of the journal as an inventory of how you screwed up, think of it as a way to open the door to steps 2 and 3, and a place to store the lessons that the process of living life has to offer.

Here's the reality of it. Everybody makes mistakes. Show me a person who says they don't make mistakes, and I'll show you a person who is a) lying and b) playing really, really small in the world.

So everybody, repeat after me. "I make mistakes. I screw things up. In fact sometimes I really botch it big time. And that's OK."

Don't be ashamed of your mistakes!  They just mean you're alive and breathing. A bigger mistake than any botch job you'll ever manage is to try to bury your mistakes and pretend they don't exist.

If you do that, you're lying to yourself, you're lying to the world, and you're cheating yourself of some of the best opportunities to learn and grow that you'll ever have.

You're already making the mistakes. So am I. We all are. That's just a fact of life. So from a purely logical perspective, if we're already investing in the potential lessons by making mistakes, doesn't it make sense to reap the rewards as well?

--

 

Brought to you by Curt Rosengren, Passion Catalyst ^TM

 

Comments

[Erin Blaskie]

I make mistakes. I screw things up. In fact sometimes I really botch it big time. And that's OK.

I feel better already! :) I really loved this post - I just had this conversation with a friend of mine this evening... about stepping up and owning your mistakes and then moving on.

[Curt Rosengren]

Excellent! Now remember to keep reminding yourself of that next week...and next month...and next year. :-)