Are mistakes way-stoppers or way boosters?

 

When we do a mistake, then we don’t like it in any way. We think why these mistakes exist in the first place. But we forget what the mistake is trying to teach us.

“Failure is not opposite of success, it’s a part of success.” These is a very renowned quote known all around the globe. But still, we tend to hate mistakes rather than learn from them.

So it puts the question in our mind, are mistakes way stoppers or way boosters, i.e. do mistakes help us to do our things in an more efficient manner, or they make our conditions worse?

It is very important to understand this concept, especially at the student’s level. Students don’t want to do mistakes when they do their works, but it ends up that they do more mistakes than they expected.

Now some of you might take this as a negative thing, but it’s not a negative thing. How? Mistakes that they do tell them that where can they improve themselves. If you do more mistakes, then you will learn more things.

When a child is very young and is learning how to walk, then he falls here and there quite many times. These falls are the mistakes that the child is doing. These mistakes that the child does, tell him that where is he needs to improve. It is the same thing that mistakes tell us to do. They tell us that where we need to improve to learn that thing.

For example, let us suppose that you are not able to speak English fluently. Then what are you supposed to do? The mistakes that you do whilst learning to speak English will tell you that where you need to say something and where not to say it. Just like you won’t say, “My name _______ is” in English which is word-for-word translation of the Hindi equivalent of this, you would always say “My name is _______”. Finding small mistakes like these will help you to improve your linguistic skills whilst learning English.

This was in the linguistic context, in other academic contexts too you need to point out at your own mistakes and know where to correct them. For example if you are stuck at a math problem, then you will check where and what am I doing wrong here? Most students directly go and approach their teacher if they are stuck at a math problem, but that is not the correct way.

If you are not able to solve a math problem in your first try, then instead of directly approaching your teacher to get to the answer, find out what you are doing wrong yourself. This will explain you to get to the solution in a lecture that is “custom-made” just for you and no one else will be able to teach you better than you yourself. So atleast try once more and then approach your teacher. At the very least, it will make solving your doubt in the question easier if not completely solve the problem for you.

Mistakes tell you where you need to improve. That doesn’t mean that you have to stop trying to reduce mistakes that you do. If you stop trying to avoid the mistakes that you do, then you can’t do better and will have a huge pile of problems on your head. Try to be the best you can be, as a student, or as a professional. This will help you reduce a amounts of mistakes and the mistakes still left would be easy to point-out and the improvement process would be faster.

We humans are not perfect in anything that we do. So no matter how well you try to do something, there will be some errors in that thing. But that doesn’t mean that we should stop doing those things continuously and until we become at least 0.001% better. That is what Thomas Alva Edison did while inventing the light bulb. He tried over 1000 experiments until he eventually was able to invent an electric bulb. So if you want to be like Edison, then follow his formula—don’t be scared to work even a thousand times.

This makes mistakes way-boosters rather than way-stoppers. Use your mistakes as your cushion to going and making yourself better at doing things and stop cutting through this cushion which will only make your fall more dangerous.