You can afford to make mistakes
In this highly competitive world, we prize success but hate it when mistakes are made and things go wrong. Nevertheless there is real value in using our mistakes to achieve ever-greater success. Because, if you do it right, embracing failure can become a launch pad for positive change. As John Backus, the American computer scientist responsible for the first computer programming language said, “My willingness to fail, gives me the ability to succeed.”
We are not born with a fear of failure and making mistakes, it's not an instinct, it's something that grows and develops in all of us as we get older. In fact, very young children have no fear of failure at all. They have great fun trying new things and learning very fast – through failure and the mistakes they make. Mistakes are simply part of being human.
Whether we like it or not, business (and life for that matter) is all about pushing your limits and taking risks. So as you would expect, making mistakes and a degree of failure should be expected. I am not for one moment suggesting that you make them on purpose. I'm also not suggesting that amassing multiple mistakes is a good idea either. But if they happen (and they will), they should not simply be shunned and ignored. It isn’t so much about avoiding mistakes but rather embracing the idea that they will come our way and when they do, being willing to learn from each and every one.
With every mistake, we discover more and more about our business, our industry and ourselves; about who we are, our limits, capabilities; what we can and cannot do. And the more practice we get at failing, the more equipped we are to deal with it and get the most from it.
Yet how many of us allow the fear of failure to paralyse us? How can we expect to develop and learn anything new if we don’t allow ourselves to make mistakes? I have seen the fear of failure cripple businesses; preventing them from taking any risks - which simply works to automatically cut off new opportunities. If you play it safe you will have more and more regrets about the things you did not do rather than the things you did do, ultimately you will regret not having made more mistakes.
The fear of being nothing, achieving nothing and becoming nothing should be far more important than the fear of making mistakes. The biggest mistake we make is believing that we should not make mistakes.
