Fail Forward - How Mistakes Shape Success
I remember the feeling I got every time I scored a perfect 100 on my math exam. I’d come home beaming and it was all my parents could talk about. Math came naturally to me, and I enjoyed it, not realizing it was the grade, more than the subject itself, that I was enjoying. I later realized It wasn’t because I had an internal goal of scoring high but because of the attention and love it brought. I was considered smart in school (unfortunately that image didn’t last in university, lol) and the scale of smartness was directly proportional to grades. The fewer mistakes you made, the more worthy you were.
As I grew older, I realized what a flawed concept that was and how far removed the training you receive in school is from the real world. Most students study to reduce errors rather than to learn the subject and its real-world applications. The education system teaches you the complete opposite of what life is about to teach you. A seasoned educator, Gerald Knesek, who taught for 40 years writes in his book about noticing a paradigm shift over the years. According to his observations, students have become more focused on grades and rewards than on knowledge. They refer to themselves as ‘A’ or ‘B’ or ‘C’ grade students, pick classes based on how easy it is to get an A, and feel ashamed of falling grades. There is no real focus on learning.
Interestingly, making mistakes, unlike what is taught in school, is actually good for your brain. A Stanford professor of mathematics writes in his paper "Mistakes Grow Your Brain" that making mistakes helps your brain grow. Studies have shown that the ability to learn from past mistakes is a crucial predictor of eventual success. Individuals who systematically learn from failures and have more failures under their belt are more likely to succeed in future endeavors. To learn in this way, one needs to allow themselves to make errors and overcome the fear of judgment when attempts go sideways and experiment with new ideas. The important aspect is to understand what went wrong and learn from the mistakes.
If you study successful entrepreneurs and common traits among them, the one thing that stands out is that everyone has multiple failures under their belt. Most of the time, the thing that made them successful wasn’t what they were working on from day one. They kept experimenting, learning from their mistakes, and with a mindset of learning, they found what they truly wanted to do and were successful.
Imran Khan, the only Pakistani politician I like, talks about this in his TED Talk. He says the bigger the goal, the more setbacks you will have, and the more failures you should expect. Failure can be the best teacher, but you cannot be demoralized by it because that is where people lose. If you instead analyze the mistakes made and learn from them, you will win.
So, let's redefine our relationship with failure. Embrace mistakes as opportunities for growth, and remember that every setback is a setup for a comeback. In the end, it's not about avoiding mistakes but about learning from them and using that knowledge to propel us forward.
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