POSITIVE MISTAKES

"There are some people who live 70 years and there are some people who live one year 70 times, repeating what they’re doing over and over in the name of the Gold watch or whatever."

-Wayne Dyer

The fear of being nothing, achieve nothing and becoming nothing should be way bigger than the fear of making mistakes, life is a teacher and you must be ready to learn from it if you want to ever overcome your mistakes or even learn from it, have you ever admitted you made a mistake? Or did you ever think life is cruel to you that’s why you make mistakes. See the greatest mistake you can ever make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one, the other day I read that most of our fears can be boiled down to a fear inadequacy and consequently rejection, I think this is true for me. When I feel a sense of panic about the potential to fail, it’s really more about being seen as a failure. When I make mistakes without witnesses, assuming the mistakes don’t cause me immense discomfort, I generally rebound fairly quickly. It’s almost like a tree falling the wrong way in the wood if no one sees it, did it even happen at all? I suspect this is true for most of us a stumble that no one saw isn’t nearly as mortifying as a stumble with an audience.

When you factor in assumption about other people’s judgment suddenly a mistake seems like more than a poor decision about our character on the whole but there’s something ironic about fearing judgment for being fallible since this is something we all have in common. If we can just embrace our vulnerability and accept that our mistakes don’t define us they can lead to a greater sense of meaning and connection.

Most of the purpose driven people I’ve met feel motivated by the need to help people with struggle they’ve already faced because we err and hurt, we can feel for other people and do our part to help ease their pain and because we know we’re fallible we learn to be humble which help us appreciate and forgive. There are no denying that there are some mistakes that we wouldn’t make if we could re-live those moments. But the reality is that “never” is never an option. All we can ever make is the smartest, bravest choice based on what we know in this moment.

The bravest choice is to do what we really want to do, regardless of whom might see and form opinions. It might not always feel comfortable to risk being seen as inadequate but alternatively, is to risk feeling partially alive.

Mistake and failure isn’t holding you back fear of mistake is we are conditioned to fear mistakes or failure, as if lack of failure (mistakes) guarantee success the reality is that lack of failure equals lack of risk taking, which is required for meaningful success.

Here is a story that will perfectly give you the knowledge (view) of what am talking about or explains it, a story about a female under 14 volley ball team.

The one problem I have on my team is having the athletes get over the fear of making a mistake we do great in practice, but during a tournament the more important the game the more they regress to predictable safe playing. To overcome this, we discussed as a team a few weeks ago that the march 17 tournament  would be a throw away we didn’t  care about the outcome if players played aggressive they would never be in danger of being subbed off, no matter how many mistake they made everyone bought into the system and was willing to give it a try except for about half of my parent group, they had a hard time accepting the fact that we were going to let the girls figure it out and let them go for it on every ball regardless of the score or the stakes. As we started the day, we serves going out and wide, but the team was relaxed and having fun if they didn’t get a great spike in one rally, they tried even the next time, they saw that by making positive errors (mistakes) often the other team would still go for the ball and touch it giving us a point as the day progressed they were becoming more confident, I had athletes who had never attempted jump serving, trying it and succeeding our play was getting more aggressive as the day went on and we were constantly winning.

We made it to the semi finals and all of my doubting parents (I call them Thomas) were congratulating me on the genius of the approach to the tournament they couldn’t believe how well their daughters were playing and it was just getting better I cautioned them and reminded them that the focus has to be on the process, not the outcome, and that even if we were in last place it would have still have been a worthy strategy for all the teaching it provided we played with the most aggression and intelligence we have ever done. We hit from everywhere on the court it was beautiful to watch.

In the second game of the finals, we were behind 23-19 my athlete who was up to serve was one who had discovered her jump serve throughout the day. In the past she would have regressed and underhand served because she had no confidence in her overhand serve during a critical time in the match. However, with no fear of messing up, and having the entire bench and coaching staff cheering on to go for it, she let fly an amazing jump service ace! The score is now 23-21 for them she goes up to do it again  I look over and her mother is covering her eyes, this player has never served 2 jump serves in a row and her mother can’t watch we’re all cheering her to go for it again, Ace! Score 23-22 for them confidently she goes back to serve again she end up serving 3 more aces, all off of her newly found jump serve and we win the tournament the bench is going crazy and the parents are ecstatic I think her mother suffered a minor heart attack.

After we clear the court I gather the team around and ask her in front of all the players how it felt to go for it when we were down by 5 point and ended up winning the match  and the tournament with tears in her eyes all she could say was ‘it was awesome’

I love this story for bunch of reasons but mostly because it shows the power of redefining failure of providing a space where mistakes aren’t merely tolerated, but seen as a productive, essential part of the process another statement that stood me on my feet that was said by the coach was “The focus should be in the process not in the outcome”, Positives Errors what a wonderful term.

All coaches, parents and guardians should be a storytellers their job is to create an emotional safe zone where player, children and youths can go to the edges of their abilities and then beyond. The coach’s wisdom was to change the story “This is a throwaway tournament” and that statement nudged his players into the sweet spot. This as they discovered is pretty freaking sweet.

Many people out there have intense feat of making mistakes those people don’t just find it hard to fail or to make mistake but they also suffer from a low self esteem as a result of their way of thinking.

All humans make mistakes and thus if someone believed that making a mistakes makes him/her less worthy than others then each and every day his self confidence will go lower as the result of the mistakes he makes.

But the question is this, why do some people really find it shameful to make mistake while others consider it a part of the human nature?

Now listen and be attentive, the difference between the two groups lies in their belief system and in the way they have been treated when they were children or brought up as children, because such negative beliefs about making mistakes can lower your self confidence.

I now formulated a way of helping our selves overcome mistakes with some motivating (inspiring) steps of changing your beliefs and how to think of mistakes and what you think you are when you make one (mistake).

STEPS 1: UNDERSTANDING THE FEAR OF MAKING MISTAKES

If you want to overcome the fear of making mistake then you must first examine your belief system to find out whether you have any of the following…

i.                    I Can Learn Without Making Mistakes: Do you know how learning happens? It’s a process of continuously making mistakes and adjusting your method until you no longer make mistake, no wonder people who think that mistaking is shameful have a low self esteem for they never give themselves the chance to develop a new skill that can make them feel good about themselves.

ii.                  It Shameful To Make Mistakes: I have discovered that when people are brought up to believe that making mistakes is a shameful act they lose the self confidence, when they grow up because the human nature always forces them to make mistakes this beliefs is usually learned when the parents shout at the little kid or embarrass him/her in public when he makes a mistake, at this point the child starts to believe that it’s too shameful to make a mistake.  

STEP 2: WHY IS PERFECTIONISM A BAD THING?

Perfectionism is just a defense mechanism that some people who don’t feel good about themselves use to hide their flaws.

In other to overcome the feat of making mistakes you must understand that mistaking is an essential step for learning, Michael Jordan the great basket-baller once said and I quote ‘I have missed more than 9000 shots in my career, I have lost almost 300 games, 26 times I have been trusted to take the game’s winning shot and missed, I have failed over and over and over again in my life and that is why I succeeded’.

Understand that you will never be able to develop a new skill without passing through the learning phase; you will never be able to reach anything before you make some mistakes. The truth is that; do you know why some people want to avoid mistakes? It because they believe that they are less worthy than others and as a result they want to hide their flaws by never drawing the attention of people to them. Overcoming the fear of making mistakes you must understand that mistaking is part of the human nature.