The Problem Is Not In Making Mistakes
63. The problem is not in making mistakes; it is in making the same mistake over and over and over.
Let me cite a remark made by Thomas J. Watson, Sr., founder and former CEO of IBM:
Would you like me to give you a formula for success? It’s quite simple, really. Double your rate of failure. You are thinking of failure as the enemy of success. But it isn’t at all. You can be discouraged by failure — or you can learn from it. So go ahead and make mistakes. Make all you can. Because, remember that’s where you will find success.
— Thomas J. Watson, Sr.
For many of you the risk of making mistakes is so great and so feared that you end up making no choices at all. Making no choices is a guaranteed way of ensuring very little growth or success. It is hard to build your life when you’re afraid to pick up the hammer. For many of you making mistakes is common, but the problem with your mistakes is you keep making the same ones over and over. So what we need to do is learn from our mistakes and apply what we have learned to avoid making the same mistake again.
I believe our fear of making mistakes develops very early in life. If we made a mistake on a test, it could lead to a low grade. If we made a mistake in front of our classmates, it could lead to being laughed at and embarrassed. If we made a mistake with our parents, it could lead to punishment. Now in your parents’ defense, some mistakes can cause bodily injury, but for the most part we have been conditioned to steer away from mistakes.
We need to reprogram your brain from believing mistakes are a point of no return. In fact, mistakes are the way you make a correction to get you refocused to the ultimate goal. Mistakes help redirect us to point in the direction of our desired destination. Making more mistakes leads us to more success. Some of the greatest minds in this country have been fired or gone bankrupt before reaching their ultimate level of success. The only mistake in making mistakes is making the same mistake time and time again.