Making a Mistake Is Not As Bad As You Fear

Nobody likes making mistakes. Most of us, in fact, hate it. In the worst situations, we have a fear of mistakes that can be paralyzing. Fear and worry about how a mistake will make us look, what it will do to our status, what people will think and say about us. And ultimately, what it will mean regarding our worth and value.

Overcoming this fear of mistakes is an important step in releasing yourself to grow and develop as rapidly as you’re able. Once you can free your mind of the fears and worries over mistakes, you can repurpose all that energy to actually getting better. The key is all in your mind and what you tell yourself.

First, remember that your emotions, like fear, come from your thoughts. The more you think fearfully, the more you will feel fear. Likewise, if you can condition yourself to think positive thoughts about mistakes, you will begin to feel differently about mistakes. You can do this by finding a mantra about mistakes that you can repeat, over and over. Something that you wish you felt instead of fear. It can be as simple as “F.A.I.L. is only the first attempt in learning.”

Second, remind yourself that everyone makes mistakes and everyone has anxiety and fear related to them. When people witness someone making a mistake, they all relate to it. They either have empathy and feel bad for the person making a mistake, or they feel insecure and look to try and make that person feel bad. So, anyone watching you make a mistake is either on your side, or feeling even more insecure than you.

Third, our brains and bodies need mistakes to be able to learn how to do things. Knowing what doesn’t work is just as important to the learning process as knowing what does work. If a problem has 5 different solutions, of varying degrees of efficiency, and you find a successful path in your first attempt, how confident can you be that you’ve found the most efficient solution? Not very. In order to find the most efficient solution, you will need to make multiple attempts, including some non-successful attempts, to discover just how efficient that first success was. Eventually, after several success, and failures, you will have a better sense of the best solution path.

Last, it is helpful to remember that failure helps you maintain a humble stance. Being humble and acknowledging that you always are in a learning mode, ready to learn from others and prepared to get better is a healthy mindset for leaders and followers alike. Those who work close to you don’t want to work with the person who always has to be right, they want to work with someone who can make a mistake with grace, and treat them with grace when they do the same.

Mistakes can be your friend, if you let them. Let yourself off the hook and embrace the mess when it happens.

Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.

-Albert Einstein