As I sit in front of my laptop, jamming to Amy Winehouse, I get increasingly more frustrated with my chemistry homework and myself. I know I understand the material but I just don't know how to do this problem! The smart thing to do would be to press submit with the answer line blank to see the answer and how to do it. BUT no, that would be me admitting that I can't do something and that I made a mistake in solving the problem at hand. As I went on however, this strategy was more helpful than me staring at a problem, attempting to do it in the utmost wrong way, and then being too upset to learn how to do it correctly. So why am I so resistant to admitting to making a mistake in order to learn from it?
I grew up being told to make mistakes to learn from then but it was never actually played out in real life. School was centered on getting it right the first time or else you just don't know it and you think to yourself, Well, I obviously don't understand the material, so I'm just going to accept it and move on because the grade is in. I thought that I had to know everything off the bat because I had been "smart" my whole life. This doesn't make sense.
I LEARNED before I knew everything that made me "smart". I had to inevitably make mistakes. I understood that grades may not necessarily reflect my knowledge in the subject because I learned from my mistakes on the test but I had no chance to show it. I learned that mistakes led to a greater understanding and I released some anxiety about the "bad" grade I received because I knew that I did now understand the material. This doesn't just apply to school, it applies to life.
I beat myself up the first couple weeks of college because I didn't know my way around campus and kept getting lost. I eventually realized that by getting lost I had learned different ways to get different places leading to an even greater understanding of the campus than I would have had if I didn't make mistakes.
This even applies to trivial things like my Starbucks order. By accidentally forgetting to say iced when ordering my #basic caramel macchiato and drinking a scolding hot coffee on a hot July day, I know consciously make an effort to say "ICED" every time I walk up to the counter.
By making mistakes and learning from that mistake and doing better the next time is what life is all about. The paralyzing fear of making mistakes is inhibiting people from living and learning like we were made to do.
Gandhi put it best when he said, "Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes".
So, go ahead and make that mistake. Go ahead and make that mistake and learn from it. Go ahead and learn from it and do it right the next time.
