Afraid of making mistakes? Nonsense! Go straight on

Hello friends!

In the last text, we talked about How to deal with criticism. The fear of making mistakes is closely related to the fear of receiving criticism. And if we think about how many dreams, how many projects – really positive, constructive, uplifting – fail to be realized for the simple reason of being afraid of making mistakes, of not wanting to hear one or another criticism!

While I was thinking about the theme of this text, I remembered Silvio Santos guiding a TV presenter, who was receiving a lot of criticism. He just said: “- stop thinking about these criticisms! Everyone makes mistakes. Go straight on”. Of course, not exactly in these words, but the meaning was this.

It is interesting to hear this thought from one of the greatest businessmen in Brazil. Obviously he was (and is) criticized… if he were to paralyze, just wanting to be praised, he would not have been able to achieve the goals he had for himself. Is that you? Are you afraid of making a mistake? Nonsense! Go straight on!

fear of making mistakes

It may seem strange to put it this way, but we learn by making mistakes. If we remember school, we will see how many math calculations we did wrong until we got it right, how many hours we had to make mistakes, practicing our handwriting until the letter was beautiful… and in all subjects it was like that. The wrong questions on the tests also get a lot of attention, and if we are smart, we will learn from the wrong questions what we need to study more.

Well, if we learn by making mistakes (in addition to observing and imitating other people’s behaviors that we take as ideal), why be afraid of making mistakes? Looking at it this way, we see that being afraid of making mistakes would be the same as being afraid of learning.

Thomas Edson, one of the greatest inventors and geniuses mankind has ever seen, once said the following when he was trying to find a solution to the creation of the light bulb. Yes, before there was no light bulb, lol. Its creator, after trying thousands of times, said: “I didn’t fail, I found 10,000 solutions that didn’t work”.

The nonsense of not moving on

When I graduated, I worked for 1 week in a nursing home. For a number of reasons, I asked to leave. The job was supposed to be for 4 months – to cover maternity leave. I was a little bummed that it didn’t continue. After all, maybe I could have better appreciated the fact that, by replacing someone else for such a short time, I wouldn’t have much space to develop my own work. That is, it would just have to be done the way it was done and it would be done later.

Anyway, I was upset about it and a good friend said to me: “Felipe, now you know what you don’t want”… I moved on and went to work in Human Resources. I stayed six months and left. It was another professional “mistake”, but another opportunity I had to know what I don’t want.

Could I have learned without making mistakes? In terms of asylum, I think so. With Human Resources, I don’t think so. To this day I like the area. Sometimes I still think of studying administration, economics, marketing (all these areas are intimately related to HR). Sometimes I wonder, but I know that going back to work in the area would be making mistakes again… Therefore, I could only learn by making mistakes and moving forward.

We also learn by comparison, by contrast. When I left the nursing home, I left work with the elderly and went to work with young people in search of professional opportunities. I then accumulated experiences in other jobs (these were not “mistakes”): the time of the master’s degree, the doctorate, the patients in the office and the patients in online psychology.

Looking at the past and seeing our paths is interesting. Were they mistakes? Sometimes I doubt. Should I criticize myself for being “wrong”? I think not. I always learned a lot.

Look ahead

While looking to the past can be an opportunity for reflection, it’s the future that matters. That’s where we’re going, isn’t it? By always keeping our mind in the present most of the time (and imagining positive, constructive and even grandiose projects) for our future, we can calmly put aside the mistake – right – of being afraid of making a mistake. Criticism will come, most likely. We’ll let them come and go with the wind…

To conclude, I would like to leave a thought of the author who I study in the Doctorate and we studied in the Jung Course:

“When we follow the path of individuation, when we live our lives, we must also accept the error, without which life will not be complete: nothing guarantees us – not even for an instant – that we cannot fall into error or mortal danger. Perhaps we think there is a safe way; why, that would be the way of the dead. Then nothing else happens and in no case does what is exact happen. Whoever follows the safe path is as if dead” (JUNG, 1975, p.337)

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